Down east with A bird's best friend 



John 



By Carla B. Burgess 



When the eye of Hurricane Diana 

 passed over the southern coast of North 

 Carolina in September 1984, most people 

 tried to put as much distance as possible 

 between the coast and them. 



But John Fussell followed in the 

 footsteps of some bird-watching friends 

 who had gone to Lake Waccamaw to 

 capture a rare glimpse of pelagic birds. 

 These birds, which normally spend their 

 lives on the open sea, were blown to the 

 lakeshore by the storm winds. 



Jaegers, black-capped petrels and 

 Wilson's storm petrels touched down on 

 this inland "ocean." Fussell arrived in time 

 to see south polar skuas and greater 

 shearwaters before the storm — and the 

 birds — moved on. 



As the New Year's Eve northeaster of 

 1987 battered the state's southeastern 

 shores, Fussell and a companion were 

 slogging around in the marshes of Carteret 

 County's North River in hopes of sighting 



the secretive yellow rail. 



"It was raining and my glasses were 

 covered with water ... I couldn't see 

 anything," he says. 



A self-employed consulting biologist 

 and avid coastal birdwatcher, Fussell says 

 that being good at identifying birds is less 



■ ■ ■ ■ 



"Ornithology, 

 more than any other science, 

 is furthered by amateurs." 



John fussell 



interesting to him than forecasting when a 

 variable such as weather might make for 

 an unusual sighting. 



"I like to predict when something rare 

 might show up," says Fussell, during a 

 recent outing to one of his favorite birding 

 spots, the Rachel Carson component of the 



N.C. National Estuarine Research Reserve 

 in Beaufort. 



A native and resident of Morehead 

 City, Fussell wrote and published a field 

 guide to Carteret County's birds and sites 

 in 1985. He also co-authored a brochure, 

 Birds of the Outer Banks, which lists the 

 nearly 400 species of birds that have been 

 sighted within Cape Hatteras National 

 Seashore and its surrounding waters. 



He's working on a book, tentatively 

 titled Finding Birds on the North Carolina 

 Coast, to be published by the University of 

 North Carolina Press. 



Some folks have called Fussell "the 

 bird man of Carteret County." They could 

 call him the plant man too. A graduate of 

 N.C. State University, Fussell holds degrees 

 in zoology and botany. 



Fussell is working for the Natural 

 Heritage Program, searching for rare plants 

 in the Croatan National Forest. Through 

 the Albemarle-Pamlico Estuarine Study, 

 he's also conducting inventories of natural 



6 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1992 



