Leave This Wondrous Island to the Birds.
ABOUT 20 MILES south of Charleston, S.C., at the mouth of the North Edisto River, a small, horseshoe-shaped sandbar rises above the water. The claim of land is tenuous on Deveaux Bank, about a half-mile offshore. At high tide, it’s three-quarters submerged. Deveaux’s sand is continually shifting as swirling currents build it up and wash it away. In some years, the island disappears altogether.
This ephemeral spit of sand, about 250 acres, is a gathering place for tens of thousands of birds. It has been home to the largest population of brown pelicans on the East Coast and to large populations of terns. There are skimmers, gulls, oystercatchers, red knots and more. Of the 57 coastal water bird species that South Carolina has identified as of “greatest conservation need,” virtually all are found on Deveaux.
Not least among them is the Hudsonian whimbrel, a large, brown-speckled sandpiper whose curved bill looks like the crescent of a barely new moon. The island is a critical way station for whimbrels on their long back-and-forth migration between South America and northern Canada.
Until a few years ago, no one knew where, exactly, most of these birds roosted at night as they fattened up for the final leg of their journey. Then, as dawn broke one day in 2014, Felicia Sanders, a biologist for the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, watched astounded as flock after flock of whimbrels flew from the island out over the water. She couldn’t quite believe her eyes: She usually found whimbrels during the day, out in the marshes feeding on fiddler crabs, but at most she would spot a couple of small, scattered flocks. That morning, staggering numbers were leaving the island, which, as it turned out, was the largest nocturnal roosting place for these birds in the Western Hemisphere.
“This,” says John Fitzpatrick, the longtime executive director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, “was one of the most mind-blowing discoveries in the history of 20th- and 21st-century ornithology.” . . .
Whimbrels were also plentiful in South Carolina. A soldier stationed on Charleston Harbor’s Morris Island during the Civil War described what he estimated as millions on a sandbar in front of his camp. Ornithologists reported “hundreds of thousands” migrating along the coast, and flocks of “forty thousand” were seen flying over Cape Romain.
But that was then. The number of whimbrels migrating along the Atlantic flyway has dropped precipitously; a recent analysis by Environment and Climate Change Canada, the national environmental agency, found a 74 percent decline in their numbers since 1980. This is part of a larger drop-off in shorebird populations worldwide that has been described by experts as a “catastrophe.” . . .
What can be done? Close Deveaux, and the sand bar emerging nearby, year round out to the low-tide line, to everyone — recreational boaters, beachgoers, sports and commercial fishermen — and prohibit flyovers by helicopters and drones.
Deveaux deserves international recognition as a place of conservation importance. It more than meets the criteria as a Site of Hemispheric Importance, the highest designation given by the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network. To Ms. Sanders, Deveaux offers what she said is a “glimpse into the abundance and wildness that was once widespread across the landscape.” By documenting the importance of Deveaux to whimbrels and other shorebirds, she added, she hopes it will “inspire protection of the island so future generations can also witness thousands of whimbrel setting off at first light.”'
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/06/19/opinion/carolina-coast-whimbrel-deveaux.html?
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