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Great Birding and more in Virginia's Eastern Shore & Tidewater Area
Story & Photos by Tony Tedeschi
The Eastern Shore of Virginia is a treasure for outdoor enthusiasts. This is the part of the state that spears down from the Maryland border and literally defines the eastern limit of the lower Chesapeake Bay. Right at the border, are Assateague and Chincoteague Islands, where each July visitors can take part in the famed pony roundup and auction. Wild ponies, said to be descendants of horses brought to the area by settlers centuries before, graze the refuge on Assateague throughout the year. On the last Wednesday and Thursday of July, the ponies are rounded up for a swim across the channel to Chincoteague where the foals are auctioned off. Proceeds go to the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Department, which owns the herd. Birding in the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge is among the best anywhere. More than 100 bird species are present at any given time, with the numbers swelling to more than 320 during migratory periods, which placed it second in diversity in an International Shorebird Survey. The barrier islands to the east, as you work your way down the peninsula, are among the most important habitats for birds in the eastern United States. Numbers alone do not tell the story. The drama of species fighting for survival also plays out here. For example, piping plovers, among the most endangered of species, nest on these islands. A walk along beaches is akin to walking a minefield of nests, spread far apart, but virtually indistinguishable from a landscape of shells, sand and dune grasses. Experts from the Virginia Department of Game and Fisheries, like Ruth Boettcher and Heather Hollis, monitor productivity, stake the location of nesting sites and mark their coordinates using global positioning satellite handsets. Rick Kellam runs visitors out to the barrier islands in his 24-foot, open-cockpit, shallow-draft boat. Descendant of a long-line of residents in this part of the world, including the barrier islands, Kellam heads Broadwater Bay Ecotours. A wonderful raconteur, whose historical, cultural and ecological anchors to this area make for an engaging monolog, Kellam will take visitors to deserted beaches on the islands whose beauty rivals any in the world. While continuously emphasizing the need to respect the sensitivity of these islands, Kellam points out some of the more 300 avian species that have been recorded in the tidal flats, stretches of beach, hammock clumps and nearby waters. Among them are egrets, herons, glossy ibis, American oystercatcher, black skimmers, black-bellied plovers and whimbrels. He points out terrapin tracks in the sand, ghost crab holes, fiddler crabs scurrying about.
Members of Kellam's family lived on Hog Island until a devastating hurricane in 1933 drove all of the permanent residents from the barrier island. "Man will never be a permanent resident on a barrier island," he says. "Mother nature just won't let him." Last year, Hurricane Isabel slammed into the Virginia coast, but for the most part this area dodged the bullet. Before a trip out to the barrier islands, or a tour just about anywhere along the peninsula, a stop at the Barrier Islands Center in Machipongo is a must. Set in a decommissioned almshouse, the center is a repository of information on the area, covering almost four centuries. Along with exhibits of nautical elements, household items, hunting and fishing implements and other bric-a-brac, the center includes exhibits of genealogy of some Eastern Shore families that is nothing short of engrossing. If you are lucky enough to get a tour with Jerry Doughty, your visit will be greatly enhanced. Doughy is a descendant of a long line of local residents and an amazing resource for the area's history and culture. He will explain that the area was "occupied" shortly after the start of the Civil War to protect Washington from a southern exposure to Confederate attack. He will explain how some of the earliest settlers hunted waterfowl, some with mean looking machines like a "punt gun," so big and so loaded with shot it could wipe out 30 ducks at a time. He will walk you through the family history of Amanda Outten, who entered the poorhouse as an indigent orphan in 1870 at the age of 5, went to work as a maid in a well-heeled family, married one of the family members and became the matriarch of one of the area's most respected families before her death at 89 in 1954. Doughty and Outten are names you see in public places throughout the Eastern Shore. Virginia Beach beyond the Beach
While noted as a resort community, Virginia Beach is also a place of great biodiversity. For example, you can go whale watching under the auspices of the Virginia Marine Science Museum. Thirty minutes off the coast, you are apt to get into a dinner party of humpbacks feasting on a bouillabaisse of krill and tiny plankton. Circling above, gannets, winter migrants from the Canadian Maritimes, mark the general location of the whales, diving for their own dinner like javelins tossed into blue Jell-O. Humpbacks, mostly juveniles under 40 feet in length, are attracted to the area by the feast of small sea creatures in the warmish 50-degree water, January through March, off the mid-Atlantic coast. Their parents are south to mating in the still-warmer waters of the Windward Passage between Hispaniola and Cuba or the Caribbean, just to the north, around the Turks & Caicos Islands in the southern Bahamas.
The concept of a bridge-and-tunnel system as a birding attraction may seem like a bit of a stretch, but locals know better when it comes to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. This 17.6-mile engineering marvel, the longest bridge-tunnel complex in the world, is anchored by four islands, which attract some wonderful examples of seabirds. You are apt to spot American oystercatchers, purple sandpipers, great cormorants, common loons, ruddy turnstones, surf scoters, harlequin ducks and more. There are also unexpected rarities from time to time, like the black-tailed gull, a visitor here that was thousands of miles off course. A resident of Siberia, the gull generally winters in Japan. Two had been spotted on Island No. Four of the bridge-tunnel complex. "These islands are unique," says Teta Kain, the bridge-tunnel's resident birding expert, "because the birds see them as stopping-off places in the open sea. Also the rocks that weight down the tunnels attract fish on which many of the birds feed. This place is also magic at night, with the great black-backed gulls hovering in the air, catching some sleep." The Virginia Marine Science Museum provides a fascinating introduction to other marine fauna and flora. Guides and volunteers, sprinkled throughout the 120,000-square-foot complex, deliver their informative talks on the various creatures that inhabit, or visit, the waters in the Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Ocean off Virginia. You can walk through corridors that display a series of tanks that take you from the close-in shoreline habitat into ever-deeper water. In the great walled tanks, totaling more than 800,000 gallons, you visit close-up with creatures from the barely ambulatory starfish to manic river otters and harbor seals. There are pools that feature sea turtles and sharks, with supporting roles for groupers, rockfish, pompano, and on and on. A truly entertaining attraction is the feeding of the rays, which whiz around a "touch tank" nuzzling up to you like puppies looking for love. History, Modern and Colonial in the Tidewater Area
Newport News in the Tidewater area just north of Virginia Beach is renowned as the home of the manufacturing facility that builds the world's greatest warships. But counter-pointing this military activity is the bucolic quiet of the town's Sandy Bottom Nature Park, 456 acres of natural habitat consisting of forest, wetlands, lakeside and open water. Viewing platforms make for great vantage points on migrating waterfowl.
No visit to this area would be complete, however, without a visit to Colonial Williamsburg. Here you can take a trip back in time to the colonial era in a full-fledged community that includes everything from dwellings to civic buildings, small businesses of the period to houses of worship. You can stroll the grounds or take a horse and carriage ride, dine in any of a series of restaurants and bring home any manner of souvenir. The combination of natural and human history make this area a wonderful place for a road trip, accessible at either end by airports in Washington, D.C. and Norfolk.
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