Welcome to my Piedmont Birding Blog

    Hello and welcome to my Piedmont Birding blog. This companion to my weekly column in the Charlotte Observer will be able to give you more frequent updates on birding opportunities in the area, let you know what's being seen, and what our area birds are up to as we run through the calendar year.
    I am looking forward to a better connection with local birding enthusiasts too. When I started the Piedmont Birding column years ago I was hoping to get a better idea of what other folks were seeing on their daily walks through their favorite park or greenway, or just what they were seeing at feeders right outside their windows at home. The response has been fantastic, and occasionally a true rarity comes to my attention. Like this week.
    Doran Smith sent me this photo of three black-bellied whistling ducks that appeared in a subdivision in Union County near Wesley Chapel. If these ducks are determined to be wild birds and not escapees from local waterfowl fanciers they will represent the first record of this species from the piedmont of North Carolina. This expanding species has been seen in North Carolina more frequently over the past few years as wanderers from the nesting populations from coastal South Carolina to Florida come further north and west, but their occurrence in union County is still an unexpected treat.