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!
New arrivals and old friends.
A stroll along River Road, just upstream, brought me an opportunity to see some of the local regulars as well as some unusual migrants – all at the mouth of Grant Brook. Although the winter’s ice has just begun to recede, the critters moved in quickly. We saw some green-headed Mallard ducks, but also a pair of Mallards with vibrant blue heads:
Meanwhile, a beaver zipped by, then dove.
See the full gallery for more photos of both.
A safari in the heart of India.
Ranthambore National Park [location], named for the 1,050-year-old Ranthambore fort within, is a sprawling 400-square-kilometer reserve for wildlife. It is most famous for its population of Royal Bengal Tigers, which currently number 36. We were lucky to see one up close, but there are many other beautiful animals and birds, including jungle cat, spotted deer, sambar deer, antelope, wild boar, langur (right), crocodile, turtle, egret, heron, stork, peafowl, treepie, kingfisher, parakeet, lapwing, and ducks. Not to mention many, many homo touristicus, crammed into 20-seat topless buses and wielding cameras. Read on – we saw a tiger! and See lots more photos.
David Kotz 