Field Trip Schedule and Descriptions

Field Trip Descriptions

Trip 1) Santee Coastal Reserve and Santee Delta—Friday Only.

Our tour of the Santee Coastal Reserve's and Santee Delta will cover the mainland area including rice fields, river frontage along the South Santee River, magnificent cypress-tupelo swamp, upland fields, and mixed forest. Expect some waterfowl and wading birds, hawks, American White Pelicans, Wood Storks, probable rails, sparrows, raptors, Red-cockaded Woodpeckers and migrating warblers. We may even find some owls if we are lucky, plenty of Bald Eagles.

Travel time: 45-50 minutes

Facilities: None

Access conditions: Moderate walking (3-5 miles on foot) all day, buggy

Trips 2 and 15) Huntington Beach State Park. ($5 per person entrance fee to the park.)

This Trip will cover the jetty at the Huntington Beach State Park, together with the nearby tidal creeks and flats, plus the causeway, Mullet Pond, the education center, salt marsh boardwalk and Sandpiper Pond. The jetty is one of best places in the state to find rarities. Remember that the jetty is nearly a 3 mile walk round Trip along the beach from the north parking lot. Bring water and lunch. Some food is available in the park store.

Travel time: 15 minutes

Facilities: Yes

Access conditions: Walking all day

Trip 3) Cherry Grove Pier, Heritage Shores, Springmaid Pier, Myrtle Beach State Park.

Heritage Shores Nature Preserve is a 0.8-mile loop trail located near North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina that features a river. The trail is good for all skill levels and primarily used for hiking, walking, nature trips, and birding. Myrtle Beach State Park has one mile of beach, dunes, a pier, and oak-and pine-filled forest. You will spot common sea and shore birds, waterfowl, Osprey, pelicans, and eagles fishing at the first state park in South Carolina.

Travel time: 60 minutes

Facilities: Yes

Access conditions: Moderate walking

Trip 4) Tom Yawkey Wildlife Center. -6:45 am.

This area is a SC Heritage Preserve and administered by the Department of Natural Resources. Public access can be rather limited. Target birds include American Avocet, American White Pelican, Barn Owl, early waterfowl, shorebirds, rails, raptors, Red-cockaded Woodpeckers, warblers, sparrows and more! Observation towers provide a panoramic view of the south Santee River Delta and surrounding area. This trip seems to be the one to get it all, in one long day! Bring food and water.

Limit: 12

Travel time: 50 minutes

Facilities: Yes

Access conditions: A short ferry over to island at 8 am and bus transportation to key sites on the island; moderate walking in various locations

Trip 5) Birds and Butterflies.

This trip begins at 6:30 a.m. at the North Beach Parking Lot at Huntington Beach State Park. From there, we'll take a leisurely three-mile round trip walk on the beach, jetty, and dunes in search of resident and migratory birds and butterflies. We'll enjoy the sunrise from the beach. The tide will be rising, making it easier to search for Seaside and Sharp-tailed Sparrows in the marsh behind the jetty. We'll spend time at the tip of the jetty for migrating shorebirds, waterfowl, and cormorants—Parasitic Jaeger is a possibility. Piping, Wilson's, Black-bellied, and Semipalmated Plover are found here. American Oystercatcher and Whimbrel may be present. There is often a small flock of roosting gulls and terns at the inlet. This is a great spot to watch for migrating Peregrine Falcon, Merlin, and American Kestrel. The cedar trees at the north end of park often host roosting Monarch butterflies and migration will be in full swing for Gulf Fritillary butterflies and others

Travel time: 15 minutes

Facilities: Yes

Access conditions: Walking all day—3 mile walk to Jetty and back

Trips 6 and 18) Lewis Ocean Bay.

This 9,000 acre preserve includes 23 Carolina Bays. The preserve is classified as an IBA by Audubon. The chief target birds will be Red-cockaded Woodpecker and other species associated with pine savannas. The state's largest population of black bears occurs here as well as numerous rare plants including the Venus flytrap. The trip will be led by a Coastal Carolina University professor who conducts research at the site.

