A Weekend of Birding on the Coast with the Georgia Ornithological Society

I’m not an ornithologist—four years ago, I couldn’t have named the birds in my backyard—but I recently found myself at the annual convention of the Georgia Ornithological Society on Jekyll Island with a hundred or so other folks, most of whom are also not scientists by trade. They, like me, just enjoy being out in nature looking at birds and plants and butterflies and sharks and armadillos and whatever else we came across last weekend.

The GOS conference has been held down on the coast of Georgia off and on since 1937, and mostly serves as a chance for friends within the hobby to gather together and go out on field trips together. Volunteer leaders take a couple dozen people to various hotspots around McIntosh County, to islands off the coast or a boat tour up the Altamaha River.

I chose Sapelo Island, Andrew’s Island, Cumberland Island and the Harris Neck Wildlife Refuge. I hadn’t been to Sapelo since seventh grade, when I briefly joined the Boy Scouts so I could go one a single camping trip with my friends (I made it all the way to the rank of “Scout,” which is the starting point for anyone who joins—but it was worth it to visit this beautiful island).

We hopped on the ferry at 8am and returned around 5pm, spending the whole day birding around the island, home to less than 100 Gullah Geechee residents and the proud hometown of NFL player Allen Bailey (so proclaimed on signs around the island). Our group collectively saw 90 different species of birds, including migrant warblers like Prairies and Black-throated Blues, hundreds of shorebirds like Semi-palmated Plovers, and a dozen falcons like the Peregrine chasing a poor Semi-Palmated Plover. Sharks swam in the shallow inlet near the Blackbeard Island National Wildlife Preserve, where a Bald Eagle scavenged a fish that had washed up onto shore.

Bald Eagles are a rare conservation success story

Of course we also encountered what felt like 90 different species of mosquitos on some areas of the island, most notably around the historic and picturesque lighthouse near the southern tip. Eight hours of birding is not for the faint of heart or the low on blood.

An Orchard Oriole was a rare find for the group

On day two, I took advantage of an opportunity every hard-core birder seeks—the chance to visit a bug-infested spoil site normally restricted from public access. Andrew’s Island is a landmass made by the Army Corps of Engineers from the spoils of dredging St. Simons Sound and the Brunswick Harbor. Silt-thickened water continues to flow from dredging projects into the municipal site, which in previous years provided an oasis for migrating shorebirds. High water levels this year have left much smaller mud flats for the birds to forage on, but we still saw a huge array of birds, including the enormous American White Pelicans, a few different migrating warblers and a pair of tiny Wilson’s Phalarope—a mostly western species and a lifer (bird they’ve never seen before) for several people in our group. We also saw a couple of summer birds that hadn’t yet embarked on their long journey’s south, a Ruby-throated Hummingbird and an Orchard Oriole, both of which will soon winter in Central America.

An Ruby-throated Hummingbird getting ready for a long migration

Somehow, the bugs on Andrew’s Island were even worse than Sapelo. Despite the lingering heat of an October day on the Georgia coast, I bundled up in a thick windbreaker coated in Deep Woods Off with the hood pulled over my head. And still the mosquitos drained me.

A Yellow-crowned Night-heron taking flight

Saturday night was the keynote event for the GOS held in a smallish conference room of a smallish resort on Jekyll Island with a cash bar and the kind of dinner you’d expect to have at a smallish resort on Jekyll Island. Throughout the meeting, we could hear the celebrations of a wedding reception next door. At a cocktail hour, conversations between longtime birding friends and those newer to the group focused on the past two days’ adventures and plans for Sunday birding, catching up on family news and reminiscing about other birding trips or rare birds seen during previous years.

A group of birders on Cumberland Island

One member, a retired ornithology professor from the University of Georgia, was celebrated with a lifetime achievement award. A scope and a pair of binoculars was awarded to a young birder from my local park, who at 16, is better at identifying birds than me and who is currently compiling a naturalist’s guide to my park as part of a self-directed study program at his high school. A visiting ornithology professor from the University of Florida shared a presentation about his life mixing scientific study with his own competitive desire to “twitch” or add to his life list of birds he’s seen, now somewhere north of 7,000—more than half of the approximately 11,000 species on earth. The night ended with a rundown of all the different birds the various field trips had seen, but half the room had already left when news of a Barn Owl under the Jekyll Island Bridge began to circulate. I followed them and saw the beautiful creature perched in a tree, a dozen birders taking in the sight.

