The Birds of Botany Bay

February 18, 2016

I spent several days in South Carolina. This is one of my adventures. 

After my hostess, Laurel, and I had rushed to get lots of pictures documenting the beautiful start of a new day, we moved on to enjoying little finds on the beach and the shore birds. We had planned to wait for low tide and cross an inlet from Botany Bay so we could walk further down the seashore.

Although the terrible fall storms had eroded the beach quite badly, there were still some some tidal pools along the shore where several species of birds were feeding. Even though it was cold, with a lot of added wind chill, neither Laurel or I noticed the cold over the couple of hours we spent mostly sitting or moving very slowly and photographing birds.

The area where the birds were feeding consisted of several pools in this kind of soil.

The birds present in the most numbers were the endangered red knots

Gulls caught their own food and harassed the American Oystercatchers for theirs 

I think this is more gull harassment than gull blessing

I think this gull caught his own food

A willet with red knots and a ruddy turnstone

A closer look at a red knot

 Black-bellied plover

Several sanderlings ran about and chased off other sanderlings

There were at least a half dozen ruddy turnstones

When we reached Townsend Inlet, the tide was still too high for a crossing and then we noticed how cold we were getting and decided we didn't want to sit for another hour.  

So we changed our plans and walked back to the car,  stopping at a very birdy place, filled with eastern bluebirds and cardinals.  When we reached our car, we drove to where the feeders are and watched those birds for a while, then did a very slow drive around the loop with lots of stops to listen, look for, and then photograph birds.

The bluebirds were probably starting to court and the males sat up high

We found at least one juvenile or female

We found chipping sparrows at the feeder as well as at several places along the tour

I was surprised to only find two phoebes in an areal where we should have found a dozen

We saw five great egrets but this was the only entertaining one.
I think Laurel must have had 50 pictures of it. 

It was a very good day.  We previously watched the dawn as we walked down the beach in the opposite direction.  I'll share that magic with you Sunday.


I'm linking up with Wild Bird Wednesday.  Click on the picture for lots more wonderful blogs about birds from around the world.