Longleaf Pine Savannah of the Carolina Sandhills
May 31-June 2, 2024
Register by clicking the ‘book now’ button above, or by contacting the Ventures office. We accept credit cards for an additional fee (2.9% for MC, Visa, Discover; 3.9% for AmEx), but you may also pay by bank transfer, cash, check, or money order. This Venture is limited to 8 participants.
Cost of Sandhills Weekend Venture: $795 per person (based on double occupancy); single supplement - $150 Price includes: Ground transportation from Raleigh, accommodations for Fri & Sat night, meals from dinner on Fri night to lunch on Sun, guide service throughout Not included: alcoholic beverages, laundry, or other items of a personal nature.
Join us for a quick weekend getaway to Weymouth Woods Sandhills Nature Preserve, The Sandhills Game Lands and other nearby hotspots around Southern Pines, NC. We’ll explore the diverse 58,000-acre Sandhills Preserve and fire-managed 930-acre Weymouth Woods, focusing on pine savannah specialist birds such as Bachman’s Sparrow, the federally-endangered Red-cockaded Woodpecker and more. Breeding season will be underway, and we will be on the lookout for new families of local birds as well as anything and everything from warblers, tanagers, buntings and more.
Longleaf pine forest once stretched from the Carolinas to eastern Texas but today only three percent remains. The focus of this trip is one of the best examples of this now rare habitat. Managed with carefully prescribed burns and the thinning of trees, the Sandhills Gamelands area boasts some of the world’s most diverse plant communities (up to 40 species per square meter!) and some of North America’s rarest birds. The oldest longleaf pine tree in the world is found in Weymouth Woods. The trip will be led by Susan Campbell, has worked in this ecosystem for close to three decades. We’ll explore the habitat here with a focus on pine savannah specialists.
If you’ve never spent time birding in this part of NC then you are certainly missing out – it’s one of the most beautiful and unique places in the state and is just down the road from Raleigh!
Some of the Birds We Hope to See
Bachman’s Sparrow, Red-Cockaded Woodpecker, Prairie Warbler, Chuck-Wills-Widow, Kentucky Warbler, Mississippi Kite, Northern Bobwhite, Red-headed Woodpecker, Summer Tanager, and a whole lot more!