More Ducks Today!

And some more beautiful waterfowl from Sylvan Heights:

Black-necked Stilt, a fairly common shorebird. It is found on the western coast of the United States all the way down to Central America.

Greater Scaup, a marine duck. It spends the summer in the Arctic and the winters in the coastal bays of Central Europe and the Great Lakes of the US. It can gather in groups or rafts as large as 50,000 to forage on the open waters of the ocean.

A Common Shelduck which is native to the UK and western Europe. Sometimes they are found nesting in rabbit burrows, tree holes or haystacks. There have been flocks as large as 100,000 spotted on the Wadden Sea area of the Netherlands.

And even more birds tomorrow!

The Sun Will Come Out . . . Tomorrow

I couldn't write a post last night and upload photos. We were under a tornado watch all evening and some extremely severe thunderstorms did erupt around my house. I just unplugged everything and read.

The rain continues today, but it looks like just rain. Parts to the south of Greensboro were hit by tornadoes which fortunately never came through our area.

Photos of ducks and geese (oh my!) tomorrow.

Sylvan Heights Waterfowl Park, Scotland Neck, NC

Hawaiian Goose

But the real reason we came to eastern North Carolina was to visit Sylvan Heights Waterfowl Park just outside of Scotland Neck. Here is the largest waterfowl breeding facility in the world and it is open to the public. There are more than 1,500 ducks, geese, cranes, and various other birds, most of whom are endangered or near endangered status.

The park is set up so that you can get close up to most of these birds within their enclosures.  I had a terrific time taking tons of snapshots although I was extremely impressed by the dedicated photographer who came with his DSLR and $10,000 zoom lens (although the question was why did he need such an extreme zoom lens when you could get within inches of the ducks and geese).

Here are some of the birds we saw:

A Muscovy Duck which is native to Nicaragua. Along with the Mallard considered one of the wild ancestors of the domestic duck.

This little Scarlet Ibis strolled down the path in front of us, coming so near that I nearly stepped on it. Since all the chicks are hand raised at the park, they have no fear of the visitors who come through. I did find out that if you get too close to some of the geese and don't have any food for them, you are liable to get a strong nip (looking at you, Hawaiian Goose).

Above is the Great Curassow which is considered threatened in its native South America habitat. Again, since it was hand-raised here at the park, he would follow us around the enclosure and let us get up close as we wanted to without taking off.

More pictures tomorrow!

Cotton Press, Tarboro, North Carolina

I didn't do a very good job photographing this very interesting structure in Tarboro. I read about it in Catherine Bishir's volume on Eastern North Carolina historic architecture and so set out to find it and take some snapshots. This is a cotton press and one of only three still remaining in the United States (the other two are in South Carolina and Louisiana).

However I was lucky enough to find photos that were taken by the National Park Service in the 1940's which shows the cotton press as it sat on The Commons in Tarboro without this shed sheltering it.

It was originally built in the late 18th century on a plantation outside of Tarboro to press fruit for wine and apples for cider, but by 1840 it was turned into a press for cotton after it was ginned so that it could be assembled into bales. Four mules or oxen were hitched to the two long booms to provide the turning power.

You can see clearly the two booms at the top of the press and the large screw in the middle that compacted the cotton into bales. The whole structure stands almost 25 feet tall.

This is also the time of year that cotton is picked in the fields in eastern North Carolina by huge harvesters. You won't see field labor picking cotton anymore. The sides of the roads we drove on this past weekend was full of cotton bolls that had fallen out of the trucks (known as boll buggies) that follow behind these harvesters. I should have had the presence of mind to photograph  them but didn't think of it until too late.

Calvary Episcopal Church, Tarboro, North Carolina

TB and I traveled to the eastern part of North Carolina this weekend to visit historic Tarboro, the ninth oldest incorporated city in the state. The town of 13,000 has more than 300 historic buildings with 45 city blocks.

