The Piedmont

On Wednesday September 25th we drove from Raleigh to Asheville making a few stops on the way - first the gardens at Duke University in Durham, then the campus of Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, then a park in Hickory and finally at Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa.

The landscaped gardens at Duke were quite lovely and we enjoyed a short visit although we did not see any special birds. We did finally catch up with Gray Catbird. At Wake Forest we walked in a more natural setting and found Scarlet Tanager and both Bay-breasted and Chestnut-sided warblers.

The next stop was at Hickory, just below the mountains. This provided the best birding of the day including my first Yellow-billed Cuckoo in about 20 years! We also added Philadelphia Vireo, Eastern Phoebe, a Cape May Warbler and a Traill's (Alder/Willow) Flycatcher. But my highlight was not a bird but a mammal - a woodchuck or groundhog and locally known as a whistle-pig.

We ended the day in the mountains at Swannanoa, first at Owen Park where we had out first Magnolia Warbler among a few other warbler species and then on the campus of Warren Wilson College - an interesting school with its own farm and a philosophy of academics, work and service. We added Cedar Waxwing here but dipped on the target bird of Field Sparrow.

Woodchuck