Last month my wife Sharon and I spent two weeks on Hilton Head Island in the South Carolina low country. Several times I was able to get out just before sunrise to Fish Haul Beach located a short distance from our rental. I chose to go at low tide during the “golden hour” at dawn. Fish Haul Beach is not a tourist beach, but a town park better suited for observing wildlife and beachcombing. I was there to see what shorebirds were active when the six-foot tides recede.
The sun began to rise over the ocean horizon just as I walked to the end of a short boardwalk to the beach. I first noticed how far the shoreline had fallen away to expose large areas of glistening striated mud and isolated tidal pools. A Great Egret was in one of the small pools trying to catch small fish trapped by the receding tide. Watching as he fussed over his preferred spot within the pool, I imagined that his ritual had been repeated for hundreds of years before people occupied this barrier island.
The exposed sand bar allowed me to walk out a fair distance from the shoreline. As I passed a group of exposed rocks, I saw several Semipalmated Plovers running back and forth feeding on the mudflats. It was a frenzy of small cheeping shorebirds grabbing an early meal and breaking off to fly to another spot. While the Plovers covered the ground, the Terns arrived and were hovering and then diving for fish in deeper water.
During the golden light of the morning, I was able to spend some time with the fishing Egret, the frenetic Plovers and the diving Terns. With luck these birds will return to this beach for hundreds of years to come. I’ll come back too.
