Bird of the Month - 

Eastern Screech Owl

Although there are many birds nesting and raising young along the Big Elkin Creek and the Yadkin River, there is one bird that almost everyone can identify - the Owl.  I came across a family of Eastern Screech Owls just a few days ago.  There are three young owlets and at least one adult that had a roost in a tree not far from where the young are found. 

Eastern screech owls roost mainly in natural cavities in large trees, including cavities open to the sky during dry weather. Females do most of the incubating and brooding, but males will also occasionally take shifts. As is the typical division of labor in owls, the male provides most of the food while the female primarily broods the young.  Although they will stockpile food during the early stages of nesting, the male tends to work hard nightly because many nestlings often appear to live almost entirely off of freshly caught insects and invertebrates. The male's smaller size makes it superior in its nimbleness allowing it to catch insects and other swift prey. Eastern screech owls usually raise only a single brood but may re-nest if the first clutch is lost - especially towards the southern end of its range. When the young are small, the female tears the food apart for them. The female, with her larger size and harder strike, takes on the duty of defending the nest from potential threats and even humans may be aggressively attacked, sometimes resulting in the drawing of blood from the head and shoulders of human passers-by.

WS Journal Features E & A Rail Trail Birding...

On Friday, May 15, Ron Morris and Philip Dickenson's column Birds-Eye View in the Winston-Salem Journal featured the Elkin and Allegheny Rail-Trail.  Hopefully, the publicity will draw new birders to the trail. The column that appeared under the headline "Elkin has new path to explore" is below for your reading pleasure:

This column often features the greenways around Winston-Salem - great places to bird, bike or just stroll. A trail in the Surry County town of Elkin is a great addition to the walking paths in the area and it promises even more for the future.

Big Elkin Creek flows into the Yadkin River just south of downtown Elkin. A few blocks north onMarket Street the Elkin & Alleghany Rail-Trail begins, following the creek northward for nearly two miles.

The trail skirts Elkin Municipal Park with its swimming pool, baseball diamonds and tennis courts. Birds typical of urban areas - bluebirds, phoebes, chipping sparrows, cardinals, wrens and towhees - are at home in this open landscape. Blue-gray gnatcatchers, among the earliest returning migrants, chatter away with their lisping calls, sounding gossipy among the sycamores that line the stream bank.

The path through an underpass beneath Business Hwy. 268 takes you into a natural area following the route of the short-lived Elkin and Alleghany Railroad. The trail was built in the early 1900s as a link from the Southern Railroad in Elkin to Sparta and the resort area of Roaring Gap. But the growing highway system soon made this railway impractical.

A few years ago the Elkin Valley Trails Association reclaimed the old railway roadbed and developed the trail, with a little help from North Carolina Rails-Trails. Signs along the path tell of factories that once used the creek's water - factories that now live only in memories and photographs.

The trail offers a comfortable, easy hike on a broad, smooth path that wanders through a mixed hardwood-pine forest. The creek attracts birds that specialize in riparian habitat, birds like belted kingfishers and Louisiana waterthrushes.

Halfway along the trail's route, a handsome footbridge crosses the creek and gives you a nice view up and down the waterway. On an early-April morning, turkey vultures roosted over the creek, waiting for the air to warm and provide updrafts for easier soaring.

The strident calls of a red-shouldered hawk drew my attention to the skies where the raptor patrols its territory. Its narrow tail bands help distinguish it from another bird of prey that nests in these woods - the broad-winged hawk which has fewer broad tail bands. The red-shouldered is a year-round resident of these woodlands while the broad-winged is a long-range migrant, only recently returning from as far south as Argentina.

Farther up the trail, a waterthrush's song lured me off the path down to a broad floodplain shaded by river birches. The bird's song led me to a point on the creek where it cuts into a stone embankment covered with rhododendrons that are sure to delight when they bloom.

Farther still, the path crosses beneath more bridges. Remnants of last year's nests on tops of the bridge supports portend the return of cliff swallows within a few days.

The Elkin & Alleghany Rail-Trail is part of the Mountains to Sea Trail and will ultimately connect Stone Mountain State Park with Pilot Mountain State Park. EVTA expects to extend the trail another half mile by this fall, an extension that will include another 200-foot bridge.
 

This 25-mile section to Stone Mountain is expected to be completed within five years.

To enjoy the trail, go to the intersection of Business Hwy. 268 and Memorial Park Drive in Elkin and leave your car at the Elkin Memorial Park.

For more about the Elkin & Alleghany Rail-Trail, see http://ncrailtrails.org/trails/elkin-and-alleghany