I have been to numerous wildlife refuges in the southeastern United States and I considered Sanibel Island and Merritt Island in Florida to be the best locations to photograph birds. But based in my experience last week, this one is the best due to the ease of accessibility to the marsh areas and the tameness of the bird life.
This park is located near Murrells Inlet in South Carolina and the first time I went there was in 1973. I visited this park various times throughout the years but the last time I was there was 2o years ago. At that time there was just an access gate (no entry fee!!!) and a narrow causeway that crossed the marsh to access the beach. The area was very rustic and the wildlife not as abundant and tolerating of people as they are presently. Now the park is more regulated with a campground, a store and a exhibition building as well as walkways over the marsh areas to observe the wildlife.
I was surprised as to the photographic opportunities here. The birds are easily approached or rather they approach you. So a 70-200 mm lens is more than adequate for most photographs. There were great congregations of great egrets, snowy egrets, wood storks, little blue herons and also got to photograph an anhinga and a roseate spoonbill; the later not commonly seen here. There were also ospreys and rails were heard but never seen.
The snowy egrets above are really jewels to watch and photograph. They would just fly in just next to me and start fishing like I was not there. The first one above caught what looks like a small crab that is about to be swallowed. These birds have problem swallowing shrimps and worked them by throwing them in the air to align the bodies along the length of the bill to swallow. While in this process another egret may try to snatch it away.
The great egrets were more agile at swallowing the shrimps. It is amazing that these birds could swallow a mature blue crab; one can see the bulk going down the throat. The great egrets will also spear fish but I did not see the snowy egrets doing it and limited themselves to minnow size fish.
The wood storks feed in family groups but when it came to sharing, that was not in their behavior and in the case above, it flew away with a blue crab. These birds just walk around with the bills in the water moving the head side to side.
As they wade they open a wing and form like an umbrella; I assume that they do this to scare the prey with the shadow or perhaps to create a shade to eliminate the glare from the water surface so that they can see better.
There is a lot of interaction among the wood storks. It appears that the two in the backgrounds were having an affair and when the one to the right approached closer, it was promptly chased away. Later on, one of the pair in the background picked a twig floating in the water and passed it to the other which in turn flew away; maybe they were making a nest. Part II will follow soon.
This building was used as their winter home until the beginning of the II World War when it was used by the Army until the end of the war. After the war, the house was again used by the Huntington's until the late 40's. This property was leased to the state of South Carolina in 1960 and converted to a park. When I first visited this park in 1973, the Atalaya was abandoned and overgrown by vegetation. I walked inside the building which was in disrepair but now is being preserved and can be formally visited for a dollar, quite a bargain.
Alligators are quite abundant in this park and show no fear of man. I spent long times observing these beauties and noticed that they would swim and bite the grass off the shoreline, I just could not figure out what they were doing.
It did not take long to discover what was going on They were pulling the grass off looking for crabs. When one was found, time was not wasted in making a meal of them. The gator will repeatedly throw its head backwards to move the crab towards the throat; this way the grass was not swallowed along with the crustacean. Another interesting observation that I was not able to capture in film was that in one occasion, one of the gators was surrounded by bubbling water along its chest. I could not figure out what was going on until I heard a very low frequency sound. It looks as the vibrations of the alligator's chest was causing the bubbling effect.
Alligators are not the only predators of the marshes at Huntington Beach Park. Fishing with a net in one of the canals there was a man trying to catch shrimps but in the time that I was there, he was not too successful.
Painted buntings are to me the most colorful birds in Southeast and it appears that their formal range had diminished. Consequently their numbers have been reduced due the destruction of their habitat. A male is below.
Here we have a mocking bird who is not afraid of big bad eagle. Size matters!!!
