Huntington Beach COLD last day!

Huntington Beach State Park, SC

This was the last day of my winter road trip, so like I said, depressing--One of my facebook friends said, "If travel was free Sondra would never come back" she is right!!   If only, but who knows what our futures hold I AM thankful for what I have every tangible and non tangible bit of life-experience home and away from home. 

The weather was bitter cold, and yukky grey.  Without the wind chill I would venture a guess of about 30ish-F with more like teens. Hardly the kind of day I would find much in the way of bird-life as they hunkered down pretty good.  I had on 2 coats, gloves, 2 hats, could barely move!!

This group of Snowy Egrets were having a hard time keeping those feather in shape!

 ...The ponds on each side of the causeway at Huntington Beach State Park were not filled with ducks as I had hoped.  The fog also made photos pretty blurry, auto focus loves to focus on water droplets.  The birds were hanging close to the Far Away Side I assume to get out of the wind more...I saw a small number of northern shovelers males and females, didn't get a decent shot of any thing I saw. 

and a large raft of Gadwalls Males n females too..

Normally I would hear rails, and see large numbers of wood storks poking around in the mud flats, and the marsh...a couple great egrets flew over low but landed closer to the trees also in Far Away range.  I did see Lesser Scaup male n female, 

And this Immature RedHead? The thin blue line is how I came to this conclusion...the one about 1/2" up from the tip of the beak.

Bufflehead 2 pairs, and Ruddy Ducks were present. 

  Hooded mergansers were out and about.  

I trekked down the boardwalk ...there were no surprises here some Double Created Cormorants.  

Noticed the water level was higher than normal this may account for the low bird count also...Maybe If I had waited till low tide... 

the wind was so cold look how miserable this tri color heron is with his crest feathers flying  back over his face...LoL poor thing..

Casey and I took a walk on the nearby beach and I saw one willet and 2 ruddy turnstones and one sanderling...that was it!! no photos of those guys.  Even gulls were not to be found.  

Casey is so light he threatened to blow away....This shot really shows the dreary day going on...

There was this really cool poster with the names of shells...I really would have liked to have one of these...little note said available in VC, but it was closed when I drove past I was out rather early.  

...before leaving  the beach access parking lot I set up my cook stove in the protected space created by opening the 2 back doors of the van and heated up some roasted tomato & basil soup and it was the best thing ever on my cold nose and hands and it put my cold induced hunger to sleep.  After doing the dishes and putting everything away I drove the 138 miles to home.

(Other birds seen but not mentioned or pictured were:

Northern cardinal, pine siskin, tufted titmouse, carolina chickadee, white throated sparrow, yellow rump warbler, pied billed grebes, northern mockingbird, brown thrasher, and american crow!) 

I had a great trip added 5 birds to my life list, saw my first
American crocodile, (in the wilds) enjoyed all the wonderful bromeliads, alligators, and the miles of saw grass, all the marvelous birds, put 9 new stamps in my Passport to the Parks Book, saw the smallest post office in the country, and met all sorts of nice people from all over the world, and added a new friend to my facebook!! Also enjoyed some ridiculous pelican and skimmer action, and watched some freaky tourists do some really silly things too!!  I enjoyed good weather in FL, 2 overnight rain storms and some partly cloudy days, a few skeeters,  but all in all perfect choice to go South!!

Since back at home I had to do the usual pick up the sticks that fall every single day in the yard, and I've been clearing out the woods on my land a bit trying to get rid of so much of the wild grape vine that has choked everything out...then I started back to work on the House!! Now I'm spending my evenings plotting my next adventure.

PEACE

Eleanor Roosevelt: You must do the thing you think you can not.