Well, we are winding up our trip to SC and spent Tuesday of this week at two of our favorite birding havens.....Huntington Beach State Park in Murrell's Inlet and Myrtle Beach State Park. Huntington Beach is great at this time of year for finding birds which are getting ready to make the trip south to Florida. The most prominent "specialties" in October are the Wood storks, Roseate spoonbills, and Avocets. We arrived at the Park early this morning and were blessed with a dead low tide. The flats were abuzz with activity as shore birds, herons, egrets, and the storks took advantage of the bounty offered by the mud flats. Wood storks were all around us....on the flats, in the trees, and lined up along the impoundments as if taking part in a morning "coffee clutch". We could have spent the entire morning just observing the feeding frenzy taking place, but we wanted to get over to Myrtle Beach SP while it was still early.
AT Myrtle Beach SP, we found our favorite song bird site....a grove of trees adjacent to the Ranger Station.....to be as productive as normal. Black-throated blue, Common yellowthroat, Magnolia, and Nashville warblers were all busily feeding in the tall live oaks as a Brown thrasher and a Catbird flitted in and out of a thicket of Pokeberry bushes. Further along the entrance road, we ran into a number of Northern mockingbirds which were interacting noisily as they chased one another around the thick overgrowth. Why there was so much ado among these mockers kept us guessing, but for whatever reason, the show was most entertaining. We'll be heading back to NY the day after tomorrow, so we'll try to squeeze in one more afternoon of birding at the vast marshlands around Shallotte, NC where we have heard both Virginia and King rails. Wish us luck!!!
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