Travel time: 45 minutes

Facilities: None

Access conditions: Moderate walking

Trip 7) Hobcaw Barony.

Entrance fee is $40 (cash or CC). Hobcaw Barony, a private, restricted access 16,000-acre research reserve/refuge located just north of Georgetown. The property contains a diversity of coastal plain habitats, including longleaf pine savannah and sandhills, pond pine pocosin, cypress/tupelo swamp, bottomland hardwoods, former rice fields, fresh-and saltwater marshes. Hobcaw is home for Red-cockaded Woodpecker, Bachman's Sparrow, Bald Eagle and a host of neotropical migrant breeding birds. The barony is also a site of historical and archaeological import, originally granted to Lord John Carteret by the Lord's Proprietors in the early 1700's.

Limit: 8 minimum—14 maximum

Travel time: 25 minutes

Facilities: Yes

Access conditions: On the property, we will travel by bus and do some moderate walking

Trip 8) Litchfield Plantation.

Join us for a tour of gated community, Litchfield Plantation in Pawleys Island. We will walk the live oak-lined streets to look for fall migrants and resident birds including Woodpeckers, Warblers, other passerines and possibly the resident Great-horned Owl. We will also visit the canal behind the plantation house to listen for rails and scan the marsh for blackbirds and others. Finally, we will stop to watch a backyard feeder for Red-headed Woodpecker, Brown -headed Nuthatch and others.

Travel time: 15 minutes

Facilities: Yes

Access conditions: Moderate walking

Trip 9) Hemingway Waste Treatment Plant.

This trip includes a visit, with permission, to the Hemingway Sewage Treatment Ponds, the top birding spot in Williamsburg County, South Carolina, with 18 different waterfowl species reported during the month of January. Shorebirds and passerines are also expected, but seeing large rafts of different kinds of ducks inland and up close is the highlight of this trip. If time allows a visit to the seldom-birded Johnsonville Sand Pits is planned. Please note that the aromas surrounding the sewage treatment ponds can be strong, pungent, and at-times even piquant.

Travel time: 70 minutes

Facilities: None

Access conditions: Moderate walking

Trips 10 and 25) Pawleys Island.

On this trip we will visit both north and south ends of Pawleys Island. First, we will go to the South end and walk the beach looking for gulls, terns, shorebirds and skimmers. As we drive from the South to North, we will be scanning rooftops for Eurasian Collared Doves and the marshes for waders and rails. At the north end, we will be closer to low tide and will scan towards Litchfield beach for loafing gulls, terns and pelicans.

Trip 11) Huntington Beach State Park without Jetty walk. ($5 per person entrance fee to the park.)

This Trip will cover the causeway, Mullet Pond, the Education Center feeders, salt marsh boardwalk and an overlook on the marshy end of Sandpiper Pond (good for rails and bitterns). This trip will also visit the beach briefly but will not make the trek to the jetty. Shorebirds, rails, wading birds, hawks, migrating warblers, owls, and falcons

Travel time: 10 minutes

Facilities: yes

Access conditions: Moderate walking

Trips 12 and 24) Brookgreen.

Participants will spend the afternoon exploring beautiful statuary gardens and wonderful open woodland habitat for a variety of birds. Brookgreen Gardens features the only known aviary built atop an actual cypress swamp. Here you can enjoy a leisurely stroll on the boardwalk while watching magnificent birds feeding and flying in a natural setting: Great Blue Heron, Black-Crowned Night Heron, egrets, Hooded Merganser, White Ibis, Redhead and Wood Ducks, rails, American Bittern, wading birds, wintering passerines, Barred Owls, Bald Eagles!

Travel time: 10 minutes

Facilities: yes

Access conditions: Moderate walking

Trip 13) Murrells Inlet Salt Marsh Kayak trip—Friday only --1:00 pm.

