We’re Not in Kansas Anymore

February 20, 2023

Each day we get further from “normal” life, yesterday’s Random Observations showed that, but today we really hit the South. But let’s back up, I need to show at least one more shot of Susan feeding the horses.

Susan got one of me feeding them also. We went through a whole bag of carrot chips and then some of our full size carrots. Tilly, the horse above, is a miniature horse with a big attitude. She pushes the mini donkey and full size horse around.

Susan made a wonderful, uhh, thing for breakfast with the fresh eggs with ham, and “stuff”. You cook the tops of the eggs by covering the pan with a lid.

We headed off to James Island County Park in Charleston South Carolina. The back roads were beautiful.

But before we got there we stopped by the Audubon Swamp Garden in the Magnolia Plantation, also in Charleston. There, we could have paid $29 each to enter the plantation, and they also would have charged us $10 each to walk the trails around the swamp. On the other hand, if you parked in the free Audubon parking lot the swamp trail was free. We choose free.

We saw some kind of wood pecker or flicker, a male cardinal, then hit the swamp trail. It was gorgeous.

I’ve been experimenting with something call Zone Sieve photography. It is something like Pinhole photography but different. It is the same in that the camera doesn’t have a lens. You can get some pretty other worldly shots with it and this place seemed other worldly.

We immediately got some life birds. The Blue Winged Teal was a life bird for both of us. We loved see them. When we kayak the ducks tend to be skittish. You rarely see them from closer than 30 to 50 yards. Seeing some from a few feet away was a real treat. Below you can see a male on the right. They supposedly have fantastic blue patches on the wings when flying but ours were content to feed. We saw a total of 11 of them.

The Yellow-Rumped Warbler was a life bird for Susan. Actually, she’s probably seen them before but my eBird shows a sighting in Truro MA back in 2009. No phots because my shots were really poor. We got some very good binocular observations in, that was fun.

Next up was a single blue bird. We had seen many the day before but it is always a joy to see, and photograph them.

The next shot shows that we’re not in Kanas.

“Hey, Paul, can you see those alligators sunning themselves on the platform way over there?”

It was actually pretty safe standing next to them. It was still winter for them and they don’t eat in the winter, at least that’s what the locals told us.

Next up was a life bird for both of us, the Anhinga.

The Anhinga spears the fish.

Then whacks the fish until it is dead and swallows it whole. The “whole” process took about 15 minutes. Both Susan and I have movies, we’ll get them up on YouTube. Someday. Maybe.

I don’t know if the next one is a Life Bird or not, we’ll see how Cornell categorizes it. It is the white form of the Great Blue Heron. We had certainly not seen them before, especially a nesting pair. The eyes are distinctive but it doesn’t have the punk rock crest.

We watched this flycatcher for awhile, we’ll never know what it was. Some of them can only be identified by song and this one was silent.

We had pizza at a local place which was surprisingly good. I say surprisingly because we weren’t sure we would stay. The inside smell of cigarettes and the outside had a lot of traffic noise. It looked like it used to be a McDonalds, gutted, but still a McDonalds.

I next surprised Susan with a trip to the beach!

We only stayed for about 20 minutes, it was cold and we felt bad that us New Englanders were cold and others were walking around is shorts!

Random Observations

• Jesus Billboards, lots of them.
• Swamps, there are more swamps than Jesus billboards. You drive down the road and look off to the side, you see trees, and no land, just trees in water. We even saw a house on pilings in the middle of the river.
• Apple Maps can route you around flood zones.
• Bears. They don’t have them down here. Trash at the camp site is an uncovered bin!

Daily: 37

Total: 1,145

Miles/Day: 229