The press was asked to leave the Cherokee Tribal Council’s meeting with their high-paid Washington lobbyist. They said it was a closed session to discuss legal matters. I had about two-and-a-half hours before I had to be in Jackson County for two public hearings and a commissioners’ meeting. I needed a break from politics.

Nov. 1 was a glorious Indian Summer day. Temperatures were in the 70s, the wind was calm and Carolina-blue skies stretched forever.

I drove over to Kituhwa. Kituhwa, also known as Governor’s Island and/or Ferguson Fields, is an approximately 300-acre strip of primarily agricultural land just west of Cherokee between U.S. 19 and the Tuckasegee River.

The property, recently acquired by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, is thought by many to be the first permanent settlement of the ancient Cherokee. Archaeological research has confirmed over 9,000 years of continuous human occupation at Kituhwa. Through the generosity of the EBCI, the area is still accessible to birders.

Corn fields, hay fields, an airstrip for radio controlled planes, cane thickets, fence rows, the wooded riverbank, ditches and marshy areas create habitat for numerous species of birds. It is a great place to search for open-country birds like sparrows, pipits, blackbirds, meadow larks and others.

I drove past the Cherokee Corn Maze and turned west on one of the turn-rows. Sparrows were quite active in the overgrown field next to the turn-row. Ahead, I noticed a sparrow-like bird fly up from the ground, showing diagnostic white outer tail coverts. That characteristic narrows the field considerably when you’re considering sparrow-like birds. The brown color quickly eliminated dark-eyed juncos. The most obvious choice would be vesper sparrow. However it was fall migration and during migration almost anything is possible — that’s what gets birders so revved during spring and fall. So there was a very slim possibility for a juvenile lark sparrow or one of the larkspurs. Closer investigation revealed a small group of vesper sparrows.

Foraging in the same area were song sparrows, field sparrows, gold finches and house finches. A nearby plowed area contained hundreds of red-winged blackbirds.

A short drive up another turn-row flushed another group of sparrows. They flew to a grassy wet area. I got out and began to look at song sparrow after song sparrow, then noticed a sparrow that flew up from the ground to chase one of the song sparrows that had landed near it. A splash of orange was evident the moment I got the bird in my binoculars — it wasn’t a song sparrow. The ochre face pattern of this bird was diagnostic, like the white outer coverts of the vesper. Le Conte’s and sharp-tails (Nelson’s and saltmarsh) are the sparrows with this feature.

All three of these sparrows are generally skulkers and are often difficult to get good looks at. Le Conte’s is generally found in drier habitat than the other two. This bird stayed perched on a slim reed about a foot-and-a-half above ground level, over standing water. When it turned it showed a gray crown, eliminating Le Conte’s. The bird stayed perched long enough to be identified as a Nelson’s sharp-tail.

The marshy area also contained numerous swamp sparrows. A pretty good couple of hours of birding. Now I could go back and face the body politic.

The sparrowing had been so good I returned the following Sunday with a couple of friends. As is often the case with migrants, neither the vespers nor the Nelson’s were seen. However, we did get Henslow’s sparrow and fox sparrow along with white-crowned and white-throated. A flock of 100 or so American pipits were noted in one of the fallow fields along with killdeer.

As it turned out, we weren’t the only ones interested in the avifauna at Kituhwa. Sharp-shinned hawks and Cooper’s hawks were patrolling the fields looking for a meal. At one time we saw two sharpies and a Cooper’s in the same tree.

(Don Hendershot can be reached at don@smokymountainnews.com)

 

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