We spent the most time in the churchyard of Calvary Episcopal Church, a two acre graveyard and arboretum. The parish itself was organized in 1749, but the current building was built over a period of a decade, 1859 to 1868 due to construction being interrupted for the Civil War.

The churchyard was designed by Dr. Joseph Cheshire who was the rector for the church from 1842 until 1889. Originally the churchyard held just a cedar tree and a rose bush, but Dr. Cheshire filled it in with plants he dug from road sides and seeds and plants that were sent to him by missionaries from all corners of the world. The result is a stunning arboretum of rare plants including a Cork Oak that Dr. Cheshire grew from an acorn that was sent to him from a friend in Spain.

Stunning Sunday Skies

Sorry about the lack of photos and posts this week. I blame it on inertia and the fact we've gone back to standard time which means if I don't take photos on the weekend or at lunchtime during the week, then I don't take any photos.

But Sundays are sacrosanct since I do this in conjunction with Anyes over at Far Away in the Sunshine. Today's snapshot was taken down at Holden Beach this past February. TB and I went down for a long weekend and photo opportunities only to have three days of rain and fog. However the morning we left to come back to Greensboro, the rain finally stopped and I got this sunrise shot right on the beach.

I'm traveling this weekend, so I'm crossing my fingers that there will be lots of snapshots and things to blog about this coming week.

The Bottle Chapel at Airlie Gardens, Wilmington, NC

 

"Minnie Evans was the gatekeeper of Wilmington’s historic Airlie Gardens from 1949 to 1974, and is considered one of America’s most important visionary artists. Evans’s take on color, mysticism, and symmetry made her garden-infused art unique. 'It was therefore an inspired decision,' Airlie Gardens Guild member Fred Wharton writes, 'to create the Minnie Evans Memorial Sculpture Garden—a garden within the garden, in the very place where she worked as a gatekeeper, where she experienced her visions, and where she created her art.'

 "Local Wilmington artists got together after Minnie’s death to create this - a seventeen-foot-high, seven-sided chapel sculpted from thousands of glass bottles, cement, and metal armature designed by artist Virginia Wright-Frierson. To create a fitting memorial inspired the symbolism and elaborate designs found in Evans’s work, Wright-Frierson assembled a team of North Carolinians to interpret the artist’s themes in various media. The Bottle Chapel Artists were Virginia Wright-Frierson, Designer & Lead Artist; Karen Crouch, Dumay Gorham, Brooks Koff, Hiroshi Sueyoshi, Barbara Sullivan, Tejuola Turner, Michael van Hout."

-Fred Wharton, author of The Bottle Chapel at Airlie Gardens

 I had not heard of Minnie Evans prior to our trip to Airlie Gardens, but this bottle chapel was breath-taking and the highlight of my visit to the garden.

Stunning Sunday Sunset

I can always count on finding a super sunset down at the marina at Lake Brandt especially when the weather is changing and and there are interesting cloud formations over the water.

I'm doing these sunset photos in conjunction with Anyes over at Far Away in the Sunshine. Go and see what she saw for a sunset there in British Columbia, Canada. I have a feeling these types of days will be few and far between as we get closer and closer to winter. This week's gray weather certainly didn't lend itself to any good snapshots. I'll have to dig deeper in my archives to find something interesting I'm afraid.

Chilean Flamingo

I'm rummaging through old photos to see what I have interesting to post as recent day trips have come up pretty dry. I mean, do you really want to see a pond full of water hyacinth and trees without any pretty leaves? The only good snapshot out of the entire day at the Pee Dee was that of the gravel road through the forest.

I took this last year at the North Carolina Zoo when I decided to go on a day trip during one of the coldest days of the winter. My thought was cold meant very few sightseers, not realizing cold meant few animals out on display. So over to the aviary which was inside, full of birds, and heated.

Except that the Chilean flamingo above thrives in this type of cold weather and so stays outside year round. They can survive at heights of over 14,000 feet in the wilds of the Bolivia Altiplano region as part of a group of flamingos, Chilean, Andean and James, known as the volcano flamingos.

