DEL.ICIO.USWILD GEORGIA
Coast is paradise for birdwatchers
For The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Georgia’s coast this time of year is a birdwatcher’s dream. Hundreds of thousands of songbirds, shorebirds, waterfowl, raptors and other feathered creatures are migrating along the shore, following the Atlantic flyway to their winter homes as far south as South America.
This annual spectacle of nature is what drew my wife, Laura, and me and some 2,000 other bird lovers last weekend to Jekyll Island for the 6th annual Georgia’s Colonial Coast Birding & Nature Festival. It’s fast becoming one of the nation’s largest birding events for experienced birders as well as beginners.
CHARLES SEABROOK/Special
A mixed flock of shorebirds gathers on the beach at Jekyll Island, much to the delight of those in town for Georgia’s Colonial Coast Birding & Nature Festival.
Attendees had more than 50 field trips, all led by experts, from which to choose and see the birds in their natural splendor — including outings to surrounding barrier islands, rivers, marshes and other natural areas. Over the years, many of the field trips have become so popular that they are filled within minutes after online registration opens in late August.
On our first outing, Laura and I joined several other festival-goers and paddled kayaks from St. Simons Island to the southern tip of Sea Island, where we walked a stretch of the beach. On the sandy expanse were shorebirds typically found on Georgia’s beaches this time of year (but not in the summer, when they nest as far north as the Canadian Arctic) — least sandpiper, semipalmated sandpiper, sanderling, dunlin and piping plover. Overhead, a large flock of black-bellied plovers flew by.
Then, our leader, naturalist Stacia Hendricks, shouted: “Peregrine falcon flying over.” Through our binoculars, we followed the magnificent, swift-moving bird as it sped over the surf. Several peregrine falcons spend the winter on Georgia’s coast, where their favorite winter food is shorebirds. Nothing causes more panic among a flock of shorebirds than an approaching peregrine.
Back in our kayaks, we paddled with the rising tide up scenic Postell Creek that twists and turns through a St. Simons salt marsh known as Bloody Marsh. It was made famous in 1742 when British forces under Gen. James Oglethorpe repulsed Spanish invaders in a bloody battle there.
As we paddled up the creek, diamondback terrapins — the only reptiles native to the salt marsh — poked their little heads out of the water. Seaside sparrows, which in the spring build their simple, open-cup nests in expanses of Spartina, or marsh grass, flitted about. Boat-tailed grackles, with their dark, blackish plumage and long tails, flapped overhead. Small flocks of red-winged blackbirds occasionally descended into the Spartina, presumably after insects living on the marsh grass.
The marsh itself was shedding its bright, mint-green color of summer and taking on its golden brown hue of fall, like a big field of ripening wheat. Individual Spartina stalks sported their tiny white flowers of fall or already had turned to seed.
For information on kayaking to natural areas on Georgia’s coast, visit
Shrimp and birds
On another bird-watching outing, several other birders, Laura and I boarded a much larger vessel, a 60-foot shrimp boat named Lady Jane that owner Larry Credle of Brunswick converted into a charter boat. As is the case with many Georgia shrimpers, high fuel costs and low prices for wild shrimp have forced Credle to find new uses for his boat.
On a four-hour trip through and around the Marshes of Glynn made famous by poet Sidney Lanier, we spied more than 30 bird species. Shortly after leaving the dock in Brunswick, we saw a flock of 23 wood storks (an endangered species) on a small hammock, or marsh island. On another hammock, we saw a beautiful, pinkish-colored roseate spoonbill perched on a tree. As Giff Beaton says in his book “Birds of Georgia,” “roseate spoonbills sport a bizarre mix of flamingo pink attire, an almost grotesque featherless head and a long paddle-shaped bill reminiscent of duck-billed dinosaur fossils.” Spoonbills were hunted nearly to extinction in the 1800s to supply fashionable ladies with fancy fans.
As Credle piloted the Lady Jane on St. Simons Sound, we spied a bald eagle flying low over Jekyll. A short time later, we saw another eagle (possibly the same bird) standing regally along the shoreline at the edge of the salt marsh.
In the sky
One of the year’s showier meteor showers, the Orionid, is visible this week with the best viewing times tonight through Wednesday. It peaks on Monday night with 25 meteors per hour, says David Dundee, astronomer with the Northwest Georgia Science Museum. Look to the east from about midnight to dawn. Unfortunately, the light of the moon will interfere with viewing the fainter meteors.
The moon will be last quarter on Tuesday night, rising about midnight and setting midday. Mercury is in the east just before sunrise. Venus shines brightly in the west just after sunset and sets in the west about two hours later. Jupiter is high in the south just after dark and sets in the west around midnight. Saturn rises out of the east just before sunrise and appears near the moon Saturday morning. Mars cannot easily be observed right now.
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