Huntington Beach State Park

 Huntington Beach State Park had more birding areas than Myrtle Beach. Jane dropped me off at the north parking lot, which had a trailhead to Sandpiper Pond. The first trail I took led to the beach. I got a nice picture of a ring-billed gull, clearly showing the black ring.

Ring-billed gull

I backtracked to the parking lot and found the other trailhead. As soon as I started down the right trail, I heard many birds, probably all the same species, but was unable to see more than an occasional flitter of small wings in the brush. I saw a red-bellied woodpecker in a tree.

Red-bellied woodpecker

There was also an “octopus tree” with a plaque explaining that when a live oak tips over, sometimes it does not die. As the trunk gets buried in drifting sand, it sends out new roots, and many “trees” develop from the former limbs. I have seen this same process with beech trees at the dunes around Lake Michigan.

Octopus tree

There were a few ducks on Sandpiper Pond. Sandpipers were conspicuously absent, however. There were male and female hooded mergansers, but my best picture was of this male. The ducks were all far away.

Male hooded merganswer

And buffleheads.

Female bufflehead

Two females and a male bufflehead. 

Meanwhile, Jane drove to the Nature Center and took pictures of birds at the feeder.

Goldfinch and chickadee

Cardinal

We were particularly happy to see our friend from the Boundary Waters, the white-throated sparrow.

We drove to the south side of the park, where I walked a short distance to a pier into Mullet Pond. Lots of people were crowded onto the viewing platform at the end, and for good reason. This was where it was at. A flock of dabbling ducks was hard at work on one side of the pier. It was difficult to get a picture of them with their heads out of the water. When I did, however, I saw they were shovelers! I had never seen such huge bills on ducks before.

Shovelers, mostly with heads underwater

At the edge of the shovelers, a couple pair of gadwalls nosed around. They are drab dabbling ducks. How’s that for alliteration?

Male and female gadwalls

On the other side of the pier, birds that may have been dunlins poked around in the mud. Shore birds are annoying.

Dunlins?

The main attraction was on the other side of the pond, where a great blue heron was trying to subdue and eat a black snake.

Great blue heron with snake-like prey

But wait! The man with the largest telephoto lens saw that the “snake” had tiny arms and external gills. “It’s a siren!” he announced. I had never heard of such a thing, but others, presumably locals, looked at the image and concurred. Google it if you’re interested. It’s one hell of a big salamander that has no hind legs whatsoever.

The heron worked on the siren a long time, dropping it to the ground, picking it up, shaking it.

Dropping the siren

Picking it up. Tiny front legs are sort of visible here.

And up again

Finally, it flipped it up and began to swallow it…

Down, maybe

Oops! Back up it came.

Or maybe not

Then down

And down.

Whew!

Recovering

In front of all this drama was a flock of sanderlings (maybe) and a pair of green-winged teals.

Female and male green-winged teal (front) with sanderlings in the back

The sanderlings got spooked by something and took wing.

Sanderlings in flight

We had to head back home after that. We stopped at Saltwater Scoops for raspberry chip (me) and Myrtle Turtle (Jane).

Raspberry chip and myrtle turtle

We took the road by Russel Burgess and got an excellent view of a great blue heron.

Great blue heron

And that was the end of our most exciting day.

 

Myrtle Beach State Park

 Wednesday, Feb 7

Jane’s brother, Dave and his wife, Mary drove down from Winston-Salem for a couple of days. Mary booked a nice suite 2 miles from our condo for a reasonable price. We invited them to join us for cinnamon rolls Wednesday morning. I had packed up everything in advance and had only to get up early to let the dough rise twice. I’d had the foresight to buy parchment paper and a rubber spatula. I suppose buying a rolling pin and ruler would have been over the top. I pushed the dough into a rectangle with my hands, but it ended up thicker and smaller than it should have been. No one complained.

Wednesday breakfast

We spent the day talking and doing a jigsaw puzzle. We went out to dinner at a nice local restaurant, The Shack.