In fact, I had no idea that flamingos existed anywhere outside of the hot climates of the Caribbean and Africa until I found this interesting article about the volcano flamingos at Cornell University's All About Birds website.

A Drive in the Pee Dee National Wildlife Refuge

A Sunday drive on a gravel road in the Pee Dee National Wildlife Refuge about 90 miles south of Greensboro. Here, nearly ten thousand Canada geese overwinter along with various other waterfowl such as mallards, wood ducks, etc., along with the natives - white tailed deer, black bears, bobcats, foxes, and more.

We didn't see any of them. No geese on Beaver Pond, no white tailed deer alongside this gravel road. I did see a cardinal on a dead tree snag, but that was it. I think you have to be in the refuge really early in the morning, probably close to daybreak or stay a little after the sun goes down (the refuge is open an hour before dawn and closes an hour after sunset for those die hard naturalists).

But the trees are full of color this year, more so than the past couple of years. I was surprised as we have been in drought conditions all through the summer and generally that means less color in the leaves. Perhaps our late summer/early fall rains helped to counter that.

Stunning Sunday Skies

I went down to Lake Brandt Thursday evening to catch the cold front as it came in from the Midwest. This is the leading edge of the front that brought us cold rain on Friday and then went up the Atlantic seaboard to turn into a nor'easter, one of the earliest ever and dumping large amounts of snow in the Mid-Atlantic states and New England.

No snow here in Greensboro (that would have been a record), but with wind gusts over 30 mph and temperatures in the low 40's, it sure felt like winter and not just a month into fall. Indicators of this winter to come?

I'm doing these sky shots with Anyes over at Far Away in the Sunshine. I know she doesn't have to worry about nor'easters there.

Song Sparrow on the Patio

A short post as the weather is conspiring against my air card and my ability to upload photographs. We're getting that storm that dumped a foot of snow on Denver a few days ago; no snow, but rain and the temperature has dropped from 78F to the mid-40's. Winter is coming.

The feeders are out in the small garden and this song sparrow showed up on the patio to pick through the seeds spilled out of the feeder in the redbud tree. He is a ground feeder and because of his shading, sometimes the only way I know that I have sparrows in the garden is when the leaves start flying in the air as they scratch around. 

This sparrow is the largest of all of our native sparrows and has the largest number of subspecies - 52. I have no idea which subspecies this one is. Perhaps Melospiza melodia melodia  or Melospiza melodia atlantica or even Melospiza melodia euphonia. Who knows?

Butterflies at Airlie Gardens

Monarch Butterfly

A place to visit in Wilmington is Airlie Gardens, one of the sites of the annual Azalea Queen festival in the spring. However by the time I showed up the first week of October, pretty much everything had gone by and the workers were starting to put up Christmas decorations (That drives me crazy! Thanksgiving is first; in fact, Halloween is before both of those holidays).

But the Butterfly House was in full swing with lots of Monarchs and Gulf Fritillaries. It made it quite easy to take snapshots as I wasn't chasing them across poison ivy infested fields.

Gulf Fritillary

Barn Quilts in Sparta, NC

And a look at the barn quilts that decorate some of the buildings in downtown Sparta -

This is called "Four Cubes and a Star" and it is on the side of the Alleghany Arts and Crafts Gallery. Quite psychedelic, isn't it?

And this is "Hawaiian Breadfruit" on the side of an antiques and pottery store. I'm told by Suzi Parron, who has written a book on barn quilts and has photographed many of these North Carolina barn quilts herself, that the owners of this shop had been to Hawaii for vacation and wanted something to remember their trip by. Hence this particuar pattern.

Sunset Sunday

I had to dig deep in my stash of photos to find a good sunset. The skies this week have been beautiful, but cloudless and I think clouds add so much to a photo, especially a sunset photo.

