A Day at Huntington Beach

Huntington Beach State Park, SC, Site #39

It rained pretty constantly overnight, but had stopped by morning. The main attraction of Huntington Beach State Park, for us anyway, is the birdlife. Today was a day of birding.

It started with a wild goose chase. Yesterday, we got soaked on the way back to Speedy during an storm-shortened afternoon walk. We had a pile of wet clothes that needed to be dried and there was a forecast for 40% chance of rain today. We didn't want the chance hanging them out and leaving them, so we decided to look for a nearby laundromat. (The campground, inexplicably, has no laundry facilities.) The campground map is one of those commercially produced tourist maps with advertisers along the sides of the map and markers on the map it self.

One of the advertisers was a laundromat at the Pauleys Island Plaza, it was supposedly nearby so off we went...all the way through Pauleys Island and halfway to Georgetown before turning around. We stopped and looked closely at the map to find other advertisers that might be nearby so we could triangulate a location. It supposedly was right in the middle of the Pauleys Island strip of stores. We headed back. We found the nearby businesses but no Pauleys Island Plaza. What we did find was a new supermarket being constructed. Pauleys Island Plaza and the laundromat were no more. No wild geese were found.

The laundry bag is still full of wet clothes. We hope to find a laundry in Georgetown on the way to Buck Hall tomorrow.

The rest of the day was much more satisfying. We started at the nature center boardwalk and a Bald Eagle flew right over. Not a bad start. It was followed by a Northern Harrier and also an unidentified falcon and we hadn't even gotten to the ducks and wading birds yet. There were several species of ducks, grebes, and coots in the ponds as well as Great Egret, Great Blue Heron and Tricolored Heron. Also seen were Forster's terns, Ring-Billed Gulls and another highlight, a pair of Wood Storks.

We drove out to the end of the road to the beach access and had lunch before tackling the beach. It was pretty windy out there and there and the beach was teeming with people, not birds. (Did we mention that it was 75° and partly cloudy by now?) There were a few gulls and a couple of little sandpipers that we couldn't identify. So much for the beach walk.

There is a nature trail by the beach parking lot that leads along Sandpiper Pond, which lies just behind the dunes. The pond is about a mile long and is dotted with observation stands along the trail. We were much more successful here. Lots of Pied-billed Grebes and a Horned Grebe; many Coots and a Common Moorhen; plenty of Buffleheads, Scaup, Green and Blue-winged Teal; even a few Gadwall and Northern Shovelers. We even managed a few Yellow-rumped Warblers and a Pine Warbler along the trail.

It was a good day.

Tomorrow we will be heading back to Buck Hall for a couple of nights and a couple of more birding stops. One of which will be a return to a spot where we saw Red-cockaded Woodpeckers a couple of years ago. eBird reports show that two were seen at that spot today. We may get a little rain overnight but the next couple of days should be dry. The current plan is to move further south, probably to the Savannah area on Wednesday. Wednesday and Thursday night are predicted to fall below freezing up here. Hopefully, we will get below the frost line.