Monday, February 2, 2015
We drove down Monday morning in a blindingly heavy rain for hours. By the time we got Down East there appeared to even be some flooding! It was looking discouraging. We drove all the way down to Columbia to the Pocosin Lakes Visitor Center first. It was closed and it was raining too hard to take the Scuppernong River Interpretative Board Walk. There was another Visitor's Center with restrooms sharing the same parking lot and it was nice and manned. So, we went in there and though they were focused on the Outer Banks, they did give us some maps we found useful. Though I have to say that even with a half dozen different maps and the GPS that the Pocosin Lakes area has bad signage when any, at least half the roads are dirt and at least half the roads are not on any map and at least half of the roads are closed. So for example, despite our best efforts we never did lay eyes on Pungo Lake. We drove for hours on dirt roads without ever finding an open one that would take us there. Did we just miss the one road? Was it closed because of the rain Monday morning? Was it closed because it was swan season? We'll never know.
I've described our frustrations, but by mid-afternoon the skies had cleared, the rain was rapidly drying off because the wind was howling as the temperature started dropping. The good news was that it was about 60F when the rain stopped. So, it was a really nice afternoon for the 2nd of February.
We started our bird watching by driving down highway 94 which goes through the center of Lake Mattamuskeet. We turned off at the Mattamuskeet Lodge sign more than half-way across the lake. Money! We could see hundreds of waterfowl. No idea what kinds they were other than American Coots right on the shore. We could see large white swans in the distance though. The rain was beginning to diminish, so I looked at the map and said we should drive to the end of the road past the old Mattamuskeet Lodge building. It was a much longer road than we expected and it was dirt and muddy so we were slow. But that is good because otherwise we might have missed the birds and animals.
Lake Mattamuskeet is the largest natural lake in North Carolina. I suspect this part where we drove around the former world's largest pumping station was a man made peninsula. It was a little odd to be driving on a road built through a large lake. There was a lot of road construction on 94 which took it down to one lane. The lake was calm and smooth on one side with white caps and breakers on the other. It felt treacherous! After the weather cleared, the wind changed directions and the rough and smooth water changed sides of the road. Even stranger! The good news is that we had the place almost all to ourselves and we saw lots of birds and even some white-tailed deer. The tundra swans were magnificent.
We did finally find Pat's Road in the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge's Pungo Unit and we headed north. It was paved for a short distance and then turned to dirt, not the gravel the map legend advertised! The dirt road was heavily rutted and potholed in places and almost not wide enough for 2 cars in most places. We drove on and hoped for the best and we found it! We drove through fallow, muddy fields until we could see ahead that they were covered in white. Every once in while a white shape would take flight. We hit paydirt! We had found a huge number of tundra swans! We saw 3 other vehicles while we were out there, so that was good news. We didn't get stuck in the mud or slide off, so the afternoon was a success even without finding a way to Pungo Lake as shown on the map.
Photos
