On our way northward toward home we stopped at Fort Pulaski National Monument located between Savannah and Tybee Island. Not really intending to bird as we were unfamiliar with the area and just planning on seeing the historical site, we learned that the land and trails around the fort are rich birding territory.
A family of Bald Eagles on a nesting platform on the way to the fort's entrance were the first birds we saw, and then a dozen of more Forester's Terns in non-breeding plumage perched on the bridge railing. While in the fort along the earthen battlement we observed a lone Great Egret in the marsh below. Eastern Bluebird flew into an ancient cedar tree and song sparrows grazed by the moat.
The park ranger noticed the bird on my baseball cap and the binoculars hanging from our necks and asked if we were birders. We affirmed her guess and she then told us of a owls, she didn't know which species, in a crater on the side of the fort's outer wall.
It was a game of Where's Waldo scanning the cannonball and shell pocked brick fort but we found the owls: a Great Horned adult and owlet on the ledge and tucked into a crater from a long ago siege.
The owlet was awake and even tilted its fluffy head up when a small plane flew directly above the fort.
We found a paved trail that wound through a wood of cabbage palm, cedar, holly and palmetto.
The tree tops were full of hundreds of Cedar waxwings enjoying the bounty of the holly and cedars. We've never seen so many in one place. Their high-pitched song was so insistent that it felt like we had tinnitus.
There was a beach but the wind was up so high that no shorebirds were present where we walked to, but brown pelican and bufflehead were out in the chop. This is one place we are planning to return another day and there are more trails to explore and certainly more birds to find!