I took this at Lake Townsend exactly one year ago using the old bridge super-zoom camera, the Panasonic FZ5. Lake Townsend is the largest of our city water reservoirs, but  this year its water levels are down by many feet, leaving a huge swath of mud flats along the shore. However, the drop is not due to our summer drought (with 12 1/2 inches of rain over the past two months, we are finally out of that misery), but due to the city having to repair the dam at the eastern end of the lake and having to lower the lake levels in order to make that possible.

I'm doing this in conjunction with Anyes over at Far Away in the Sunshine. Go and take a look at what she saw.

Revoir à la Rose

The very last roses of the year. The Clotilde Soupert has been a phenomenal bloomer this fall.

But as you can see from the bud to the left of the large bloom, we've had very cold mornings; not quite a freeze but there has been a little frost some mornings.

So, it tells me that I need to start putting out the bird feeders for my little boreal migrators and there will soon be bird pictures to come.

More Barn Quilts

And some more barn quilts that I photographed this past Saturday up in the mountains. I'll identify them if I can.

This is called Dutchman's Puzzle. It is on the workshop of Dan Abernathy who is a renown bird sculptor. He provided a bird Christmas tree ornament for the 2002 White House Christmas tree (only one craftsperson from each state is chosen) and his sculptures are in museums and private collections all over the country. There was a gallery/studio tour in Alleghany County Saturday, so I got two for the price of one.

While there are two barn quilts listed on this particular country road, this isn't one of them. No idea what the pattern name is.

Even if this wasn't listed on the brochure, the pattern is instantly recognizable as Log Cabin. I had to take this from a distance as the barn was at the far end of a large pasture. You can see that they also are a Christmas tree farm (just behind the barn).

I did a quick mental calculation as to how many barn quilts there are in western North Carolina (foothills and mountains). There are probably close to 1000! I promise not to turn this into all barn quilts all the time, but will look for them on future trips.

Barn Quilt on Shatley Springs Road, Crumpler, NC

The weather forecasters predicted a bright and sunny Saturday, so TB and I left early that morning to go up to the mountains and take pictures of the colorful leaves and any other interesting buildings and places we could find.

TB saw this barn quilt in her side view mirror as we were heading south on US Highway 221 towards West Jefferson. I would've never seen it unless I looked at the exact right moment in my rear view mirror.  Since I was taking as many barn quilt pictures that I could find on this trip, I made an U-turn and back to Shatley Springs Road to take this picture.

I can't tell you the name of this pattern as this particular quilt is not noted on the Ashe County website which currently only lists 30 barn quilts. However the Ashe County Arts Council states in their latest newsletter that there are now more than 150 barn quilts in this county alone. Wish they and neighboring Alleghany County would get their act together and update their respective websites. It's delightful to come upon them accidentally, but I prefer mapping out my road trip beforehand.

Stunning Sunday Skies

Another standing in the parking lot at work and shooting blindly up in the air with the small camera snapshot.

Our weather has changed rather dramatically from the heat of this past summer to the cool and crisp of fall. And with this change of weather, I watch all these storm fronts coming towards us from the Midwest with these stupendous clouds right before the sky turns grey and rains for days.

This weekend has been terrific, though, with bright blue skies and not a cloud in them, what we here refer to as "Carolina Blue" and what the University of North Carolina has co-opted for their school colors. But the Tuesday prior brought me all these glorious clouds and a stunning sky.

I'm doing this in conjunction with Anyes over at Far Away in the Sunshine. I bet her pictures are done a little more professionally. . .

Faison-William House, Faison, North Carolina

Just north of Magnolia is Faison, another town that grew up around the Wilmington-Weldon Railroad (which now through many and various mergers is CSX Transportation). Although it was originally settled by land grant in 1776, Faison's heydays were during the years of 1830 to the end of the nineteenth century.

Prior to the Civil War, many planters built large mansions in the town, earning it the sobriquet "The Acropolis of Society of Duplin County". One of those mansions is the one pictured above, the Faison-Williams House.

