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HBSP and a question



    On Saturday (2/5), my wife and I spent from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. birding
Huntington Beach State Park.  We drove down to Surfside Beach Friday night
and stayed at the Comfort Inn on US 17 Business.  Before heading for the
park, we spent some time looking at birds in and around the ponds in
Surfside Beach (between the Comfort Inn and the ocean, roughly).  We noted
two mute swans whereas we had only seen one in November.  We saw lots of
robins both there and in Murrell's Inlet, where we also turned up a cedar
waxwing.
    Arriving at HBSP we started at the causeway and then hiked the
Sandpiper Pond trail, beginning at the parking area for the boardwalk.  We
also checked the salt marsh from the boardwalk and made the trek out to the
south jetty at the inlet.
    We saw over forty species of birds during the day.  Here are the highlights:
ducks:
    hooded merganser (causeway pond)
    ruddy ducks (causeway pond)
    canvasbacks (causeway pond and Sandpiper Pond)
    ring-necked ducks (causeway pond)
    green-winged teal (causeway pond)
    buffleheads (Sandpiper Pond, jetty ponds, jetty
    lesser scaup (ponds, jetty)
gulls:
    Bonaparte's (causeway pond)
    herring (jetty)
    ring-billed (causeway pond)
shorebirds
    dowitchers
    dunlin
    black-bellied plovers
    semi-palmated plovers
    willet
    sanderling
    ruddy turnstone

    On the jetty we found the one ruddy turnstone, no purple sandpipers.
The scaup at the end of the jetty were clearly lessers--we had good looks
through the scope.  In the inlet and on the ocean beyond we saw common
loons.  There were horned grebes in the ocean on the south side of the
jetty.  On the channel marker out from the south jetty there were three
great cormorants.  The white on the heads was clearly visible on two of the
three birds.
    When we stopped at the first observation platform on the Sandpiper Pond
trail to glass the water, we discovered a swan feeding on the far side.  It
spent most of its time tipped up with its tail in the air, so we had to be
patient to get a good look.  Black legs and feet, off-white over-all color,
so it was an immature, and a dark bill with a yellowish upper side.
According to my field guides, the bird should be a tundra swan, but having
seen mute swans not very far away in Surfside Beach, I'm being cautious.
Has anyone else observed this swan?

Bob

--------------------------------------------------
Robert C. Perkins, Ph.D.
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
Methodist College, Fayetteville, NC 28311
910-630-7037     rperkins@methodist.edu