A Brit abroad

Tybee Island: a tale of sun, sea, skimmers and stupidity

I spent the Hallowe'en weekend on lovely Tybee Island, the nearest bit of GA coast to Athens at a mere 4.5 hours' drive away! I stayed at the Lighthouse Inn bed and breakfast, a very convenient location for birding the North Beach area and breakfasts to die for. On arrival I had planned to race off to the beach, but the welcoming owners Stuart and Susie sat us down on the front porch rocking chairs with a glass or two of wine - a welcome change of pace! Their dog, Artie, was already dressed up for the Hallowe'en celebrations.

I got to the beach just in time to see some flyover Brown Pelicans...

... and the beautiful sunset.

Next morning I got up early to look for shorebirds before the beach got too busy, but the tide was out and I saw little other than Ruddy Turnstone and Sanderling. A few Bottlenose Dolphins were feeding surprisingly close to the shore.

These striking Gulf Fritillaries were abundant.

The beach parking lot was filled with noisy Boat-tailed Grackles.

After breakfast we headed to Fort Pulaski to coincide with high tide. The area boasts expansive Spartina alterniflora marshes, which are home to three hard-to-see species of saltmarsh sparrow.

On arrival, a sparrow was sitting up in the Spartina, and I just had enough time to clinch the ID as my lifer Nelson's Sharp-tailed Sparrow before it flew. The bird flew much closer to me and into low vegetation, but proved impossible to relocate. Over the next hour I had occasional glimpses of up to 3 Seaside Sparrows, another new bird, but these proved to be equally shy. Other marshland birds heard but not seen here included Clapper Rail and Marsh Wren - indeed the only bird I managed to photograph here was this Palm Warbler!

Several Forster's Terns were perched on the bridge over to the fort, offering splendid views from the car.

At the fort itself there were several groups of Savannah Sparrow. This race seems much more richly coloured than the birds I used to encounter in California.

I spent the afternoon exploring the lush green squares of Savannah - this is the Mercer House, made famous by the book Midnight in the garden of good and evil.

Back on Tybee, I had a fine dinner of shrimp 'n' grits and key lime pie at AJ's, watching Belted Kingfishers and Black-crowned Night Herons at dusk.

On Sunday I headed out to the northernmost tip of the north beach, via a boardwalk over a small swampy area. Unfortunately mosquitoes were still very much in evidence, but on the bright side I found the area to be very birdy. A little pishing encouraged the birds out of the bushes - Gray Catbirds, Carolina Wren, Song Sparrows and numerous Myrtle Warblers were the first to appear, followed by a female Indigo Bunting and this, a female or immature Painted Bunting, only the second individual I've ever seen.

However, the best was yet to come - a small Spizella sparrow which had given frustratingly brief views finally popped up just next to the boardwalk, allowing me to confirm that there was no line between the eye and the bill, and that therefore I was watching my lifer Clay-colored Sparrow!

I finally made it out to the beach where a huge mixed roosting flock of gulls, terns, skimmers and shorebirds was assembling. Scanning through the commoner species (Herring, Laughing and Ring-billed Gulls, Royal Terns and Black Skimmers), I was able to find smaller number of Caspian, Sandwich and Forster's Terns, a couple of Great Black-backs and my first US Lesser Black-backed Gull.

The skimmers put on an amazing show, and I was able to watch them at very close range as they flew along just offshore, dipping their lower mandibles into the water to feed.

A large (migrating?) flock of Tree Swallows swirled in a tight ball over the beach, and occasionally came to rest on the sand.

As the tide got ever higher, good numbers of shorebirds began to assemble. The Ruddy Turnstone flock contained a few Dunlin, Sanderling and a single Red Knot, but unfortunately no Purple Sandpipers (this being the only regular wintering site for them in GA). Other species present included several American Oystercatchers, Black-bellied Plover, and a few each of Semi-p Plover and Willet. On the walk back to the hotel I was lucky enough to run into a single Piping Plover roosting with a Sanderling.

It is here that I'm embarrassed to confess to an act of extreme stupidity. My poor old fuji digiscoping camera has never been the same since falling out of a canoe in France, so I treated myself to a shiny new Nikon CoolPix P5100. The roosting larids and shorebirds made perfect targets for getting to grips with the new camera, and I took well over 100 shots that morning. However, somewhere between the Piping Plover and the beach parking lot, the camera managed to fall out of my pocket without me noticing, and in spite of immediately scouring that stretch of beach it was not to be found. I left messages at the beach cafe and the police station before reluctantly leaving, assuming my less than a week old camera had met with a watery grave. In fact, when we were a good 2 hours' drive away from Tybee, the police called to say that the camera had been handed in! Said camera has now been posted to what will be my future address in Athens, but my idiocy means that I'll now have to wait until next year to get out and use it. Watch this space for more photos from Tybee!

Posted by rjhall at November 10, 2008 7:51 PM