Operation Windmills: Myrtle Beach Trip: DAY 4

Rick and I decided we wanted to check out Huntington State Park near dawn, so we got up extra early to be there and again, we were not disappointed.
All the wading birds were right up near the road!

Little Blue Heron with a Tri-colored Heron behind it

SO MANY BIRDS!!

Great Egrets, Snowy Egrets, Wood Stork, White Ibis, Tri-colored Heron, Little Blue Heron

Great Egret

Black Skimmer

This Black Skimmer put on quite a show. You can just barely see the ripples on the far right of the picture, that's a school of little fish! There's an alligator out of frame who pushed them up to the surface and the skimmer went back and forth after them.

Wood Stork in the water, Wood Stork in the trees!

Tri-colored Heron

Brown Pelican

Moorhen (juv)

Tri-colored Herons

These Tri-colored Heron's lined Both railings of the boardwalk! There were close to twenty of these pretty birds. The ones with the brown head/neck are juveniles while the ones with the blue heads and dark necks are adults.

Great Egret

Laughing Gulls

Saltmarsh Sharp-tailed Sparrow

Papa told Rick and I about a place (right across the street from Huntington) called "Brookgreen Gardens" famous for it's gardens and hundreds and hundreds of sculptures. It sounded like fun so we wandered across 17 to check it out. Turns out it not only had statues but also a zoo!

Rick standing next to a giant Cypress tree. We would have loved to have seen this when it was alive!

Orange Spotted Purple Butterfly

five-lined Skink (juv) - when this guy reaches maturity he'll have NO lines and be mostly red!

A part of the zoo at Brookgreen was an aviary/rehabilitation program for raptors and owls, and my favorite aviary had three large trees beneath the net and a little sign that said "Can you find me?" and pictured a Great Horned Owl, a Barn Owl, a Barred Owl, and a Turkey Vulture. Rick and I spotted the Turkey Vulture right away, but they other three were much, much harder, even though they didn't have many places to hide. We searched a good fifteen minutes and never found the Barred Owl! It's no wonder we never find them in the wild! These birds are the kings of camouflage!

Great Horned Owl - he looks obvious in this picture but I promise he was not. I only spotted him because he moved!

Rick spotted this Barn Owl, again because he moved. You'd think with the white he'd be easy to see, but again that wasn't the case at all!

This grasshopper was HUGE! And very bright

Box Turtle

I spotted this Box Turtle between a couple paths because he got up and started walking. I pointed and told Rick "That rock's a turtle!" and we chased after him (it was a short chase). It took a while longer to get a picture where he was looking at me, (this turtle was determined to moon me) but I got him. When we looked him up in our field guide we learned that Box Turtle's can live 70-80 years and if their habitat permits it, they'll never leave an area the size of a football field! For a guy in a mobile home the box turtle does NOT like to travel.

Water Lily

Don Quixote by Anna Hyatt Huntington

Don Quixote astride Rocinante! The plaque said the sculpture is meant to portray him "dazed and confused at the moment after he lost his joust with windmills." I don't usually go in for "pictures of art" but this was so wildly appropriate for this blog that we just had to have a picture!