Greg and Kat's blog

I just took a 2 hour walk around the UNC Campus.

I walked by the gym, through the campus cemetary (will take pictures on the next excursion, I promise!), around the cemetary, to Battle Park (a wooded park managed by the UNC Botanical Gardens), and through what is called “Forest Theater”, which is a stone amphitheater set in the woods that I think is included in Battle Park. I saw lots of cardinals (yes, Oli, I will take pictures next time!), starlings, robins, Eastern bluebirds, some sort of wren, Carolina, probably, the local thrasher (don’t remember which one that is at the moment), brown, maybe, northern mockingbirds, what I think was a red-headed woodpecker, a female eastern rufous-sided towhee, and … wait for it… HOUSE FINCHES!!!! They exist!!! I spotted a pair flying from out of a shrub into a tree at the edge of the cemetary. Then I saw about 4 more males and two more females hopping around in the grass and around headstones in the cemetary. On my walk back I cut through the woods near the university’s stadium and saw another pair. The stadium is pretty much right next to the Biology buildings! Yippee!

On another positive note, I got clearance from the director of the university’s grounds department to hang feeders and traps in the wooded areas. I just have to tell them where the feeders will be, they draw them on some map, and then present that to the groundskeeping guys so they don’t disturb them, or so that they can inform me when they have to do maintenance nearby. This is great!

So, I think I’ll be hanging some feeders on Monday. Have to still contact the grounds guys, so I think this weekend may be out of the question, but we’ll see how fast they get back to me.

Now all I need is a car so I can get here after dusk and before sunrise!