{"id":70,"date":"2009-02-24T10:24:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-24T14:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/2009\/02\/24\/70\/"},"modified":"2009-02-24T10:24:00","modified_gmt":"2009-02-24T14:24:00","slug":"70","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/2009\/02\/24\/70\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

For the Birds: South Carolina trip I<\/span><\/p>\n

My wife and I took a holiday trip to North and South Carolina in late December. We spent five delightful days on the South Carolina coast with friends in McClellanville, South Carolina. The birding and the weather were delightful.<\/p>\n

The maritime forest of the Carolinas is dominated by live oaks. These evergreen oaks rarely exceed fifty feet in height but have many large horizontal branches that extend out for tens of feet and then grow upward to the canopy. Foresters report that some live oaks can occupy a full acre! The trunks of these trees are large with diameters regularly exceeding six feet. The largest live oak known had a diameter of 11.5 feet.<\/p>\n

The small fishing town of McClellanville is dominated by live oaks. The few roads through the village seem to be tunnels through these great trees.
The live oaks provide habitat for many birds. Walks through the village turned up Carolina Chickadees, Tufted Titmice, Carolina Wrens and tons of woodpeckers, the most common being Northern Flickers, Red-bellied Woodpeckers and Downy Woodpeckers.<\/p>\n

Yellow-rumped Warblers are common wintering birds in this part of the world. Most warblers rely on insects gleaned from leaves for their food year-round. Most of the warblers that nest in North America are now on Caribbean islands or in Central and South America. The Yellow-rumped Warblers are more flexible in their diet and switch to fruit eating during the winter. These warblers depend on the fruits of the abundant wax myrtle bushes found along the coast of the southeastern United States. Of course, they will feed on insects if they can find them. But their ability to switch to fruit eating means they do not have to make the arduous migration to tropical climates to pass the winter.<\/p>\n

My ears told me I was not in Maine when I walked out of the house on morning to hear the energetic fee-bee of an Eastern Phoebe. Like the Yellow-rumped Warblers, the phoebes will switch to small fruits when the flying insects they depend on are not easy to find.
An unusual sound in the village was the three-note song of a recent colonist, the European Collared Dove. The song is a set of three coos, with the second one longer and stronger. It has the same cadence as the word \u201cunited\u201d.<\/p>\n

The European Collared Doves are native to southeastern Europe. These birds were introduced in the Bahamas in 1970 and spread to Florida by 1982. The species has expanded in the United States reaching Veracruz, Mexico, the Great Lake states and even British Columbia. I know of a single record from Maine on Monhegan Island. The largest densities of these birds are in the Gulf coast states.<\/p>\n

Some ornithologists think the Collared Doves are taking the place of the extinct Passenger Pigeon that was so abundant in the United States until the latter part of the 1800\u2019s.
It\u2019s too early to tell what effect if any the Collared Doves are having on our native birds. The expansion of their population seems slower than the explosive invasion of the birds into western Europe fifty years ago.<\/p>\n

Our friends in McClellanville have s small skiff so we were delighted to take a bird excursion through the maze of streams that divide the huge salt marshes of the area. Buffleheads, Hooded Mergansers and Red-breasted Mergansers were the most common ducks. Occasionally, a Bottle-nosed Dolphin would break the surface of the water near the boat. Boat-tailed Grackles were common in the salt marsh.<\/p>\n

Two Bald Eagles were a real treat. A Red-tailed Hawk perched atop a navigation pole and a Merlin streaked by at breakneck speed.<\/p>\n

\"\"Brown Pelicans were common. I still marvel at the ability of these birds to glide effortlessly just above the water. We also saw a flock of 40 White Pelicans, regular wintering boards along this portion of the coast. Unlike the Brown Pelicans that dive to capture fish, White Pelicans are social hunters. A group of White Pelicans will form a semicircle just offshore and swim toward the shore, driving any small fish into the center of the semicircle where they can be captured by simply bobbing underwater. White Pelicans do not dive.<\/p>\n

The exposed intertidal flats had a nice mixture of shorebirds. Sanderlings, Dunlin, Short-billed Dowitchers and Piping Plovers were seen. It was hard to miss the American Oystercatchers with their raucous calls and their striking appearance (black and white plumage and long red bills).<\/p>\n

Double-crested Cormorants, Common Loons, a single Red-throated Loon, Northern Gannets and Belted Kingfishers made it to our list as well.<\/p>\n

In the next column, I\u2019ll describe a wonderful trip to the coastal forest of the Santee River.<\/p>\n

[Originally published on January 10, 2009]<\/p>\n\n

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For the Birds: South Carolina trip I My wife and I took a holiday trip to North and South Carolina in late December. We spent five delightful days on the South Carolina coast with friends in McClellanville, South Carolina. The birding and the weather were delightful. The maritime forest of the Carolinas is dominated by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":146,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/146"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}