North Carolina county #21 Granville Athletic Park
Wednesday morning, I left for an overnight trip to hit a bunch of counties. It ended up getting cut short, but I had a good time hitting three spots throughout the day. My first stop was Granville Athletic Park.
I really was not expecting much and didn’t expect to stay long. It had taken me some time to find a spot to bird in Granville and I settled on this spot since it was just off of I85 and on my way to Kerr Lake. As it turned out, this is a really nice park. There are trails and walking paths through some wooded areas and around all the fields.
There were several walkers and joggers around, and the parking lot had a good number of cars in it for a Wednesday morning in March. I saw 18 different species, but it felt like much more, because of the large numbers of Dark-eyed Juncos, White-throated Sparrows, and Northern Cardinals. In fact, I think I saw more Northern Cardinals per minute here than I ever saw before, and I ended up recording 25 of them in ebird. I am sure there were more than that.
I was pleasantly surprised by this spot, and if I were local to the area I would probably stop by here a lot. It is an easy, quick walk to survey the park and there is a good amount of activity to keep your interest.
ebird checklist