An American Redstart with a snack

Sunday morning involved another ferry, this time to Cumberland Island, where the ruins of Thomas Carnegie’s Dungeness Mansion lies, along with the now feral descendants of abandoned horses. The main road from the Sea Camp Dock south was a stunning tunnel underneath a canopy of live oaks draped in Spanish moss with a variety of migrant warblers, Swainson’s Thrushes and Rose-breasted Grosbeaks chipping from the trees. A boardwalk through the saltwater marsh and South End Ponds offered views of herons, storks and sandpipers. Wild turkeys strutted past on our way to the beach, where we saw hundreds of gulls, terns and plovers, including an adorable Piping Plover with colorful bands on its legs, indicating it had been tagged by a wildlife biologist at the University of Minnesota to help learn more about the migration patterns of this threatened species. I’ve reported the bird and look forward to finding out more about its history.

Yogi, the Piping Plover, born at Silver Lake State Park in Michigan

[Update: The Piping Plover is “Of,YO:X,G known as YOGi,” according to Alice Van Zoeren of the Great Lakes Piping Plover Conservation Team. “He’s a long-time breeder at Silver Lake State Park, Mich. He hatched in 2014 at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore at the mouth of the Platte River. He began nesting at Silver Lake State Park in 2017 and has been there each summer since then. He’s a winter resident at Cumberland Island. He’s the father of the famous “Monty” of Montrose Beach in Chicago. There’s a new post with more information about him on our FaceBook page.” If you see a banded bird, visit the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to see where to report it. If it’s a Piping Plover, here’s more information.]

Cumberland was definitely the highlight of my long weekend—I’d long wanted to visit this island, which allows a limited number of campers each night in order to protect the natural wonder of Georgia’s largest and most pristine barrier island. The horses, though obviously not native to the island, add to its romance. We encountered about a dozen grazing near Dungeness. We only explored the southernmost portion of the island and still enjoyed several wildly diverse habitats. I’m eager to return and see more.

One of the feral horses of Cumberland Island

On my way back to Atlanta on Monday, I joined some of my fellow birders for a brief stop at Harris Neck National Wildlife Refuge, a beautiful preserve with a dark history. The U.S. government claimed eminent domain on the lands, evicting a Gullah community from their homes in order to establish an Army Airfield in the 1940s with a promise to return the land to its owners after the war. That promise was broken and the U.S. government transferred the land to McIntosh County instead. After decades of mismanagement, the land was reclaimed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1962, and the refuge was established.

As we drove around the 2,800-acre preserve, stopping periodically to visit the ponds, we found that some had dried up. Painted Buntings and Common Yellowthroats flitted around the reeds of one of the remaining ponds, which was also home to enormous alligators and turtles. We saw 60 bird species of the 350 that have been spotted at the park over the years, including a pair of Yellow-billed Cuckoos, a secretive and striking bird that’s always a thrill to encounter.

An American Alligator suns itself at Harris Neck

These treasures of nature along the Georgia Coast would be a joy to visit anytime, but it was a added delight to experience them alongside other amateur and professional naturalists who share my newfound pastime of watching birds, whether marveling at their diversity or thrilling at encounters with rarities and adding to our personal life lists. It doesn’t take any particular level of expertise to join a group like the Georgia Ornithological Society, so don’t ever be daunted by an official-sounding name. If you have a passion in any field of science, whether it’s astronomy, botany or herpetology, don’t hesitate to jump in and learn directly from the experts.

Josh Jackson is Paste’s co-founder and editor-in-chief. A passion for music and movies led him to help launch Paste, and a passion for nature, ocean life and birds has kept him sane. You can follow him on Twitter @JoshJackson and @BirdsAtl or on Instagram @atl_birds.