Binoculars and Bird Calls: 

 Tracking Maritime Fowl 



John Fussell enters the maritime 

 forest, cresting the ridges, wrestling 

 thorny vines, until he's found a suit- 

 able clearing among the pines and 

 live oaks. He holds his binoculars at 

 attention, just in front of his chest. 



Silence. Then he calls: 



Sh, sh, sh, sh, sh. 



Sh, sh, sh, sh. 



Sh, sh, sh, sh, sh. 



From deep inside the Theodore 

 Roosevelt Natural Area, an unseen 

 prothonotary warbler answers him 

 with triple "tweets." 



A Carolina wren weighs in with 

 a "toodle de doo." 



The noise that Fussell, a biolo- 

 gist, is making is a distress call. And 

 it's supposed to draw birds close to 

 investigate. 



This time, no birds come into 

 view. But several sound off. 



The species of birds singing to- 

 day in this Carteret County natural 

 area have changed some since 1974, 

 when Fussell first surveyed a 25-acre 

 plot there. 



Some are new to the area; others 

 have disappeared. 



For better or worse, this pattern 

 is emerging all along the Carolina 

 coast as barrier island forests are 

 fragmented and cleared away. The 

 effect is compounded by the fact that 

 barrier islands, by their nature, sup- 

 port lower diversity of plants and 

 animals than the mainland, Fussell 

 says. 



Carolina chickadees, for in- 

 stance, have been traditionally absent 

 from barrier islands in North Caro- 

 lina, but they began moving into the 

 Roosevelt natural area 25 years ago. 



"In the 1970s, you wouldn't 

 have heard a chickadee singing 

 here," Fussell says, adding that 



they're still not nesting at Cape Hatteras 

 or Buxton Woods. 



The same pattern of migration is 

 true for starlings, an introduced species 

 from Eurasia that has driven out some 

 native birds by taking over their nest 

 cavities. Starlings could be responsible 

 for a decline in the numbers of 



the great crested flycatcher, Fussell 

 says. Similarly, the black-throated green 

 warblers may have fallen victim to the 

 growing population of brown- headed 

 cowbirds and common grackles. The 

 cowbird lays its eggs in the nests of 

 smaller birds, forcing them to find new 

 living quarters. 



A more welcome sight to bird en- 

 thusiasts was the arrival of the white 

 ibis, which started nesting along the 

 coast in the 1960s. Only a rare summer 

 visitor to North Carolina earlier in this 

 century, it's now a common species 

 along most of the Carolina coast, even 

 in the winter. Likewise, the osprey was 

 rarely sighted nesting in barrier island 

 treetops before the early 1970s. 



"You had to go to a big effort to see 



an osprey nest," Fussell says. "But to- 

 day, they're on channel markers. 

 They're all over the place." 



The osprey is making a comeback 

 from DDT poisoning that left its eggs 

 brittle and unviable. Other immigrants 

 are riding the wings of "progress" 

 around North Carolina's maritime for- 

 ests. As the coast is developed, its woods 

 are fragmented by roadways and clear- 

 ings for sewer systems and power lines. 

 These openings are road maps for 

 non-native birds that fly in and some- 

 times flush out the original populations. 



In general, the ubiquitous species 

 have grown in number in the maritime 

 forests; the Carolina wren and northern 

 cardinal are the most common. 



Fussell 's surveys of the Theodore 

 Roosevelt Natural Area — in 1974, 1977 

 and 1993 — show that common grackles 

 have increased. But the species of the 

 forest interior have declined. Black- 

 throated green warblers, and perhaps 

 other species, are now absent from the 

 island as breeders. Once, 10 pairs nested 

 in the area each breeding season. 



The red-shouldered hawk, present in 

 the 1970s, is gone, Fussell says. This is 

 true also for the red-eyed vireo, white- 

 eyed vireo, great crested flycatcher, 

 black-throated green warbler and 

 chuck-wills-widow. 



The brown-headed cowbird was not 

 represented in the 1970s at all, but 

 showed strongly in the 1993 survey. 

 The blue jay and Carolina chickadee 

 turned up for the first time in 1977 and 

 have remained. 



"Those kinds of patterns would be 

 the case in other maritime forests, and 

 not just maritime forests but a lot of 

 wooded areas along the coast," Fussell 

 says. "Some species have moved out; 

 they've ceased to be there. 



Jeannie Faris 



COASTWATCH 1 1 



