Wildlife and Fourth of July holiday in South Carolina.
We spent a few days in Charleston SC around the Fourth of July holiday. It allowed me to enjoy time with family, swimming and boating on the Ashley River, dining in some excellent restaurants, and photographing wildlife.
I was back in South Carolina for the Christmas holiday and had a chance to explore some of the wildlife around Kiawah Island and Magnolia Plantation, both near Charleston. The gallery shows some of my favorite photos from that week… deer, ducks, alligators, herons, and seagulls. I especially enjoyed watching a pair of blue herons going about the construction of their nest. They seemed to be taking their time, slowly building it one tiny stick at a time.
A long weekend in lowcountry South Carolina.
Every other year, our extended family gathers on a rural farm in lowcountry South Carolina outside Charleston, to celebrate Thanksgiving with family, feast, and friendly competition. My wife’s family prepares the turkey (130 pounds!) and the outdoor setting, and a hundred extended relatives bring potluck favorites … stuffing, corn pudding, collard greens, green beans, sweet potatoes, fish stew, cole slaw, and more. And the dessert table (shown)… pies and cookies and cakes galore. This year, 95 members of the family re-connect, and meet new relatives. Many huddled around the six-foot-wide diagram of the family tree to discover their relationship or to scribble in the names of new arrivals.
This year we were blessed with wonderful weather – sunshine and mild temperatures. As people finished their lunches and chatted in lawnchairs, another group set up for the skeet-shooting competition. This year, about 20 people competed, young and old, using a shotgun to shatter the clay disks as they flew away from them. It’s even harder than it looks! The old-timers taught the new-comers, some who had never shot skeet before, or perhaps had never shot a gun before. After several rounds of increasingly stiff competition, the best received the treasured felt hats – each scribbled with the winners’ names and dates going back almost five decades.
Over the course of the weekend my father and I had a chance to explore Kiawah Island and Magnolia Plantation Gardens, also outside Charleston, to photograph the wildlife and scenery. Explore the photo gallery!
A day in the wildlife refuges of coastal South Carolina.
During my visit to Charleston, my father and I spent several hours exploring the wetlands of Bear Island WMA and Donnelly WMA – two beautiful wildlife management areas in the “Ace Basin” south of Charleston. I snapped nearly a thousand photos, and present the best two dozen in the gallery. Below, a blue heron settles in near an island, where an anhinga dries its wings; these two had an altercation earlier… read on for the drama!
David Kotz 