Wednesday, May 1st - the first day of the 2024 Nesting Season

 Finally, this day has arrived, the Wednesday Volunteers walked this morning.  No, we did not see any evidence of a False Crawl or nesting lady.  Waties Island is the most northern barrier island in South Carolina, so many times our first activity is normally about the third week of May.  

We drove out to island at low tide, cloudy skies, warm temps, not a spectacular sunrise, but any morning on the island is a good day.  

There was a lot of trash to be picked up, the Wednesday volunteers met that challenge we took 3 large bags of trash off of the island, along with a seat cushion, a 5 galleon bucket and 3 mangled crab traps.

At the upper end, unfortunately there were three deceased bird carcasses.  Also on the beach was a large piece of Sargassum - which promoted Leslie to make sure everyone got to check this out.  We do not see it very often on the beach.  Several of our volunteers inspected the berries, which are actually gas-filled structures called pneumatocysts which add buoyancy to the plant which is why it floats.  This floating habitat can provide food, refuge, and breeding grounds for a number of animals such as fishes, sea turtles, marine birds, crabs, shrimp etc. 

See the tiny berries