North Carolina county #40 Bog Garden and Hamilton Lakes Park
My first trip as part of the spring Carolina Bird Club meeting was to two locations in Guilford County: the Greensboro Bog Garden, and Hamilton Lakes Park. During my field trips with the club, I do not bring my backpack and switch lenses, so I just used my phone to record the locations. It’s a new phone though (Google Pixel XL) so the photos usually come out ok. I still used my camera to try to grab some bird photos though.
The Bog Garden is a nice park with a roughly 1 mile loop on a boardwalk. It was early morning and overcast, so it was a bit dark under the trees for photos, but I did get some shots of a pair of Barred Owls – it looked like one was feeding the other. I also saw several warbler species, including Worm-eating Warbler, Black-throated Blue Warbler, Northern Parula, Black-and-white Warbler, Pine Warbler, and Northern Waterthrush. Worm-eating and Northern Waterthrush were both my first for the year.
At the halfway point, there is an overlook over a marshy pond where we spotted Solitary Sandpiper and Spotted Sandpiper.
After we were finished, we took a quick drive to Hamilton Lakes Park.
This was a larger park and we hiked about 1.75 miles of it. I didn’t actually see any lakes but there were a ton of warblers here. In fact it was the best warbler spot I’ve been at all year so far. We got 10 species of warbler, Scarlet Tanagers, a Baltimore Oriole, and 3 species of Thrush. We also got good looks at a Red-shouldered Hawk in her nest feeding young. There was even a hummingbird flying around. My favorite was the Chestnut-sided Warbler, which I have seen in the fall before but not their beautiful spring plumage.
These were two great locations and I highly recommend stopping by if you are in Guilford during a migration season.
ebird checklist - Bog Garden ebird checklist - Hamilton lakes Park