Category: Birds
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Wood Stork Flock / Muster Marsh Foraging
What a beautiful sight of a wood stork flock (also called a wood stork muster) foraging and squirreling around together. I’m guessing that there were over one hundred. Wood storks have bald blackish heads with thick stout beaks that turn downward. They are huge birds with a wingspan of 5 plus feet. They have fingered…
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Yellow Crowned Night Heron Horaltic Pose & Gular Fluttering
This adult yellow crowned night heron is thermoregulating in the horaltic position. This position helps birds cool down in hot weather and/or warm up or dry off in cold weather if the sun is shining. It also helps bake or get any mites moving in the feathers and sometimes they preen a bit after this…
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Bald Eagle Missing Lower Jaw (Mandible / Beak) & Black Necrotic Feet
This adult bald eagle flew into a tree and we were so excited as it had been months since we’ve seen one. Upon focusing in, we saw that it is missing it’s lower beak / mandible / jaw. We then noticed extremely black feet which is not good because raptors need healthy talons and feet…
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Turkey Vulture Feaking After Eating
This turkey vulture ate a dead stingray in the marsh and comes up to the dock to feak. Feaking is the act of a bird cleaning and or honing it’s beak after eating. In Charleston SC, they have to work with the tides to eat. They can’t eat the things they can’t see or get…
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Breeding Plumage Laughing Seagulls & Yellow Crowned Night Heron
This laughing seagull has his / her breeding colors going. Orange / red bill, darker hooded head, and white crescent shaped incomplete eye rings around the eyes. The laughing gull spits up something, gets kicked off by another laughing gull, and then gets run off by a yellow crowned night heron in it’s breeding plumage.…
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Osprey Eats Fish On Dock
This male osprey caught a small fish and brought it to our dock to eat. It took about 16 minutes from start to finish. The osprey feaks (cleans, hones it’s beak), shakes, poops and takes off, pretty classic bird behavior. Ospreys are raptors with hooked beaks and talons. They generally dive feet first into water…
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Immature White Ibis Chilling In Oak
May 2025 Charleston SC Immature White Ibis hanging out at the top of an oak tree off the marsh in Charleston SC. His / her buddies are all around up there. Ibis are social birds and forage in groups in wetland areas and lawns.
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Thirsty Yellow Crowned Night Heron Drinking
Yellow crowned night herons have returned to Charleston for the season. They’re one of my favorite birds so I’m pretty happy to see them again. Yellow crowned night herons are always thirsty and they were the inspiration for this waterbowl on the dock after seeing them try to drink out of the sink that is…
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Male Belted Kingfisher Eats Fish
This male belted kingfisher swallows this little fish whole in one gulp and then feaks (cleans his beak). Kingfishers plunge head first in the water to get their food. Kingfishers don’t actually get the hiccups, that’s just how I describe it. Charleston SC March 2025