I've been watching birds a lot as I motor along. I am not a bird-watcher, and can identify very few birds. My friend Gene is a bird-watcher, and sometimes I email him a description (very infrequently a picture, as I'm too busy steering), with the email subject "What bird is this?". My descriptions aren't very descriptive, with adjectives like 'very small', 'not so small', 'a bit bigger'. But he very often replies with some good guesses and pictures of the possible options.

I find it very interesting to watch how they behave. Terns (I don't know what type of terns)have been very common . They swoop, and then hover. You can see them looking down in the water. Then they dive down, and almost immediately swoop back up - sometimes with a small fish in their beaks. Pelicans also dive for fish, but it is very different. They crash into the water, and then bob there for a minute. No idea if they've caught anything. I've also seen a lot of gulls that I believe are Bonaparte Gulls (Gene said that was one type of gull that matched my description). They seem to skim across the water, and then fly up.

Pelicans are everywhere. They follow crab fishermen as they tend their traps - gliding along a foot above the water, and then landing all around the crabber's boat, waiting patiently with that knowing look pelicans have. When the crabber is done with one pot, and races off to the next, they take off and glide along just behind the boat.

I've also seen: a Bald Eagle carrying a stick to her nest; ospreys in their nests, flying around, and in one case, one chasing another which had a large fish in its talon; a small bird neither a tern nor a gull that sits on crab trap floats or bobs in large groups in the water; and swallows flitting around chasing insects. A lot of cormorants, and something that looks like a cormorant, but with slightly grayer coloring and 'a bit larger'. Just to round out the fauna, I've seen one alligator on the side of a very shallow stretch of waterway, and a very large turtle - could be a loggerhead, that came up right next to the boat, saw me, and dived.

It's been a while since I've updated you on my route and progress. Since the last post, I've anchored in the Beaufort River, just off Beaufort SC (mile 537), South Edisto River (mile 509), Stono River (mile 472), and spent two nights at the Carolina Yacht Club. My son Andrew flew down for the weekend, and despite a drenching Saturday afternoon and evening, we had a great time - drinking craft ales, having lunch with my wife's uncle at the yacht club, taking a horse drawn carriage tour, eating a great dinner. He saw me off Sunday morning - helping me get Grace out of the slip, and then going to the airport. This weekend was a very welcome chance to visit and a change from the continual moving north.

But now I've picked up the pace. One night at Avendaw Creek in the middle of the salt march (mile 435), then a night anchored in Thoroughfare Creek (mile 388) in the middle of cypress trees. Now I am tied up at a free dock in North Myrtle Beach (mile 354). At this pace, I will be at Mile 0 of the ICW in about 11 days. I see very few other boats heading north - clearly a sign that I am returning too soon. The weather suggests that - mornings in the mid-40s, days in the 60s. Oh for the warm Bahama days!

I expect blog updates to become a bit less frequent - and possibly less interesting with fewer photos, as I focus on getting back to New England.