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Savannah spoil site trip report



Today, Sunday, 6 May 2001 a small number of members of Columbia Audubon,
guided by Steve Calver of the US Corps of Engineers, toured the Savannah
Harbor Dredged Material Containment Areas (better known among birders as the
Savannah spoil site) in Jasper County, SC. This area is literally directly
across the Savannah River from Savannah, GA.

Our thanks go out to all those who help make this tour possible, especially
Steve Calver and John Phillips and his colleagues in the Georgia Department
of Transportation.

Birders must realize that you may NOT visit this area on your own. This is
an active industrial area, with many dangers. You MUST make arrangements
with GA DOT and the US Corps of Engineers to gain access. Having said this,
it is wonderful to report that, after years of essentially no public access
at all a pilot program of very limited access has begun. We applaud these
efforts, and I know that many birders across Georgia and both Carolinas will
envy Columbia Audubon for our tour today.

If you get a chance to visit this area, any time of year, jump on it! Simply
put, this is one of the very best birding areas in the state of South
Carolina. We hope that some sort of better public access will be available
in the future, but recognize the many hurdles in the way of reaching this
goal.

Our trip today was great, even though we saw no true rarities, and even
though the passerine migration seemed to be limited largely to good numbers
of Bobolinks and Cedar Waxwings. Still we easily saw many species that a lot
of birders in Georgia and the Carolinas would love to see. We had great
weather -- dry, cool to warm (60 F to 82 F), with a light breeze to help
keep the biting insects at bay. Steve guided our caravan over approximately
25 miles of dike roads, and we visited every important easily accessible
part of the spoil site.

We found approximately 100 species. This is in an area with only small wood
lots, no real forest.

I include a tentative day list. At least these species were observed by tour
members today, although no one saw all of them.  I include numbers of
individuals. These numbers are pure guesses, impressions at best, given to
give you an idea of relative abundance. I am sure that Steve Calver's counts
were much higher than these guesses:

Brown Pelican -- 1
Double-crested Cormorant -- 40
Anhinga -- 20
Least Bittern -- 1
Great Blue Heron -- 3
Great Egret -- 100
Snowy Egret -- 200
Little Blue Heron -- 25
Tricolored Heron -- 12
Cattle Egret -- 100
Green Heron -- 15
Black-crowned Night-Heron -- 5
White Ibis -- 10
Glossy Ibis -- 50
Wood Stork -- 6
Black Vulture -- 8
Turkey Vulture -- 20
Canada Goose -- 2
Mallard -- 40
Mottled Duck -- 12
Blue-winged Teal -- 8
Northern Shoveler -- 1
Ruddy Duck -- 4
Osprey -- 1
Mississippi Kite -- 1
Bald Eagle -- 1
Northern Harrier -- 1
Red-tailed Hawk -- 2
Northern Bobwhite -- 6
Clapper Rail -- 2
Common Moorhen -- 30
American Coot -- 6
Black-bellied Plover -- 5
Semipalmated Plover -- 200
Killdeer -- 25
Black-necked Stilt -- 500
American Avocet -- 120
Greater Yellowlegs -- 10
Lesser Yellowlegs -- 100
Solitary Sandpiper -- 5
Willet -- 25
Spotted Sandpiper -- 1
Sanderling -- 3
Semiplamated Sandpiper -- 2000
Least Sandpiper -- 150
Pectoral Sandpiper -- 1
Dunlin -- 15
Stilt Sandpiper -- 8
Short-billed Dowitcher -- 40
Laughing Gull -- 25
Ring-billed Gull - 4
Gull-billed Tern -- 35
Caspian Tern -- 1
Royal Tern -- 3
Sandwich Tern -- 1
Forster's Tern -- 6
Black Skimmer -- 150
Rock Dove -- 3
Mourning Dove -- 15
Common Ground-Dove -- 2
Yellow-billed Cuckoo -- 1
Common Nighthawk -- 4
Chuck-will's-widow -- 1
Chimney Swift -- 1
Red-bellied Woodpecker -- 2
Great Crested Flycatcher -- 1
Eastern Kingbird -- 3
White-eyed Vireo -- 4
American Crow -- 2
Fish Crow -- 25
Tree Swallow -- 10
Northern Rough-winged Swallow -- 5
Bank Swallow -- 2
Barn Swallow -- 50
Carolina Chickadee -- 1
Carolina Wren -- 5
Marsh Wren -- 3
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher -- 4
Gray Catbird -- 12
Northern Mockingbird -- 10
Brown Thrasher -- 4
European Starling -- 2
Cedar Waxwing -- 200
Yellow Warbler -- 1
Prairie Warbler -- 1
Common Yellowthroat -- 10
Yellow-breasted Chat -- 3
Eastern Towhee -- 12
Savannah Sparrow -- 20
Seaside Sparrow -- 2
White-crowned Sparrow -- 1
Northern Cardinal -- 15
Blue Grosbeak -- 2
Indigo Bunting -- 4
Painted Bunting -- 25
Bobolink -- 200
Red-winged Blackbird -- 300
Boat-tailed Grackle -- 200
Brown-headed Cowbird -- 20
Orchard Oriole -- 10

Robin Carter
President, Columbia Audubon Society
Columbia, SC
rcarter@sc.rr.com