Today the house is nearly hidden from sight behind these huge magnolia trees. I drove up the driveway to get a better look at the house which looked neglected and abandoned (I figured I could leave long before the sheriff's deputies showed up to arrest me for trespassing).

What an odd sight. The front stairs had been repaired but there was an abandoned secretary's chair and contractor's light on the porch. The old brick piers holding up the porch have been replaced in places with concrete blocks (ugly). When you look through the front door and windows, the inside has been gutted to the studs and drywall lies piled on the floor. If you click on this link, it will take you to the North Carolina State University Digital Library and photos of the interior which were taken in 2005. Six years later, it still looks the same.

A little digging around the Internet brought just one comment on a genealogy site from the guy who bought it in 1999. In 2001 he wrote that he and his wife were renovating it and planning on turning it into a bed and breakfast. It looks as though they gave up on the renovation shortly after posting that comment.

And doing a little more digging to find the owner's name, it turns out that he ran for town commissioner twice and state senate once and was roundly defeated for all three races. Think people were upset by how he's left this once proud mansion to fall into ruin?

Old Store, Magnolia, NC

While I was trying to find another historic house in Magnolia, I ran across this boarded-up and abandoned store. It's not in my books, not on the Internet. I wonder what it's history is.

A close-up of its decorative embellishment in the gable of the roof.

Magnolia Academy, Magnolia, North Carolina

I've stopped driving the interstate highways as much as possible during my weekend day trips. For one, it is mind numbing to drive and see nothing but four (or six lanes) of asphalt mile after mile. Secondly, it takes me away from the small towns and villages where there is always something new to see.

Magnolia, North Carolina is one of those tiny villages with something unusual to see. It sits along US Highway 117 which parallels Interstate 40. And since I-40 siphons off all the traffic, it made for a pleasurable drive to Duplin County and through the towns that sprang up along the Wilmington-Weldon Railroad back in the 1840's.

Magnolia was once the largest town in the county and the center of North Carolina bulb producers and exporters back before the Civil War. Today it has around 900 people living here.

Above is a picture of Magnolia Academy which was built as a private school in 1858. When I saw a picture of it on Built Heritage North Carolina, it looked as though a strong wind would blow it down completely (if you click on the link above, it will take you to the interior photos of the academy).

But when I finally found it, it appeared that someone had moved in (see the window with the air conditioner in the picture below) and had done a little, not a whole lot, of renovation to the building.

Sunset Sunday

A last sunset on the Intercoastal Waterway at Holden Beach. This time I didn't hold up traffic to take it. There is a public dock under the ICW bridge where the locals gather to fish and trade tall fish tales. They were gracious enough to share the dock with me while I took sunset snapshots.

I was  so fortunate to have a week where every single day was sunny and warm. Great weather for a vacation!

I'm doing this in conjunction with Anyes over at Far Away in the Sunshine. Go see her beautiful sunset.

Birdwatching on the Masonboro Sound

This morning I drove up to Wrightsville Beach to take a birding tour of the intercoastal waters given by the Cape Fear Naturalist. The nice thing about going on vacation in October is that tour groups tend to be really small. In fact, this one was so small there was another tourist, the boat captain, the tour biologist and myself.

I wasn't sure that I could get anything decent in the way of a snapshot as the pontoon boat was rocking and rolling in the swells and wakes and I just have a bridge camera, not a DSLR with all the options and gadgets.

But a lot of the pictures turned out well. Here is a close up of the terns on the sandbar above:

The ones with the black heads are Caspian Terns and the ones with the wedge of gray are Royal Terns (along with a scattering of gulls).

And what happens when you get too close to a sandbar and set everyone off:

Brown Pelicans, Royal and Caspian Terns (in the air), Common Terns, Black Skimmers (the ones with black wings), and gulls of some type.

It was a terrific adventure and made me wish for Swarovski binoculars and a DSLR with a huge telephoto lens.

