24 Hours in South Carolina

Megan and I had a great time in South Carolina, getting to spend plenty of time with my Mom and Brother. My dad was back in Ohio-he's been having chronic abdominal pain and didn't make the trip. No fun.

One of the things that I try to do when I first arrive at a new place is to take note of the first bird species I see. On Saturday morning, the first bird was a Eurasian collared dove. While we were waiting for 50 ridiculous minutes for our shuttle van to pick us up, I watched this bird make several trips from its oak tree nest to a flower bed. It would carefully look for the right type of material, and then it would fly down the airport pickup road and fly up into the tree. We had flown into Columbia, S.C. as it was much cheaper than leaving Columbus. And we flew from Dayton, probably right over Abe Lincoln's house!


After a two hour drive to Seabrook, we picked up our condo keys and headed to the place. The neighbor had parked his car in our driveway, which caused somewhat of a ruckus- we couldn't park in the driveway. We called security, etc. etc., the guy moved his car. All the while I noticed this green treefrog sleeping on the railing o f the entrance stairs to the condo. What an awesome creature. More on these later. So we arrived about two, and I had a few minutes to photograph whatever was around the condo.



Can you see the ant lion?



Then, it was off to the wedding, held at 6:15 on Friday evening.


Best of luck to the bride and groom, Amy and Jason!

The sun goes down in the west......


....and after a rousing good party, I woke the next morning to see the sun coming up behind the palm trees, golf course, and salt marsh, looking to the east.



Some type of resurrection fern?


The tree frogs were basking in the early morning sunshine.


And the male anoles were flapping their dewlaps to woo female anoles.


And this bee caught my eye.


And a great-crested flycatcher was nesting next door- in a cavity built right into the side of the condo.

And to end on a sad note, this cedar waxwing crashed into the condo next door, and I saw it flutter down, land in the soft pine straw and live oak leaf litter, and breathe its last breaths! How sad. What a beautiful bird.

And that was our Friday and Saturday morning on Seabrook Island!

The Fantasy Land of Seabrook Island

The island that Megan, my Mom, my brother, and myself traveled to this weekend for my cousin's wedding really was a fantasy land. A gated, private island, catering to those with more resources than ourselves! Wow, what huge houses there are on this island, built right into the dunes and and around the swales of what once was a pristine, natural area. It is still fairly intact, and the beach there is the only place along the South Carolina shore where sand is actually accumulating. These are images from our walk along the shore Saturday evening. Storms were threatening, so I left the big gun at home (my XTI and bag) and shot these images with Megan's Kodak p850, a very serviceable 5 megapixel super zoom. Take a close look at each photo. There is a life bird for me in one of them, see if you can spot it.