Join us for a quick weekend getaway to the Sandhills Game Land and the Weymouth Woods Sandhills Nature preserve outside of 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 Northern Bobwhite, Bachman’s Sparrow, and the federally-endangered Red-cockaded Woodpecker, to name a few.  Spring migration will be underway and we will be on the lookout for any northbound migrants as well, 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. We’ll attend nature programs with the Weymouth Woods’ rangers, visit a banding station, and explore the forest with a focus on pine savannah specialists.