SUMMER BIRDS ON DEVEAUX BANK

     The South Carolina seacoast has 34 barrier islands and beaches.  Fortunately, 21 of them are either undeveloped, or have few structures and human activities on them.  Limiting human activities on those islands and beaches is beneficial to a variety of shore birds because so many other ocean beaches are devoted to human recreation, which is not conducive to birds' activities.   

     Deveaux Bank is a 25-acre, alluvial, barrier island composed of sediment carried by the Edisto River in South Carolina and dropped at the river's mouth where it pours into the Atlantic Ocean on the South Carolina Coast.  This little island has been a bird sanctuary since the 1930's.  Though small, this shifting pile of sand and mud is big in migrant and nesting shoreline birds, including gulls, terns, sandpipers and pelicans, each spring and summer.  And, fortunately, most human activities are prohibited on Deveaux Bank, protecting those migrating and nesting birds from human intrusion.

     Deveaux Bank is most noted for the twenty thousand whimbrels, which are a kind of larger sandpiper that migrate each spring from the east coast of South America to the Arctic tundra to nest, but stop on Deveaux a couple weeks in May to rest and feast on crabs and other invertebrates before continuing north.  It's been stated that half the whimbrel population on the east coast of North America gather at that tiny island each May.  Every evening during that time, thousands of these sandpipers create an amazing sight when swooping in and landing at once on that alluvial island. 

     Every spring, flocks of other kinds of migrating shorebirds, including red knots, ruddy turnstones, sanderlings, dunlin and black-bellied plovers, also stop at Deveaux to rest and feed on small invertebrates before continuing north to the tundra to raise young.  Some of these shorebirds, including the knots, come from their wintering grounds in South America.  Obviously, whimbrels and other species of shorebirds need undisturbed sandy beaches and mud flats to feed and rest before continuing their long-distance flights north to rear offspring.         

     Each summer, laughing gulls, brown pelicans and royal terns are the most common nesters on Deveaux Bank.  They hatch young on the ground because there are no trees or bushes for rookeries. 

     These gulls, pelicans and terns are attractive and interesting birds, each kind in its own way.  The gulls have black heads and boisterous calls, the pelicans appear clumsy on land, but are elegant in the air and on the water.  And the graceful terns have orange beaks and black feathering on their heads.

     The gulls scavenge edibles and catch small fish.  And the pelicans and terns catch fish by diving into water and snaring their prey with their beaks. 

     Other nesting birds on Deveaux are the usual beach birds, including piping plovers, Wilson's plovers, least terns, sandwich terns, gull-billed terns, black skimmers and American oystercatchers.  Willets, another type of sandpiper, hatch offspring among grasses on the island.  None of these species are common along the North American coast of the Atlantic Ocean, in part due to human interference, including motorized vehicles, dogs and recreational activities.  

     Deveaux, and other, protected, beaches and islands like it, benefit a variety of shore birds.  And those birds are beautiful and interesting parts of the whole seacoast experience.    

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