Bull Island Ducks

[Stripa Swipa]

This is front page P&C today. Almost a thousand cans there now. Saw some cans last week...good sign.


Bull Island Ducks

A bird's-eye view of Bull's Island

BY CHRIS DIXON
The Post and Courier



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Chris Crolley has seen scores of birds in his life, but this season the Bull's Island ferry operator and Cape Romain naturalist has been impressed by the ducks and other winged creatures wintering on the Charleston County island.

Cruising out aboard the ferry on a breezy late December morning, he gave ample reason for bird lovers to visit this pristine wilderness at the southern end of the Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge. "The population of migratory waterfowl this year is impressive," he said. "I've never seen so many canvasbacks in one place before in South Carolina."

Early this month, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will conduct its annual midwinter survey of waterfowl by holding counts in national wildlife refuges up and down the Eastern seaboard. Using aerial and ground-based counts, biologists take a day's snapshot of prime waterfowl habitat along the so-called Atlantic Flyway - a migratory bird route stretching from Maine to Florida. The survey does not determine the harvest allowances for duck hunters, but according to South Carolina Department of Natural Resources biologist Dean Harrigal, it is important in determining long-term trends and shifts in waterfowl populations.

"It's a snapshot out of a plane window at a given moment," he said. "It is not an absolute count by any stretch of the imagination."

Harrigal said waterfowl counts in the state had been trending downward during the past decade, particularly in the Santee Cooper lakes region, where habitat changes have led birds to bypass the areaalmost entirely. This makes Bull's Island, the Santee River Delta and the ACE Basin more important wintering spots.

"Bull Island has traditionally held a good number of waterfowl," he said. "And one thing you see with the season in, is that birds tend to gravitate to where they're not being bothered. That's the important role that our inviolate refuges play in providing a place for birds to rest and not have disturbances."

The notoriously difficult job of counting the transient bird population around Bull's Island has fallen for more than a decade upon the shoulders of Fish and Wildlife biologist Sarah Dawsey. From the time migratory birds arrive in November until they migrate northward in March, Dawsey conducts weekly counts.

On Dec. 22, Dawsey counted 8,107 migratory waterfowl on Bull's Island, a healthy number that was up 1,500 from her previous week's count. Numbers occasionally exceed 10,000 on particularly good weeks. Of the 5,222 ducks on her recent survey, Dawsey counted 81 blue-winged teal, 382 green-winged teal and 788 canvasback. Among the nonduck species, she counted nearly 2,500 coot and 162 pied-bill grebe.

"Numbers are looking good this year," she said. "We're seeing lots of diving ducks: canvasbacks, scalps, ringnecks, wigeons, gadwalls and green-winged teal. A lot of them breed in Canada and the colder middle U.S. and basically work their way down the Eastern seaboard as the temperatures drop."

Motoring out to the five-mile-long Bull's Island, Crolley pointed out not only airbound ducks, but also sharp-shinned hawks. In front of the pontoon boat, a pair of American loon dove for fish while an orange-beaked flock of American oystercatchers hunted off the starboard rail. "Those beaks are evolved and adapted to feed on oysters," he said. "There are huge beds of oysters out here, and when those oysters crack open a fraction of an inch to filter feed, those oystercatchers slide their beaks into the shell, clip the abductor muscle and remove the oyster. We have the concentrated majority of the American oystercatcher population in Cape Romain. They're a beautiful bird and people come from all over the world to see them."

Bull's Island is especially important to at least 277 species of migratory and permanent birds because of its unique combination of freshwater lakes, reed-filled marshes and dense maritime forests of oak, cedar, loblolly pine and sabal palmetto. The wetlands running along the island's 16 miles of trails are fished by great egret, blue heron and bald eagle, while rare peregrine falcon cruise for feathered prey.

Stopping along one pond, Crolley pointed to a single hooded merganser preening its feathers just as, overhead, an osprey dove for fish. "The osprey do really well out here," Crolley said. "American bald eagles will actually sit and watch them hunt and when they catch a fish, the eagles will go out and steal their prey."

Crolley walked through forests thick with Bull's Island's bewildering variety of trees while birds of all feathers flew overhead. The wax myrtle tree, he said, is so named because female trees produce a fruit that can be used for candles. The yaupon tree, better known as the holly, is easily identified by its red berries, and the invasive popcorn tree produces white berries from which the tallow can be used for soap.

At Bull's Island's north end lies Boneyard Beach. Ceaseless erosion here has led miles of dense forest of cedar and oak to become beachfront property. Here, a rare white pelican flew above the equally bleached branches and trunks of the long-dead trees.

Just inland from the Boneyard lay Alligator Alley, Moccasin Pond, Jack's Creek and an assortment of huge reptiles and wintering birds. An alligator at least 22 feet long sunned itself on one bank. "Alligators aren't supposed to get that big," Crolley said.

Along the broad waters of Jack's Creek, a carpet of ducks swam, dove and bickered. "That's absolutely ideal migratory waterfowl habitat," Crolley said. "The food source is plentiful with the wigeongrass and other aquatic plants, and the little fishes for the divers and hooded mergansers.

"It's just a great phenomenon of migration where these ducks just fly thousands of miles from one place to another," he said. "Some fly from upper Canada all the way to South America. They move farther in their lives than any other creatures on the planet."

It was on the hundreds of watery acres around Jack's Creek that Crolley said he typically sees the greatest concentration of ducks. The northern edge of the creek also lies close to Bull's Bay and the pelagic, or open ocean, birds that feed not among the reeds but among the rolling swells. "It's a very dynamic edge between ecosystems," he said.

And although the current run of ducks is remarkable, DNR biologist Harrigal said a strong cold or warm front could send the ducks scampering south or north at a moment's notice.

"A lot of what we see is weather-dependent," he said, "and a lot is duck-dependent. Ducks are just like people - they do what they wanna do."

Contact Chris Dixonat cdixon@postandcourier.com or 745-5855.

[Gander]

"Numbers are looking good this year," she said. "We're seeing lots of diving ducks: canvasbacks, scalps, ringnecks, wigeons, gadwalls and green-winged teal. A lot of them breed in Canada and the colder middle U.S. and basically work their way down the Eastern seaboard as the temperatures drop."

Must be a lot of bald men runing around to see that many scalps.