South Carolina Bird Watching at Myrtle Beach State Park

I wrote on April 6th about the birdhouses around the Myrtle Beach State Park and the nest I discovered.   If you haven't seen it yet you can check it out here.  Today I went back to check out the progress of the egg hatching and to see if there were any more nest.  Here's what I discovered today. 

You know how you see the bird nests up in the trees and wish you could peek inside,

  at Myrtle Beach State Park they have these birdhouses all around the nature center and you can to peek inside.

See, they have a door on the front with a little latch to open and the part with the bird hole opening drops down.  Also, on some you lift the top and peek in.

So let's see what surprises were in store for us today....These are all Carolina Chickadee nest and baby birds.  According to Wikipedia....The Carolina Chickadee, Poecile carolinensis, is a small songbird, a passerine bird in the tit family Paridae.

 Here is the nest I showed you on the sixth of this month and already the babies have been hatched.  Looks like she has two more eggs to go.  Have you ever seen anything newborn so tiny?

Mother Nature sure is amazing.

We walked around and explored a few more bird houses.  Some were empty, but some held some more surprises.

The above nest was taken by lifting the lid being.  I couldn't see in very well, so I just took two photos and hoped for the best.  Not too bad.

I like this view without being enlarged better.  It's not so burred.

Further along we found this one with just the eggs.  Maybe next week there will be more baby birds.

Another nest with just eggs, viewed with the top lifted.  I prefer the bird houses with the drop down door myself, but there are more of this type and they are attached to taller poles, making it hard to see in or get a photo.  They do tilt to the side but we try to be careful so I don't dump the eggs.  Here DH is tilting while I try to take a photo of something I can't actually see.

Now this next one is really pretty interesting.  The bird brought a lot of her own nesting materials and added on.  When we lifted the lid it was full to the top.  I really didn't think I'd get a good photo of this one.  I was surprised when I uploaded the photos.

Finally one with the mother bird sitting on the eggs.  Usually when you walk up to the bird feeder the mother bird will fly out the hole, scaring you half to death.  This one must have been used to having unexpected/uninvited company.

It's kind of hard to see, this bird house was in the shade, but she just sat there, all spread out over her eggs looking at us.

So we hit all the feeders and then moved on to see if we could find any other birds.  I was feeling lucky since it was a beautiful sunny day in the 70's. 

Now I don't think this is a cardinal, I originally did but then when I looked at it's beak and face and the long tail, I changed my mind.  I'm thinking maybe a Tanager.  Any experts out there?  This red bird doesn't have the crown sticking up on his head either, so I'm pretty sure it's a Tanager.  What do you think?

This photo isn't good enlarged.  This is at a feeder outside of the nature center.

He flew off so we walked around some more and lucked out by finding this beautiful blue jay. 

I'm glad I took more than one photo.  He flew off pretty quickly too.

So that's it for my bird watching at the state park today.  I hope you enjoyed the tour.