Our Guest Contributors
& their Stories

Review of Wings Over Water Festival,

October 2025  in the Outer Banks of NC

By: Karen Widmayer and Cheryl Nicchitta

This past August, my sister Cheryl reached out to me asking if I’d ever heard of the Wings Over Water (WOW) Festival. She and I, along with our other two siblings, have dabbled in birding, in part out of a sense of honor to our mom, Leni Friedman, who passed away in 2008, and was an
active birder in the last two decades of her life. She was one of the first hosts for AOL’s “fledgling” birding forum back in the 1990s, and she later traveled with birding groups throughout the mid-Atlantic coastal areas, as well as to Belize, Nebraska, and the Texas Hill Country. Our father would tag along, faithfully carrying her equipment while she explored.
 

After a brief review of the WOW itinerary for the October main event (there is also an encore event in December), Cheryl (who lives in Durham) and I were 100% in. Although we don’t think Mom attended this particular festival, we had a strong sense that we would be following in the
path of her many walks at Pea Island and Pine Island, especially when she would steal some time away from our annual boisterous OBX family vacations to spend time communing with the birds along the coast.
 

Registration was already filling fast. The festival, which originated in 1997 and takes place across six national wildlife refuges spanning six northeastern North Carolina counties, is one of the premier wildlife festivals on the East Coast. Many activities occur on National Park Service
property, specifically Cape Hatteras National Seashore, which is one of the festival’s partners. The festival has a strong following of birders, from novice backyard observers to leading experts in the state and nation.
 

We found an adorable Airbnb -- an original Nags Head cottage, nicely updated, just a block from the beach. From there, we were within easy driving distance to our destinations: Kitty Hawk Woods Reserve, Nature Conservancy’s Nags Head Woods Preserve, Fort Raleigh National
Historic Site in Manteo, Pine Island Audubon Sanctuary on the Northern Banks near Duck, and Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge at Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

Our first evening, we paddled a quiet waterway at sunset through the marshland of the Maritime Forest in Kitty Hawk. On another evening, we went owling at the Nags Head Woods Preserve and stood transfixed as our guide called in four different screech owls who began serenading the quiet woods. We had a rigorous classroom session on gulls and terns in Manteo and an informative intro to shorebirds down by Oregon Inlet -- both followed by excursions that put our new knowledge to use.

​

​

​

 

 

 

 

 

​

 

 

 

​WOW is scheduled to coincide with the latter part of the Atlantic Seaboard fall migration, and while the recent nor’easters had affected the flocks, we saw numerous warblers, including palm warblers, who for me closely mimicked our own “butter butts,” towhees, waxwings, woodpeckers, redstarts, brown creepers, both types of kinglets, vireos, hundreds of migrating cormorants, bald eagles, kestrels, gulls (of course), plovers, plovers, several rails, sanderlings, five different terns, and a rare clay-colored sparrow! The leaders were extraordinary, pointing
out so many things we would have easily missed on our own. Each maintained an ebird list and shared it with us at the end of the day.
 

Our excursions were partially disrupted by the federal shutdown, which started the week before the festival, but the organizers adapted and found us new classroom venues and places to explore when several facilities were closed. Many of the excursions affected by the shutdown were at Alligator River, where individuals could still access the remarkable reserve
but groups could not. My sister and I received some great tips from our guides about where to go, and we drove it on our own and saw more than a dozen black bears and a number of birds, including a kingfisher who dove and fished alongside us in a small channel.
 

I would strongly recommend WOW to those in St. James who would like to broaden their birding acumen in a truly remarkable ecosystem just 4 ½ hours from here. The event is beginner-friendly and many excursions are highly accessible. I’d be happy to answer any questions.

​

                                             Happy Birding!