On Sunday, my husband and I took a road trip to one of North Carolina’s hottest spots for winter birds: Lake Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge. Located about 200 miles east of the Triangle in Hyde County, Lake Mattamuskeet is North Carolina’s largest natural lake. It’s also very shallow and nutrient-rich, providing food for thousands of waterfowl that overwinter on the lake.
We arrived around eight in the morning and were immediately greeted by the cheery squawking and babbling of hundreds of tundra swans, northern pintails, American coots, and pied-billed grebes, along with green-winged teals, northern shovelers, redheads, and mallards. Most of our birding was done from the car, and as we drove toward the historic lodge we spotted long-tailed muskrats—one canal even held a mother with young, all of them slicing through the dark water like little commas. Behind the old lodge, double-crested cormorants basked openly, and a single black-crowned night heron made itself known with noisy commentary. Out on the lake, tundra swans drifted among rafts of American coots, sometimes close enough to watch the quiet choreography of feeding and head-dipping at the water’s surface.
After visiting the lodge, we took a short boardwalk hike through cypress and wetlands. The trail yielded several warblers and vireos, and from the edges of the marsh we watched different flocks of ducks lift off in sudden, coordinated bursts—wings flashing, water scattering, the whole marsh briefly rearranged by flight. Back on the road, driving farther out across the lake, we continued adding species: great blue herons, great egrets, more tundra swans, American wigeons, white ibises, and hooded mergansers. All the while, northern flickers and tree swallows flitted low across the road, quick punctuation marks against the open winter sky.
Our next stop was Swanquarter National Wildlife Refuge, a coastal marsh refuge established in 1932. We walked the boardwalk that juts out over the marsh and spied great blue herons, brown pelicans, great black-backed gulls, herring gulls, and ruddy ducks.
Driving this region in winter—especially toward Pungo Lake—birders are also likely to see large flocks of red-winged blackbirds, often harangued by low-soaring northern harriers, along with the usual supporting cast of vultures, killdeer, crows, herons, and kestrels.
Sense of Place 