Hello all,
I have some good news to share! After working with the NC HotSpot
coördinator, I have gotten three new HotSpots approved for Durham County. I
know this is drudgery, but it would greatly please my OCD-afflicted brain
if anyone who has birded these spots would merge their personal locations
with the new HotSpots. I spent, of my own volition, several months scouring
all eBird records and compiling comprehensive Google spreadsheets of every
species, checklist, and observer at each of these locations, and I would
love it if this information could be reproduced via Citizen Science on
eBird itself! I will describe the new HotSpots below, and if you think you
may have birded there in the past, pretty-please double-check and merge
your locations.
Yay citizen science!
3. McFarland Lake and Moore's Mill Fields
<https://ebird.org/hotspot/L13938785>: This is a large area of cropfields
surrounding a farm pond, across the road from the golf course proper and
extending south to the gravel State Forest Road that transects NCSU's Hill
Forest. There is no address, but if you look at your eBird locations and
they say something like "1856-2252 Moore's Mill Rd
<https://www.google.com/maps/@36.2138847,-78.9010938,1009m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDQyOS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D>," etc, you likely birded this HotSpot. It made a big splash in 2020 after 3
glossy ibis were reported there in April, and then it was birded pretty
continuously for the next month until folks lost interest. Aside from
attracting windblown waders with its marshy inflow streams, McFarland Lake
is good for waterfowl (though not as crazy as Lake Winds), and the adjacent
fields house the county's only known sustained breeding population of
Horned Larks.
If any of these sounds familiar, please please please review your
checklists and merge your locations so we can have the most accurate data
possible on eBird. I will also be adding information to the new About Pages
on these HotSpots' eBird sites so that more information may be available to
prospective birders. BIG thanks and good birding,
~ Noah
