Civilization Is a Stone’s Throw From...

MANTEO, N.C. —  The rusty cable that serves as a gate across the bumpy sand road is down. It means Louis Midgette Sr. is hanging out with his 900 Canada geese.

“It’s a great thing when you commune with wildlife. They understand you’re their friend,” Midgette said.

What started as a hobby has become a passion for this retired landowner, who is responsible for a 1,000-acre nature preserve just a stone’s throw from the thriving beach community of Nags Head.

The property has been in Midgette’s family since the days of royal land grants.

Decades ago, Midgette said, he turned down an offer of $500,000 for 500 acres from developers who wanted to build a marina and condominiums. Instead, he donated 600 acres of marsh to the Nature Conservancy, keeping 400 acres on the fringe for a private preserve.

Today the marina--with gleaming boat hulls, neon beer signs and trimmed grass--stands across the highway from Midgette’s unspoiled marsh.

“Every time someone drives across that road and looks out at that beautiful vista, they can thank Louis,” said Merrill Lynch, assistant director for protection at the Nature Conservancy.

He said Midgette’s gift has “outstanding ecological significance.”

The marsh, officially called the Roanoke Island Marsh, is home to fish and crabs that lay eggs in the shallow water. It also is home to the black rail, a nocturnal bird.

Midgette, 78, spends several hours a day feeding the birds who are drawn to the preserve. A grocery store and several restaurants give him their leftover produce.

“I’m not a rich guy. I could have been a rich guy,” Midgette said, while he slits a watermelon, takes a bite and slides the canoe-shaped offering across the dirt into a chirping band of fuzzy goslings.

“ ‘Peep. Peep.’ That’s the noise they make when they’re happy,” he said.

“They love peaches,” he added as he dumped produce that included leftover salads from restaurants, onions, cabbage, strawberries and carrots. The geese swarm around Midgette, following his truck when he drives in with their food.

Midgette and his son, Louis Jr., plant grain every year for the birds to eat, set up nesting platforms and reinforce a gosling pen so foxes, turtles and other predators won’t kill the young. In his truck he carries a map of the nests, complete with notations showing, year-to-year, how many eggs were laid and how many goslings survived.

“He loves his birds,” said his son.

The flock of Canada geese began when the state Wildlife Resources Commission launched a project in the early 1980s to create resident flocks. Midgette was given some of the 5,000 geese that were relocated to North Carolina.

Now, there are approximately 30,000 resident Canada geese in the state; Midgette’s flock is one of the largest, said state waterfowl biologist Tom Monschein.

When he got his first geese, Midgette said, he named them after friends. “I know a lot of them. Ten years ago, I named 100 to 150 geese. There are so many now I’ve kind of gotten out of that.”

Today, the bird population includes a peacock someone dropped off, mallards and wood ducks, and several pair of osprey. Three white tundra swans that were found wounded elsewhere swim with the geese.

Midgette already had two careers under his belt when he started the preserve. He’s a retired Coast Guard engine mechanic and a retired superintendent of the Elizabethan Gardens adjacent to the Ft. Raleigh National Historic Site here.

Midgette’s wildlife interest dates back to childhood, when his father ran a private hunting preserve on the Outer Banks for a New York stockbroker. Midgette tagged along and learned the ways of the wild and how to hunt.

“Back in my boyhood, the sky would be black with Canada geese and ducks,” he said. “I’ve killed a lot of geese in my day and I was sorry of it.”

It seemed natural to him to donate part of the land he inherited to establish the preserve in the rapidly growing Outer Banks area.

“There wasn’t anything I needed in life,” he said. “I held onto property. It was a great thing to be able to make a gift, and I haven’t finished giving.”