Birds and Bear
The trips are inexpensive, and the beauty of them is that you show up at the time and place specified and you’re taken in hand by experienced (well, mostly – we had one exception), led to the places where the action is, and are in the company of others who are interested in the same kind of experience.
…By the time we joined him, he had two powerful scopes focused on an immature Peregrine falcon on a sand dune. 
He then turned one of the scopes around and showed us three terns – a Forster’s, a Sandwich, and a Royal, all standing in a line at the water’s edge.
…By this time, we were late back and couldn’t stop for the truly magnificent sight of hundreds of pintail ducks feeding in flooded fields on the other side of the road, so there was no way of verifying the presence of other kinds of ducks among them. 
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Friday Dan went off in the afternoon for a WoW adventure billed as a walk through tidal swamps. … Also seen: American Oystercatchers 
and a flight of Tundra swans incoming from Canada to their wintering grounds in Pea Island NWR: a magnificent sight in the setting sun and honking to each other as they lined up for the approach.
All in all, a terrific, well-organized week of seeing beautiful birds and places, in good company, with no lines at restaurants (the few remaining open that is), all this by the ocean.