Summer Birding Specials

Most of the songbird nesting activity is complete by mid-July, and the returning migrant song and shorebirds won't be getting back to coastal Georgia until August.
There are, however, a few midsummer bird spectacles that are worth the price of admission.
Past its peak but still entertaining is the spectacle of wading bird nesting. By mid-July, the high-density heron, egret, wood stork and ibis rookeries at Harris Neck and Pinckney National Wildlife Refuges, Jekyll Island, Skidaway Island and the ponds near the Savannah airport are teenage hangouts rather than bird nurseries. The young birds will be busy begging for fish before taking off to find their own food. If you're lucky, you may even catch a glimpse of a young roseate spoonbill straying north from its Florida nesting grounds.
The impoundments at the Savannah Refuge become the staging ground for another impressive summer spectacle. When the migratory swallow-tailed and Mississippi kites are finished nesting, they gather in large feeding flocks.
For dozens and sometimes hundreds of swallow-tailed and Mississippi kites, heat is a good thing. Rising temperatures create updrafts of air called thermals. For hawks, vultures, wood storks and even anhingas, catching a thermal is like taking the elevator to the 14th floor. You can go a long way up without expending much energy. Once aloft, the kites get down to the serious business of devouring flying insects.
An early morning or late evening trip to the beach offers a different kind of summer bird spectacle. In late July and August, large numbers of gulls, terns and black skimmers congregate at the northern or southern ends of the barrier islands. They hang out on the sand in noisy groups, facing into the wind to keep their feathers tidy. It is easy to pick out this year's adolescents. Young gulls are a dirty brown, while young terns and skimmers have more speckling in their feathers. A speckled bird begging piteously in front of a crisp gray and white adult is easily identified as a hungry teen.
For an all-out summer birding extravaganza, consider a road trip to Lake Murray, S.C., west of Columbia, home to the nation's first officially designated purple martin sanctuary. From late June to early August, 500,000 or more martins congregate on a small island in the middle of the lake.
So many birds roost there that they can be tracked using National Weather Service Radar.