Return of the Folly Beach Bird Walk!

This Friday, Jeff Mollenhauer (Audubon South Carolina) and Keith McCullough (Charleston County Parks and Recreation Commission) will team up to lead the second Folly Beach Bird Walk. The program has been so successful that both the March and April walks filled to capacity. The walks were created as part of a monthly series to help educate people about the importance of Folly Beach to migrating, wintering, and breeding shorebirds. The walks will continue to be held on the second Friday of every month.

Our first walk, in March, was very successful with 26 participants in attendance. We saw 8 species of shorebirds, including a large flock of Red Knots, Dunlin, and Semipalmated Plovers along with a Common Loon (image above) and a Greater Yellowlegs (image left). We covered topics such as the importance of seabird nesting islands like Bird-Key Stono, Red Knot population declines due to over-harvesting of horseshoe crabs, keeping dogs on a leash while at the beach, and other shorebird conservation issues.

You may have missed your chance to sign up for the April walk, but there is still time to sign up for the following walk on May 9th, 9:00am - 11:00am. May will be our last chance to see many of the wintering and migrating shorebirds before they head north to their breeding grounds. We hope to see shorebirds such as Dunlin, Ruddy Turnstone, Sanderling, Red Knot, Semipalmated Plover, Wilson’s Plover (image below), Black-bellied Plover, American Oystercatcher, Least Sandpiper as they dazzle us with their beautiful breeding plumages. Many of the breeding seabird species will have returned and we will have good chances of seeing Least Tern, Royal Tern, Sandwich Tern, Black Skimmer, and perhaps even a Gull-billed Tern if we are lucky!

To register for the May 9th Folly Beach Bird Walk please visit: http://online.activecommunities.com/charleston/Activities/ActivitiesDetails.asp?ProcessWait=N&aid=1911 or call 1-800-795-4FUN (4386).

Images by Jeff Mollenhauer