Boolie’s Blog

It’s taken me a year to edit this alligator picture, taken last summer in Huntington Beach State Park in South Carolina, and it’s also time to bid both the park and the alligators a long distance goodbye.

I used to visit Huntington Beach when in South Carolina to see my mom, drawn to the park by the chance to see alligators. Now that she has moved to Texas, I won’t be visiting the park anymore — it’s not exactly an easy drive from Oregon— but if you’re in the area, I highly recommend it. Arrive when the gates open if possible, my favorite moments (and favorite pictures) nearly always occurred in the first hours of the day.

I used a telephoto lens for this picture close to the shoreline of the marsh at Huntington Beach State Park, which is a good thing, as an alligator can move very quickly over short distances.

I’ve never seen the alligators be aggressive towards humans there, but it only takes once …

The stork might seem a strange choice to deliver babies in American folklore, as America’s only stork is the wood stork and it is not only carnivorous but also not exactly our most beautiful bird.

However, the tradition started not in America but in Europe, where the white stork often nested on farmhouses in spring when new life was emerging. The white stork has a feathered head and lacks the prehistoric look of our storks.

This adult was part of a group that was feeding in a freshwater marsh just before sunrise at Huntington Beach State Park in South Carolina. Younger birds have feathers on their necks and back of the head but are still unmistakably storks.

Another alligator picture from Huntington Beach. The causeway that separates the freshwater and saltwater marshes provides an excellent opportunity for close (yet safe) viewing of the alligators that primarily hang out on the freshwater side.

You do have to watch your back a bit though, as one time a gator crossed over from the saltwater to the freshwater by walking across the road not too far from me. I’ve never seen the gators be aggressive there, either to people or each other or the birds of the park.

The crabs they eat for breakfast might not think them so passive of course.

It wasn’t just little lizards that made me want to get an SLR after spending the summer of 2004 in Florida. Nearby Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge introduced me to alligators, but like the green anole, after leaving Florida at the end of the summer it would be another decade before I’d see them again.

I photographed this mostly submerged alligator in the still waters at sunrise in a freshwater marsh at South Carolina’s Huntington Beach State Park.