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Birding in the Myrtle Beach Area
- To: carolinabirds@duke.edu
- Subject: Birding in the Myrtle Beach Area
- From: Winfield3@aol.com
- Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 19:53:33 EST
- Sender: carolinabirds-owner@acpub.duke.edu
My wife and I are birders from Texas on our way south from a summer in
Ontario and Quebec. We visited Huntington Beach State Park this morning f=
or
a hike on the beach to the jetties and back. The wind was out of the nort=
h
and several shore birds were huddled out of the wind on the leeward side o=
f
the jetties. There were about 15 purple sandpipers, 15 red knots, many
dunlins, and ruddy turnstones =E2=80=93 all so tame or tired that they all=
owed us to
approach within less than 20 feet for a great view. On the freshwater lak=
es
we saw a couple of buffleheads, a pair of hooded mergansers, ruddy ducks,
ring neck ducks, redheads, great blue herons, grackles, great egrets, grea=
t
blue herons, double crested cormorants and a couple of osprey. On the bea=
ch
and the little lake south of the jetty, we saw hundreds of short-billed
dowitchers, dunlin, a common loon, sanderlings, several gannets (one young=
gannet diving with brown pelicans), willets, black-bellied plovers and mor=
e
than 20 piping plovers.
We have been staying in our motorhome at Myrtle Beach in the Lakewood RV
Park. The mallards in the small lake behind our camping spot serenade us
night and day with their quacking. A couple of mute swans add class to th=
e
scene. We routinely see yellow rumps, pine warblers and a few palm warble=
rs.
Also have seen ring bill gulls, black-backed gulls, laughing gulls, fores=
ter
terns, and a few royal terns. Red-breasted sap suckers, flickers,
white-breasted nuthatches, eastern bluebirds, tufted titmice, red-wing
blackbirds, chickadees, mourning doves, downy woodpeckers, pied-billed
grebes, and a house finch were also seen. Squirrels bombard our motorhome
with hickory nuts and twigs while foraging in the tall hickory tree that
shades our site.
Although we have added no lifetime birds to our list, the birding here has=
been great and the weather has been most cooperative.
You are all invited to come to Texas for some great birding and maybe a
little Texas barbecue. We will likely bird in the Rio Grande Valley for a=
short while this winter before moving on into Arizona and California.
Many thanks for all the lively birding reports on "Carolinabirds" while we=
have been here.
Winfield Sterling