Video Tour of Fish Haul Creek Park and the Port Royal Flats on Hilton Head Island
The northeast end of Hilton Head Island where the Port Royal Sound empties into the Atlantic Ocean is a “hot spot” for shorebirds to gather, especially during spring and fall migration. The Town of Hilton Head Island has preserved a large area of land along Port Royal Sound as part of Fish Haul Creek Park, which includes a tidal creek, marshlands, maritime forests, and a stretch of sandy shoreline.
This video provides views of the area from the shoreline, looking first up into Fish Haul Creek and its marshland area, then going around the shoreline and the “Port Royal Flats” area where hundreds of gulls, terns, skimmers, sandpipers, pelicans, herons, and egrets gather to feed, rest, and “hang out” on the sandbars.
NOTE: It was a windy day when I shot the video using a hand-held camera, which caused a good bit of background noise and made it hard to hold the camera steady at times. But you can still identify a lot of the birds shown in the video, including Black Skimmers, Laughing Gulls, Ring-billed Gulls, Royal Terns, Brown Pelicans, Double-crested Cormorants, and other shorebirds.
Tags: birding, fish haul creek, gulls, hilton head, lowcountry, pelicans, port royal, skimmers, terns