Boats, beaches, and birds

This week’s special edition of the Daniel Island News offered me the perfect excuse to mix three favorite topics together. If birding is fun to you, how much better does it seem when you are enjoying your hobby out on the water or while strolling barefoot down the beach?

 

If you have ever been around gulls at the beach, on your boat, or even in downtown Charleston and thought some of them with black heads were laughing hysterically at you, then you have probably encountered Leucophaeus atricilla, or the laughing gull.

 

These birds are common along the eastern coast of the U.S. and range as far north as Canada, but they don’t like the cold. By winter they are mostly south of Charleston and enjoying Florida and the Gulf Coast, both coasts of Mexico and even northern South America.

 

Their feeding behavior can be as raucous as their calls. Laughing gulls will eat while walking, wading, swimming or flying and have even been known to land on the heads of pelicans to snatch food from their cavernous beaks.

 

This brings us to pelicans. There are two pelican species found in South Carolina.The brown pelican, Pelacanus occidentalis, is common along our coast and can frequently be seen flying along the beach in its single-file lines or partial “V” formations. 

 

Additionally, they can be seen off the beach, in the harbor or even in the rivers and creeks near Daniel Island diving into the water to capture fish (and water) in their huge bills. The water is then drained out so the fish can be swallowed.

 

These birds are also opportunists and will often be swimming nearby when someone is cleaning fish on a dock or pier. White pelicans are far less common than their brown cousins. These are grand birds with wingspans of up to nine feet!

 

While their bills are similar to those of the brown pelican, white pelicans do not dive into the water to feed. They swim to catch their food.

 

Finally, we have to at least touch on the sandpipers that dash up and down our beaches, zipping in behind receding waves to grab a sand crab or other morsel and racing back up the beach before the next wave overtakes them.

 

Many a child and many a dog have worn themselves out chasing sandpipers up and down our beaches. I cannot begin to name all of the sandpipers and similar shorebirds.

 

But when my wife, Jenny, was walking on IOP last week she got a couple of great shots of a bird I just could not identify. I even bothered an old friend who teaches biology and once worked for the DNR at Santee Coastal Reserve. Even he declined, saying he was not good at “these sandpiper/sanderling identifications.”

 

It’s no wonder, given the large variations in color and patterns, even for a single species, depending on its age, sex, and whether or not it is in breeding plumage. I ultimately identified the bird as a juvenile sanderling, a shorebird common to just about every coastline of North America and to other continents as well.

 

The next time you head out in the boat or take a trip to the beach, toss some binoculars and a camera in your bag. You will greatly increase how much fun your hobbies are and you’ll likely see some birds you might otherwise never encounter.