Commuting on the Southport Ferry

One thing you can say about the North Carolina Ferry system is that they are strictly utilitarian and cheap. It only costs $5 per car to take this from Southport to Fort Fisher. I imagine during the summer and high season for tourists, that this is generally packed with cars, not the handful you see here.

But there are always freeloaders who sneak on after the ferry has set sail:

Common Grackle

First Summer Herring Gull Juvenile

Price's Creek Lighthouse

Yesterday I decided to take the ferry from Southport to Fort Fisher and the beaches at the very south part of Wilmington.

As the ferry pulled out of the dock, I turned and looked back and saw this small abandoned lighthouse. I took some snapshots and then went on to the other beaches in search of interesting photos and shells.

When I got back to the beach house last night, I did a little research and found out that this small lighthouse is called Price's Creek Lighthouse and was built in 1849 as one of eight paired lighthouses to guide boats down the Cape Fear River. This is actually the smaller of the pair as a taller light was built behind it. According to what I read on the Internet, ship's captains positioned their vessels so that the taller light appeared directly behind the shorter one. By doing this, their ships would be safely in the middle of the Cape Fear River.

Their heyday lasted until the end of the Civil War when they were abandoned to the weather and scavengers. This is the only one left and now lies inaccessible on private property.

Looking Down the Intercoastal Waterway.

Many years ago when my family first started coming to the North Carolina seashore (over 45 years now), the only bridges to the coastal islands over the Intercoastal Waterway where either drawbridges or swing bridges. I could remember many times during our summer excursions back to our cottage where we had to sit in idling traffic while the bridges had opened to allow boat traffic down the ICW. For some beaches like Sunset Beach, the only bridge connecting it to the mainland was not only a swing bridge, but a one-lane bridge meaning traffic had to wait for the other lane to clear.

Some years back, someone in state government finally got a clue that trying to evacuate these hugely populated islands for a hurricane was going to prove to be a nightmare situation with this little bridges and so they started building mammoth concrete bridges over the ICW to replace these now outmoded asphalt and wood ones.

This is the evening view from the bridge from the mainland to Holden Beach over the Intercoastal Waterway. It is not one of my better snapshots as I had to stop at the top of the bridge, roll down the car window and take a quick shot while I held up traffic behind me. But at least they were patient for that minute - no laying on of car horns and no sheriff involved.

Buckner Hill Plantation, Faison, NC

I know what you're thinking. I went to the beach for vacation, so where are the beach snapshots?

No beach for my Sunday travels - rather away from the beach in search of historic buildings that are too far from Greensboro for a day trip. In fact, I had this specific building on my list for quite a long time and now that I was within driving distance, off I went.

For those of you who saw The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood back in 2002, this house may look familiar. It portrayed Pecan Grove, the Walker family's home place in Louisiana. It is actually Buckner Hill Plantation outside of Faison, NC - many, many miles from Louisiana.

It is one of the largest plantation homes in North Carolina and was built by skilled slaves owned by Dr. Buckner Hill in the 1850's. The floor plan is that of a cruciform with twelve  foot wide halls bisecting both floors. When the weather becomes too hot for the family, the doors and windows are opened and the interior halls become interior porches. The large intersection of the hallways was also used by the original family members as a ballroom.

I saw the owner trimming his hedge out back, stopped and asked if I could come onto the property to take pictures of the front of the house. He's probably quite used to sightseers coming by and was very gracious and allowed me to drive up the driveway and take all the pictures I wanted. 

Stunning Sunday Sky

I can't believe I have gone a whole week without posting, but sometimes life and work get in the way. I'll have lots and lots of posts this week as I am on vacation down at the beach. The weather forecast says every day will be sunny and warm, so lots of opportunities for snapshots.

Today's photo is of the sky after one of our thunderstorms from last week finally ended and the sun came out that morning.

I'm doing this with Anyes over at Far Away in the Sunshine. I may miss a week of blogging, but I won't miss a Sunday sky or sunset.