The painted bunting's rainbow of colors - red chest, blue head, green back - make it arguably North America's most spectacular songbird. That's according to the National Audubon Society. Myself, I had never heard of them until the day before, when I arrived. Bald Head Island's maritime forest preserve has one of the country's largest populations of breeding buntings, so I decided I had to see one.
For years I had ignored this car-free island on the southeast tip of North Carolina because I assumed it was all one big development with a golf course. I was partly right. At the bottom of Smith Island, measuring one mile wide and three miles long, there are some 1,060 homes and condos, and about 1,000 more to come, most being built by Bald Head Island Limited.
But that's only part of the story. I discovered on a springtime visit that 10,000 of the island's 12,000 acres have been set aside for conservation. And what is being preserved is worth checking out.
Our painted bunting sighting came after a two-hour hike filled with natural treasures. We were on the Creek Trail in the Bald Head Woods Coastal Reserve, where you can hear waves crashing on the beach in the distance. The nearly mile-long trail had been cut recently by volunteers and staff at the independent, nonprofit Bald Head Island Conservancy, where Dewire is senior naturalist. The conservancy runs programs year-round, has a gift shop and visitors center, and is raising money to build a barrier-island research facility. It also coordinates the nationally recognized Sea Turtle Protection Program, since the island is an important nesting site from May through October.
On our walk, Dewire (a New Englander who grew up in Stonington, Conn.) pointed out 300-year-old live oak trees, a variety of laurel, and a massive felled trunk that a yellow-bellied sapsucker had turned into a cribbage board. On the walk back to our golf carts, before searching for the painted buntings, we spotted a red fox.
