In this episode we move further north, returning to Buck Hall, we get one more lighthouse stamp, shop and have no BBQ and see no Ruff.
We left Hunting Island State Park early yesterday. (Actually, it wasn't as early as we had hoped...daylight savings time struck overnight). Surprisingly, it had been a relatively quiet night given the full campground. We must have been in with the quiet group. We were on our way to Buck Hall, a Forest Service campground north of Charleston where we have stayed several times before, including on our way down to Florida in January. We took US 21 and US 17 most of the way. It is the shortest route and the fastest for Speedy. With a detour around downtown Charleston on I-526, we came out in Mt. Pleasant and made our way to Fort Moultrie on Sullivan's Island to collect the Sullivan's Island Lighthouse stamp for Kate.
Sullivan's Island looks like a pretty nice suburb of Charleston. It seems to have a pretty active Sunday brunch. As we drove through its small downtown, there were at least five restaurants chock full of people just before noon. Being a nice day, many were eating at outside tables. We'd been to Fort Moultrie before, so we didn't spend much time there. It was strictly a collecting stop.
After the fort, we made our way to the Charleston Whole Foods, actually in Mount Pleasant, as the food supply was running low. We also wanted to stop at Melvin's BBQ, which is right in the same plaza as Whole Foods. We had parked right by it many times before, but had never tried it, figuring that a barbeque place in a shopping center parking lot was unlikely to be notable. What did we know? Melvin's is one of the 100 Mile barbeque places in South Carolina. These are places that the South Carolina Barbeque Association (the judges) deems worth traveling a 100 miles to visit—and we'd been brushing it off for the five years!
Just our luck, when we finally realize that it is worth a stop, it is closed. Closed on Sunday!
We picked up a few specialties at Whole Foods and headed up the road still hungry. Our next stop was the Publix Market. We can't stop at only one supermarket. Actually, Publix is a bit less expensive than Whole Foods for some things and they have Boar's Head meats, which we consider better deli meats and cheeses than those at the Whole Foods deli counter. It was just as well, as this was going to be our lunch.
We arrived at Buck Hall by mid-afternoon, taking site 9. We haven't been in this one before, but it seems to be on of the better ones here (It was the only one available when I made the reservation). It is in the far corner out of the direct line of the bathhouse lights, a consideration at Buck Hall. Its downside is that it doesn't have a direct view of the Intracoastal Waterway. We spent a quiet afternoon and evening.
This morning it was back to the Santee Coastal Reserve. This is about 15 miles north of Buck Hall and one our favorite local birding spots. It has a large set of impounds for wintering waterfowl and lots of upland for land birds including areas of open longleaf pines that are Red-cockaded Woodpecker territory. Unfortunately, we started later than we'd hoped, but we spent the whole day there. In the morning we walked the first impound near the Gun Club building (no longer a gun club, but the SC DNR offices on the refuge) looking for water birds. We saw the usual ducks and lots of coots as well as Red-tailed Hawk and several Bald Eagles.
While having lunch in Speedy, parked by the building, one of the rangers drove by and asked if we were birding. He pointed out that the refuge has a camping area that is primitive, but free. You need a permit which we can get at the office when it is open, but if it isn't open, he said to camp anyway and get the permit when someone arrives. If no one arrives, don't worry about it...an eminently reasonable approach. We may try this if we get back here again. The campsites are in a nice area of woods and it would be a perfect way to start a birding day—right on the refuge.
In the afternoon we walked out towards the Cape Road, which leads to an area that was closed to visitors when we were here in January. This goes along a pond, then through some woods to another set of impounds, even larger than the ones where we spent the morning.
We got some good looks at a small birds in the woods, the highlight of which was a Brown-headed Nuthatch, a little bird we don't have at home.
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Just after we saw the nuthatch, we met another birder heading out to the impounds. He was a biology instructor at one of the South Carolina colleges (name didn't stick). He was primarily looking for a Ruff which had been reported here in the last few days. We walked along with him and he was joined by three friends shortly afterward. We were in a group of serious birders. We saw quite a number of ducks and shorebirds, particularly Lesser and Greater Yellowlegs. These were the species that the Ruff would be hanging out with.
The Ruff is a Eurasian sandpiper that is very unusual in breeding plumage and a rare vagrant in the US, but a few are seen every year. They breed in the Arctic and evidently a few follow the wrong route south and end up in the US. We looked and looked, but didn't find it.
We left the group a little early and expected that it might give them luck, but it was not seen today. We did manage a Black and White Warbler on our way back through the woods. It was a nice day in all.
We start back tomorrow. We might run into rain on the way, but hope to get to Virginia at least.
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