Roseate Spoonbill in South Carolina (1 Viewer)

I took an overnight trip to Tybee Island adjacent to Savannah, Georgia, and then spent the following morning at the Savannah Wildlife Refuge.

First bird I saw inside the refuge was an immature Roseate Spoonbill. I thought maybe I was hallucinating because according to the bird guides, they live no farther north than south Florida. But I did search online and other people have been seeing them in South Carolina and Georgia, and they've even photographed them and put the photos up online.

Here's the list of birds I saw on my trip.

Tybee Island:
Laughing gulls, herring gulls, a least tern, brown pelicans, boat-tailed grackles, dusky seaside sparrows, morning doves, a cardinal, city pigeons, starlings.

Savannah River Wildlife Refuge:
Roseate spoonbill, great egret, cattle egrets, an unidentified duck, a green heron, a Louisiana heron, purple gallinules, cormorants, eastern kingbirds, unidentified swallows, red-winged blackbirds, an unidentified rail, turkey vultures, and mourning doves.

On the road trip back and forth from Augusta to Savannah:
crows, black vultures, a red headed woodpecker, an eastern phoebe, eastern kingbirds, mockingbirds, and mourning doves.

We also saw 2 alligators at the wildlife refuge. This wasn't a particularly good time of year to visit the refuge. The best time is during the winter when over 20 species of wintering ducks arrive there.

I saw 3 species on this trip for the first time in my life--the roseate spoonbill, purple gallinules, and dusky seaside sparrows. The sparrows were feeding on sea oats in a sand dune behind a beach.

Mark the Roseate Spoonbills are breeding at least as far North as St. Augustine, Florida. They are common here now after decades when they were rare. Savannah is only 180 miles North of here, with similar habitat, so hopefully you Georgia folks will see even more.