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Edisto Beach, 7/28




A trip to the coast to visit Sharon Brown yesterday with Kathleen O'Grady
yielded both excellent birding jokes and good birds.  I'll have to confine
myself to reporting on the birds.

Of most interest were the large numbers of Ruddy Turnstones and Sanderlings
streaming by at Edisto Beach.  In well-spaced single species flocks of ten
to thirty birds, the Turnstones and the Sanderlings flew by, headed south.
Before we stopped watching, hundreds of both species had passed through our
fields of view.  Terns were less evident and less numerous than two weeks
ago.  The Laughing Gulls are beginning to slip out of breeding plumage, some
showing odd-looking faces as the white begins to break through the black
around their beaks.  Heading to an area where we thought we might find the
Turnstones and Sanderlings feeding, we were met with almost no beach at high
tide and no birds, except for an immature Sharp-shinned Hawk attempting to
nab a Barn Swallow and large flocks of House Finches feeding in the grasses
behind the dune line.

I am coming to really like this "flip-flop summer birding" (birding that
requires footgear no sturdier or more practical than flip-flops) especially
when done with friends.

Donna Bailey
Winnsboro, SC
e-mail: dsbailey@conterra.com
URL: http://www.conterra.com/dsbailey
     "Where are the Birds?  Migration across South Carolina"