Thursday, Feb 8

Jane and I were up early the next morning to take Jan to the airport. Her cousin had collapsed and died shortly after retirement, and the funeral, family dinners, etc. were Thursday and Friday. She would fly back Saturday.

We got together with Dave and Mary again after breakfast. After frittering away the morning (again), Dave and Jane took naps while Mary and I had a long walk on the beach. We then took a drive by Russel Burgess and Heritage Shore again. There weren’t many birds. We tried a new ice cream shop, Melt, that was right on one of the main streets of North Myrtle Beach. I had mint chip. It had a sufficient number of large chocolate shards.

Mint chip from Melt

Friday, Feb 9

Dave and Mary left early to go back home. Jane and I headed to two state parks on the south side of Myrtle Beach.

First we stopped by Heritage Shore, where this little belted kingfisher was sitting on the pier looking glum.

Belted Kingfisher looking glum

At Myrtle Beach State Park, we sat on a bench and watched the bird feeder for a few minutes. What I thought at first was a prodigious amount of fungus growing from a log turned out to be peanut butter. A tufted titmouse couldn’t get enough!

A tufted titmouse can't get enough peanut butter

We also saw more butterbutts, which could also be called butter wingpits.

Butterbutt (yellow-rumped warbler)

Butter wingpit

And a yellow warbler.

Yellow warbler

Jane perused the gift shop by the beach while I walked up the beach and back on a boardwalk. This was a better shelling beach than back by the condo, as witnessed by the shellers. My apologies to the woman whose ass is prominently displayed. I didn’t realize when I took the photo.

Shellers shelling by the seashore

Seashells and a bit of coral

I cut back to the parking lot that eventually led to the board walk and immediately came upon a magnificent southern live oak. Breathtaking.

A magnificent live oak

I didn’t seem much else on my walk back to meet Jane. We went to Huntington Beach State Park next. Due to the number of photos, I’m going to cover that in a separate post. Check back soon!

A day in North Carolina

 I have no photos from Sunday and Monday. We frittered away all of Sunday morning at the condo and spent the afternoon driving south to Murrells Inlet to visit Jan’s niece and her two daughters. Monday was cold and dreary. The forecasted rain did not materialize, but it still wasn’t a good day for doing anything outside or, in fact, anything at all. We did laundry. That’s about it.

Tuesday, Feb 6, we drove to North Carolina. We first went to Green Swamp Preserve, a Nature Conservancy site. Like many Nature Conservancy properties, it lacked public access, or at least public access that we could find. There was one plaque with faded pictures of flowers and a story about the restoration of the pine barrens. The forest was quiet, sunlight, and peaceful. I think these are loblolly (or southern yellow) pines. According to Wikipedia, loblolly began its life as a word referring to stew or porridge and over time came to mean swamp. One assumes there were some nasty stews back in the day.

Pine barrens

We puttered along some not-very-good dirt roads through Juniper Creek Game Land. We saw not one other human being. There were several turkey vultures overhead and a few tweets darting around the trees and shrubs. Not a great birding place.

We drove north to Lake Waccamaw State Park. Like our previous two stops, few people were about. The ranger station was open, but empty. We were able to see the much-advertised 3-million-year-old fossilized whale skull, the only one of its kind in North America. Although Lake Waccamaw is 50 miles from the ocean presently, 3 million years ago, all of this land and more was underwater.

3 myo whale skull

Most of the land around Lake Waccamaw is privately owned. A ditch runs along one or both sides of the road and is populated by impressive numbers of chicken turtles. I had never heard of chicken turtles before. I thought they were sliders, but close observation of the pictures shows that their shells are not smooth. When I zoomed in, I saw the characteristic shallow furrows.

Chicken turtles sunning en masse

I thought one of these turtles was a red-eared slider. When compared to the picture in my Golden Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians, however, it was clear that the red was in the wrong spot and was probably just a dead leaf caught under the shell.

