I just got back from a fantastic week of birding in the upper coastal plain, piedmont, and mountain regions of South Carolina.  Ever since I started writing the guide back in October 2006, I have been planning this trip.  It was definitely an ambitious route with 3-4 locations per day and I spent an average of 12 hours each day birding.  But all the hard work paid off in the end, since I managed to see 138 species total on the trip and that was without ever setting foot on the coast!  I could have easily topped 160 species if I would have added a day on the coast and looked for egrets, herons, shorebirds, and terns.  Songbird migration, especially in the upper piedmont and mountains was fantastic.  It seemed like at nearly every stop on my route, I was able to pick up a new species of warbler for the trip.  By the end of the trip I had seen 29 species of warblers, including some real beauties like Nashville, Chestnut-sided, Bay-breasted, Magnolia, Blackburnian, Cape May, Canada, and Yellow Warblers.  Black-throated Blue Warblers, American Redstarts, and Ovenbirds seemed to be the most common migrating warblers.  I also managed to do pretty well with thrushes, since I picked up a couple late Hermit Thrushes in the coastal plain and Gray-cheeked Thrush in Congaree National Park.  Veery seemed to be much more common early in the week, but by the end of the week I was seeing mainly Swainson’s Thrush.  I’ve listed the complete list of locations and interesting bird sightings below, just in case you are interested.  There wasn’t a stop on this trip that I didn’t enjoy and I highly recommend this route for a spring trip, although you may want to visit Huntington Beach SP, Santee Coastal Reserve, Charleston Harbor, Edisto Island, Bear Island/Donnelly WMAs, or Hilton Head Island in order to pick up some of the species that I missed.

Dean Thomas chickened-out.

As we drove down the last beach in Texas, his nearly non-stop stream of one-liners and bon mots slowed to a trickle, then stopped.

I glanced in the rearview mirror to find him casting a pensive eye over the surf. It was rolling.

The forecasted 2-3 foot seas had turned into honest 3-5s, with an occasional higher wave breaking on the third bar.

“I’ve got to be honest with you,” Dean says. “I’m not comfortable with this, without wet suits. Those rollers out there beyond the break mean we will be in the water.”

hat was hard to hear. Because it reinforced my own growing trepidation, and because I had invested months of planning in the notion that – today – I would start paddling at the mouth of the Rio Grande. Not to mention I’d just shelled-out $40 for a driver to take the truck back to South Padre Island.

Dean, a kayak fishing guide in Aransas Pass, paddles about 300 days a year. He’s also not uncourageous. It pays to listen to him. I did. We decided to wait to see what the weather would do Saturday.

In the interim, well, we could always go fishing. After dropping our driver back at our home away from home -- the Brown Pelican Inn on South Padre Island – Ken Larson of Rockport, Dean and I headed back across the causeway and through Port Isabel to State Highway 48 and our top-secret kayak launch on the Brownsville Ship Channel.

By 2:30 we were on the water, and 30 minutes later a feisty 14-inch snook attacked my lure. Half an hour after that, I had a 35-inch fish on the end of my line.

The stiff east wind that had whipped the surf into unexpected vigor also funneled down the ship channel, but as long as it was at our backs and we were catching fish and waves weren’t breaking over our boats … well, who cared?

The Brownsville Ship Channel has always, for me, been a remarkable study in contrasts. Deep-water haven for tropical fish species; salvage yard and repair shop; trans-shipment point for oil, asphalt, grain and other commodities … its banks are lined with the rusting hulks of ships awaiting the breakers’ torches.

On a moonlit night, with a breeze that has faded to just a whisper, one can easily imagine the lives that have played-out on the decks and among the cabins and spaces of the once-proud ships that have arrived at their final destination.

During the day here, ospreys “kee” as they soar and plunge on unwary fish, and as the sun sets over the upper end of the channel coyotes can be heard singing off to the south, in the narrow strip of land between the river and this 20-some-odd-long mile incursion of the Gulf of Mexico.

It is a strange and special place that in many ways reflects the hard practicality with which Texans have almost always approached and used our land and water. It also demonstrates, as do so many of our scarred landscapes, the amazing resilience of the creatures that make their livings here too.

Sunday morning, as I write this, I am graced with a very different view of deep South Texas. Sitting on the verandah of the inn, I look out over the flat – and in this light, blue – expanse of the Laguna Madre and watch a pair of white pelicans straining breakfast from the water.

Black mangroves in the inn’s resident wetland hide the horizon to the north – the route we’ll take tomorrow.

Today, I think we’re going to take advantage of our weather window and make-up some of the leg we lost yesterday; I have to, at least, paddle through the mouth of Brazos Santiago pass.

We’ll make our way back up the inside of Padre Island and back to the inn this morning. If the predicted front is slow enough in coming, or quiet enough in its arrival, maybe we’ll even head back up the ship channel this afternoon for another shot at some Texas linesiders.

Dean hooked two yesterday – solid fish in the 24-28-inch slot – and got the thrill of seeing them jump and shake their heads, but not the joy of actually putting his hands on one.

My friends are always asking me, "What is the coolest thing that you have seen so far while working on the guide?"  Would it be the hooded mergansers feeding on blue crabs in Charleston Harbor, the lone sandhill crane at the Dobbins Cattle Farm near Townville, the groups of tundra swans flying overhead in the early morning light at Bear Island Wildlife Management Area, or the over-wintering yellow-breasted chat feeding with a group of common yellowthroats at Santee Coastal Reserve?  After birding in a different section of South Carolina nearly every weekend since early November 2006, it is definitely hard to pick a favorite moment, but one experience does come to mind.