Hoping those here in the States had a happy and safe 4th of July celebration! Our Intrigued HQ is just down the road from an individual that puts on a rather impressive annual show for us ruralites. Had some of our staff over (including Brad and Jan), filled the coolers with drinks, threw some meat on the grill and capped the night with things that light up the sky and make you go Oooohhhh and Ahhhhh – life is good. I did manage to come out with a losing record in our highly competitive JARTS tournament (the real ones, not those pansy ones they try to pawn off on kids these days). That will have to be remedied during our next Intrigued outing!!! As promised in my previous post, Brad has posting duties while I taper/rest/heal/plan/worry/obsess/fret and generally drive Linda crazy this week leading up to the first ultra of the year. One of those planning tasks is to set the crew schedule. In this case, only a cast of one (well, and 3 furry assistants), but I can tell you without hesitation, Linda is the secret sauce to success. While I go through the details with her, we’ll have Brad bring us an adventure with a much larger crew!
Take it away Brad…
After a very long and productive day of birding at Harris Neck NWR in Georgia, Jan and I decided we needed just a little bit more birding in our full day. Our memory cards weren’t quite full, and what’s the use of having large memory cards if you don’t fill them? Plus, we had plenty of battery life left on our cameras.
We decided to visit the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge, which sits on the South Carolina state line shared with Georgia. While on a bird walk on Hilton Head at the Audubon Newhall Preserve, we heard people talking about the “millions” of ducks at Savannah. Others on the walk said there can’t be more than 10-20 birds there, there has never been a “million” in one location. A million ducks would be interesting. That sounded like a challenge for us.
Savannah NWR, at least the part we visited, is a drive-through nature preserve. The gravel drive is mostly a causeway type of thoroughfare, raised a few feet above the tidal water on either side. We had just entered the preserve and rounded the first corner when we saw a large grey pickup parked along the side of the road. That usually means there’s something worth photographing nearby. I pulled within a respectable distance of the truck and parked the car. Jan and I already had our cameras assembled and ready to go from earlier in the day. We saw the owner of the truck on the other side of the road on a smaller walking path. He was looking into the distance.
As we approached the driver was shaking his head and muttering something about, “every time I move, they move.” He had just driven non-stop from Virginia and was a bit worn out chasing ducks back and forth across this little pond.
What’s that sound, everybody look what’s going down on the other side of the jump!
Continue reading A Cast of Thousands…by Brad Marks
Life Intrigued 