Two red patches, both dead leaves

Sometimes the turtles just flopped on the bank to sun. I'm not sure if the one on the bank is a different species or just looks extra yellow because it's in full sun.

Yellower turtle on the bank, left. Too crowded on the log, no doubt.

We also saw a great egret (I think—yellow bill, black legs) in a swamp at one end of Lake Waccamaw.

And more turtles.

So many turtles!

We had a late lunch in Whiteville, which may or may not reflect the demographic, at a charming place called Sophie’s. I was way beyond peckish at that point, and felt much better after eating. We poked our way along backroads to get back to North Myrtle Beach. One notable tiny town was named Bug Hill. I thought they might have a marketing problem.

Meanwhile, Jane’s brother Dave and SIL Mary drove down from Winston-Salem to visit for a few days. We all went out to dinner together and visited at the condo until bedtime. A nice day all around.

North Myrtle Beach birds

 Our first full day of vacation was spent settling in. I slept right through sunrise. We had a leisurely morning and late breakfast. Jane and I went shopping while Jan had a Zoom meeting. Shopping took forever. Poor Jan was starving by the time we got home. We went straight to happy hour followed by supper.

The next morning, I made good on my promise to myself to get up and go for a walk on the beach. I had come all that way, after all. It was in the low 40’s, but I had enough clothes to stay warm. I was out at 7:00, well before sunrise. The tide was out, and the beach was the cleanest I had ever seen. There was no trash, dog poo, dead fish or rotting seaweed. Due to the absence of the two latter items, it didn’t even smell like the ocean. The shells were sparse and broken up, from which I guessed that the surf pounded hard.

The sunrise seemed to last a long time, beginning with a rosy horizon which brightened in one spot. The orange sun crept up over the sea.

Beginning of sunrise

I thought that the gulls were herring gulls, the type I’m most familiar with. Closer examination of the many pictures I took showed them to be ring-billed gulls. I walked all the way down to a pier on the north end of the beach and headed back. The beach was fairly flat, but beach walking can make you sore in new ways, and I didn’t want to press my luck.

Once the sun cleared the horizon, it sparkled on the water. Sun sparkles on the water are among my favorite things.

Sparkly water!

I took a self-portrait with very long legs. Our condo is in the fourth floor of the pale green building.

Self portrait with condo building

Right outside the building, I saw sea oats, which is so valued as decoration that it has had to be protected in some areas so people don’t pick it.

Seaoats

I was surprised to see a prickly pear cactus with lots of fruit.

Cactus! In South Carolina!

When everyone was dressed, we drove to Russel Burgess Coastal Preserve a short distance from the house. Jan spotted oyster catchers before we got to the parking lot. By the time we parked and got the camera out, they had moved. This is the best picture I could get, which was the oyster catchers far away on an oyster-created island with some cormorants.

Oysters, oystercatchers (orange bills), and a cormorant

A tern worked the shoreline, soaring and diving, never once posing for a decent picture so I could identify which of the gazillion gray terns it was. How rude.

A speedy tern hits the water

A great egret was more cooperative, standing by the road at the opening of a culvert. (I only know the species because it flew off shortly after and I got a picture of its black legs and feet.)

Great egret

Two little egrets flew by, showing off dark legs and yellow feet.

Little egrets

There were also some ducks, such as a bufflehead

Bufflehead

And a group of (based on the white spots at the base of the neck) common mergansers.

Common mergansers

Our next stop was Heritage Shores Nature Preserve. I got an excellent photo of a great blue heron looking grumpy on the shore by the Cherry Grove boat landing.

Great Blue Heron

There were no visible water birds in the estuary, but we did see a female yellow-rumped warbler (aka “butterbutt”)

Mrs. Butterbutt

And a northern mockingbird that hopped energetically around on a dead tree, apparently defending its territory.

Northern mockingbird

We drove to Little River and had lunch at Seabrisa’s Waterfront Seafood Restaurant. After that we crossed the border and drove around the North Carolina coast. Not much going on there.

We had our lunch leftovers for supper, and that was the day.