This four-hour aquatic adventure will allow you to see the salt marsh the best possible way -by kayak. We will launch from the Oyster Shell Landing at Huntington Beach State Park and paddle across the high tide looking for Clapper Rails, Saltmarsh Sparrows, and Seaside Sparrows. The high tide makes it much harder for these secretive birds to hide, so we can hope to see quite a few of them. We will paddle to the sandbar behind the jetty for a short walk to look at the hundreds of sandpipers, plovers, terns, gulls. Most of the rare birds found at Huntington Beach State Park are found on this sandbar. The water will be calm, but there will be a current (sometimes with us, other times not with us). When you register for this outing Paul Laurent will contact you to ask if you want a single or tandem (two-person) kayak. Full disclosure -we call tandem kayaks 'divorce boats'. Make sure you wear clothes and shoes that can get wet and/or muddy and bring a hat, sunscreen, etc... for an afternoon in the open. The boats are provided by Black River Outdoors, and lifejackets and a brief paddling tutorial are also provided. No kayaking experience is necessary for this outing, first time paddlers are welcome and even encouraged! The cost will be $58 per person, please bring cash to the landing to make life simpler for the good people at Black River Outdoors and also to get us out on the water faster.

Travel time: 45 minutes

Facilities: Port-a-lets

Access conditions: Flatwater paddling

Trip 14) Murrells Inlet Marsh walk/Limpkin Hotspot/Oyster Landing HBSP—Saturday only -1:10 pm.

This field trip will take you to three different locations that are relatively close to the hotel on US 17. Oyster Landing is 3.4 miles north on US 17. Murrell's Inlet Marsh Walk is another 2.9 miles on US 17 North (Business). The Limpkin Hotspot is 20 minutes (8.7 miles) from Murrell's Inlet Marsh Walk going north on McDowell Shortcut Road for 7 miles to Blue Heron Blvd. Go 1.2 miles to the hotspot. The order will be determined by tide at the discretion of the trip leader.

Trip 16) Black River Cypress Preserve (BRCP)—Peninsula Campus and the Georgetown Fishing Pier (Saturday only)—6:45 am.

This all-day fieldtrip will cover 2 different habitats increasing the likelihood of getting a number of species. Black River Cypress Preserve is a private property conserved by the Butler Foundation and the Nature Conservancy. The Carolina Bird Club previously visited the Main Campus in Fall 2019. This time we will visit the Peninsula Campus with similar habitats including extensive bald cypress stands, mature pine forest, bottomland hardwoods, and early successional shrub/scrub areas. Expected species are mature forests and early successional migrants and resident species. We will also stop at the Georgetown Fishing Pier (either before or after the BRCP). The pier, located on an island at the convergence of the Great Pee Dee and Waccamaw Rivers, should prove to be a great migrant trap. We will explore the scrub and marshy areas as well as walk the pier to search for migrating passerines, terns, gulls and shorebirds.

Travel time: Approximately 1 hour to the BRCP

Facilities: There are no restroom facilities. Food, drink, and snacks should be obtained ahead of time or along the route.

Access conditions: Trail walking over sometimes uneven terrain at BRCP.

Trip 17) Hasty Point and Rocky Point Community Forest (Saturday only)—7:00 am.

The Carolina Bird Club has been granted special permission to bird a newly acquired, not yet open to the public, tract of the Waccamaw National Wildlife Refuge, called Hasty Point. This former plantation located on the Pee Dee River includes former rice fields, longleaf and loblolly pine forests, bottomland hardwoods, tidal marsh, and bald cypress forests. In these diverse habitats, we will be able to tally a variety of waterfowl, wading birds, migrating and year-round passerines including the Red-cockaded Woodpecker. We will picnic here before proceeding to a nearby site on the Black River, the Rocky Point Community Forest. Here we will explore the waterfront as well as the nature trail to look for waders and migrating passerines. Rocky Point Community Forest is a property for which the Carolina Bird Club has contributed grant money for its preservation.

