​I took a stroll along the Four Mile Creek Greenway on Saturday April 13, from the Bevington Road parking area to Johnston Road. I was curious to find out what migrants were passing through, and what breeders had arrived over the past couple of weeks.

Soon after passing under Elm Lane, I heard the loud, clear song of a Louisiana waterthrush. They nest along the greenway, preferring the small streams that feed into the main creek. 
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A larger bird flushed from a thicket right by the boardwalk; a green heron, the first I had seen this year. Green herons are crow-sized waders, quite a bit smaller than the great blue herons that frequent the greenway year-round.  Pairs nest individually in the thickets of low shrubs in the creek bottomland, unlike the colonial great blues. They are an attractive species but can be hard to see. They tend to sit still and crouch low while waiting for a tasty frog, minnow, or crayfish to give itself away.

Not too much later I spied a barred owl just a bit west of the large cattail marsh on a low branch right by the greenway too.  The owl was fixed on scanning a standing puddle for the same prey, oblivious to the walkers and joggers streaming by. I gave a hoot and instantly its head swiveled around to check me out. It didn’t hang around much longer after that.

I went as far as the Johnston Road overpass. An Eastern phoebe has a nest under the bridge, but last year’s barn swallow nest site hasn’t been claimed thus far.

On the walk back an osprey flew out from a tree on the edge of the cattail marsh. Osprey are most often seen as flyovers along the greenway. Undoubtedly that individual was just taking a brief rest. There isn’t enough open water to entice a pair to nest along Four mile Creek but the larger lakes in the area do grab their interest as they pass by.
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As I neared the parking area where I started, a loud drumming echoed through the woods. I knew what it was, and I glimpsed the pileated woodpecker briefly as it took off with a yodeling laugh. It has been a couple of years since the resident pair chose to hang out close by. Hopefully they will continue to do so through the season.  

​I’ve been writing about, and looking for, songbird migrants so much recently that I almost forgot about some other interesting migrants that are starting to show. I ran out to a high-quality wetland behind and southwest of Pike’s Nursery in Ballantyne to follow up on some reports of shorebird migrants appearing. This has been a great flooded wetland for few years but recently the water has been draining away, maybe the result of beaver activity. As a result, there are large patches of exposed mud and shallow puddles that shorebirds love. I wasn’t disappointed.

​​The main goal was to check off pectoral sandpiper for my Mecklenburg County Year List. Pectoral sandpipers pass through our area annually, but a general lack of shorebird habitat makes them tough to find. Almost immediately I spotted a group of four shorebirds in a shallow puddle; the pectoral, two least sandpipers, and one solitary sandpiper.

Shorebirds can be challenging for both experienced and inexperienced birders. Generally, they are brown or gray on top and paler underneath, but with good looks and a good field guide you can have a good chance to ID them correctly.

Looking at the photos of the pectoral and least, they do superficially resemble each other. But the pectoral is a large shorebird while the least is our smallest. The size difference is obvious. In fact, the pectoral is sometimes described as looking like a giant least sandpiper.
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The solitary sandpiper is one of the most common shorebirds that migrate through. Through April and early May, any muddy lake shoreline will have several. Note the long legs and prominent eye ring on the pictured bird.

Each March I start looking forward to the return of the blue-gray gnatcatchers and Louisiana waterthrushes.
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The gnatcatchers start showing up during the third week of the month. I always hear them before I see them. The are slim, tiny birds, the general shape of a wren but leaner with a much longer tail and beautiful bright blue- gray plumage. They are fussy little things; giving a nasal, complaining wheeze almost non-stop. It seems the males and females show up at the same time and immediately start pairing up. It is not unusual at all to see a pair building a nest way before the leaves appear. They weave a tiny cup from spider webs and slender grasses, then coat it with lichens for perfect camouflage. Placed on a horizontal tree limb, it looks just like a natural knot on that limb. The only thing that gives it away is the constant quarreling and back and forth of the pair during the nest construction. Though it is only a couple of inches wide, it is surprisingly easy to see before the leaves emerge.
They will be abundant in just a few days. See if you can pick out their calls on your walks or when doing yard work.

​Louisiana waterthrushes sometimes arrive as early as March 15 in our area. They announce themselves with a loud, ringing, musical song from the bottomland forests along the major creeks in our area. It’s a great song with an echo quality when given from thick forest understory.
The Louisiana waterthrush is not a thrush at all, rather it is a member of the warbler family. I suppose they are called “thrushes” because of the brown upperparts and streaked underparts. Like the gnatcatcher, they don’t require newly emergent foliage either, thus their early arrival date. They eat mainly aquatic invertebrates they find by wading into the shallow edges of creeks. They are not brightly colored but can be easily identified by the peculiar continuous bobbing of their rear ends, with a good look.