Travel time: 50 minutes

Facilities: Yes

Access conditions: Walking 3-4 miles on occasionally uneven terrain.

Trip 19) Francis Marion Forest South Tibwin.

Francis Marion National Forest has a very wide range of habitats, including longleaf pine savannas, floodplain forest, bald cypress-water tupelo sloughs, pine plantations, and even a bit of salt marsh. We'll walk through mature pine forest to medium-sized impoundments bordering the Intracoastal Waterway. These impoundments are where we hope to find a variety of waterfowl, shore birds, rails, bitterns, etc. Warblers, flycatchers, wrens, and birds of prey are also possible.

Travel time: 60 minutes

Facilities: None

Access conditions: 2-3 miles of walking on wooded trails and open scrub dikes.

Trip 20) Santee Coastal and Santee Delta.

This morning tour of the Santee Coastal Reserve's and Santee Delta will cover the mainland area including rice fields, river frontage along the South Santee River, magnificent cypress-tupelo swamp, upland fields, and mixed forest. Expect some waterfowl and wading birds, hawks, American White Pelicans, Wood Storks, probable rails, sparrows, raptors, Red-cockaded Woodpeckers and migrating warblers. We may even find some owls if we are lucky, plenty of Bald Eagles with chances for Golden Eagle.

Travel time: 40 minutes

Facilities: none

Access conditions: 2-3 miles of walking over occasionally uneven terrain

Trip 21): Lake Busbee and Conway Treatment Plant.

Lake Busbee is an eBird Hotspot and provides a feeding area for Wood Storks, herons, egrets, gulls, shorebirds, Osprey, and eagles. The marshes and canals around it provide wonderful habitat for a variety of waterfowl, waders, shorebirds, and rails. Hardwoods and some cypress lining the edges serve as good perches for raptors and habitat for passerines.

Travel time: 40 minutes

Facilities: None

Access conditions: 2-3 miles of walking on level gravel road

Trip 22) Young Birders: Huntington Beach State Park.

This is for those young birders, or those who just want a refresher. You will visit Huntington Beach State Park looking and listening for birds in a variety of habitats and observing behavior with a focus on identification techniques. This trip will be led by one of the premier birders in the Carolinas.

Travel time: 10 minutes

Facilities: yes

Access conditions: Moderate walking

Trip 23) South Litchfield Beach.

Located near our hotel, this beach is south of HBSP. Along the causeway leading to the beach is one of the best places to find rails. From the parking lot there is a 1.3 mile walk along the beach where we may see a variety of shorebirds. On the western side of the island, we may find plovers, skimmers, and sandpipers.

Travel time: 50 minutes

Facilities: No

Access conditions: Trail walking & boardwalks

Trip 26) Cox Ferry—Waccamaw National Wildlife Refuge—Saturday only—1:00 pm.

This trip visits the Cox Ferry Recreational Area with its 5 miles of trails through multiple ecosystems including coastal wetlands, cypress swamp, pine forests and the Waccamaw River, of course. Target species include migrating warblers, resident passerines such as the Red-cockaded Woodpecker, owls, raptors, and early-arriving waterfowl.

Travel time: 50 minutes

Facilities: No

Access conditions: Trail walking & boardwalks

Trip 27) Waties Island.

Waties Island is one of the last undeveloped barrier islands on the S.C. coast and a true oasis in comparison to the Grand Strand. Saved for generations by one family, Waties is now preserved by a conservation easement and is host to research projects by the faculty and students of Coastal Carolina University. We will be able to see a variety of migrating raptors, passerines, waders, and shorebirds as well as their resident counterparts.

Travel time: 70 minutes

Facilities: None

Access conditions: Moderate walking, including beach walking

Trip 28) Chasing the Rare Ones—Sunday a.m.—TBD.

Did you miss out on a great bird? Saturday evening, groups are encouraged to self-organize to chase the birds you may have missed. There will be no designated leader or departure time. This is a do-it-yourself trip