Birds are an essential part of our beach experience, including here on Hilton Head Island. Even if you don’t consider yourself a “birder,” you’ve seen and probably appreciated our shorebirds and the many other animals and wildlife that bring our shores to life. Without our birds, our beaches wouldn’t be the same.
Shorebirds, however, are in decline. One big reason here in Hilton Head and in many other popular beach destinations is us. Our habits on the beach affect them and, in many cases, unwittingly cause them harm. But we can change that with your help.
Hilton Head Audubon is working to let people know about a few simple things we can do to ensure our shorebirds stay safe and potentially rebound in numbers. We can change their fate right now and happily co-exist. With very little cost to us, we can lend a hand to these incredible creatures on the beach and help them get the life-altering food and space they need to survive.
Below, you can read more about the ‘why’ the beach is so important for shorebirds and the ‘how’ to help them. Hopefully, knowing why these small adjustments on our part are important will make them easier to do, and at the same time help us all — the birds and us — feel good.
Sections:
Why Our Beach Birds Need Beaches
When Birds Flee in Fright: Some Science
Sharing the Shore: A Matter of Life or Death for Shorebirds
Why Our Beach Birds Need Beaches (Hint: It’s not for fun in the sun!)
The beach is shorebirds’ source of food and place to rest and restore energy.
In human terms, it’s both their grocery store and living room. But for shorebirds, it’s truly their life-source. Without disturbance-free zones, the beach can be a dangerous place that threatens their survival.
Food Source:
Our Lowcountry coasts are filled with rich sources of food. Abundant insects, worms and crustaceans feed the small plovers and sanderlings running along the waves’ edge while our egrets, herons, and skimmers wade and fly a little deeper for small fish, amphibians, and insects, and gulls, terns, pelicans, and oystercatchers venture further out for their fish.
This beachside grocery store, however, isn’t like ours. It’s hard work to hunt and catch food. It takes a lot more energy than it takes us to drive to the store and simply pick out what we desire on the shelf.
Rest:
Birds must use their energy wisely and retain it for their main goals of survival: reproduction, raising chicks, flight, and hunting, the key parts of their life cycle. Resting birds on the beach are saving fuel by staying where they are until the next feeding cycle.
Getting enough food and rest on our beaches is truly life-or-death and vitally necessary for the survival of our shorebirds.
What Can We Do to Help?
Give Shorebirds Lots of Space
Here are easy things to do and remember at the beach:
- Keep your distance from birds, whether on a bike, walking or running
- Leash your dog on any important shorebird beach areas and around shorebirds
- Always pick up your trash
- Keep an eye out for the birds — they can be hard to see
- Keep noise and disturbances to a minimum
On the beach, birds are disturbed easily by loud noises, people coming too close, and — most detrimentally — when they are chased. Sometimes, we unwittingly cause them to fly away when we don’t even realize they’re there. To support their survival, always be mindful of our shorebirds. Know that they are there on the beach with us, all around us, and need to be there.
Keep Dogs Leashed
At Hilton Head Audubon, we’re beach lovers and dog lovers ourselves. And we know that people love to run their dogs on our wide open beaches. When flocks of birds are resting or feeding, however, off-leash dogs tend to chase those birds, harming their very survival.
The myth: Dogs are ‘just having fun’ by running into a group of resting birds. It’s harmless.
For birds, ‘fun’ couldn’t be further from the truth when they’re being chased. It is terrifying to the birds. For tiny shorebirds, often weighing just a few ounces, a dog racing toward them is scary. And fleeing from this danger wastes much of their valuable energy reserves.
So, while chasing birds might seem ‘fun’ for the dogs, it also causes a great deal of harm to our shorebirds. To birds, these and other chasers are predators who are pursuing them and threatening their very existence.
To help, please consider this: There are plenty of spaces on our beaches for dogs to run and get their exercise without chasing and disturbing the shorebirds.
The best rule of thumb is to keep our distance.
How far?
If birds fly away, you’ve come to close!
- Please keep dogs leashed on the beach – especially in important bird areas like Fish Haul Beach on Hilton Head Island, and on any beach where shorebirds are gathered to rest and feed.
- Keep a safe distance from shorebirds in general, be it with children running, adults jogging or anyone riding bikes. Stay clear of shorebirds, especially large flocks.
- If we keep our dogs leashed and our distance from our shorebirds, we’ll increase their chances of survival enough to make a difference.
South Carolina Audubon promotes this easy-to-remember rule:
Keep Shorebirds Safe
Give Them 100 Feet of Space!
When Birds Flee in Fright: Some Science
When we cause shorebirds to fly away, they are giving up more than their food, rest, and energy. It actually shortens their life.
The stress-filled consequences of causing birds to flee from us, our noises, or our dogs are devasting. When our human or canine activities disturb them, the birds panic and fly away, literally in a ‘flight or fright’ state. Researchers have found that when birds must flee in panic, their body chemistry is altered. When this happens repeatedly, this alteration further endangers their very survival.
Research has shown that repeated and chronic fleeing causes harm to their longevity:
“Birds exposed to high levels of chronic disturbances have more oxidative stress which damages their body condition and shortens their life.” – Melissa Chaplin, Fish and Wildlife Service, Biologist, South Carolina Office
Scaring birds on the beach has potentially life-threatening consequences on other levels, too. Another stressed-caused flight can end in nesting shorebirds abandoning their nests, leaving their chicks to bake in the sun.
Migratory birds are also in precarious conditions when they stop here. Their bodies are depleted of energy after having flown hundreds or even thousands of miles on their routes. Many migrating birds stop here on our Hilton Head beaches to rest and refuel on their journeys between the northern states or Canada, and Central or South America. For other birds, Hilton Head is their destination. They spend the season here until they migrate back. All migratory birds need undisturbed rest and food to restore their bodies.
Sharing the Shore: Sharing Our Beaches is a Must to Save Our Shorebirds
Bird populations are down and human disturbance is one of the most significant factors causing this decline in South Carolina —especially on Hilton Head Island. According to Melissa Chaplin, biologist for the South Carolina Office of the Fish and Wildlife Service, Hilton Head Island beaches are among the most disturbed shorebird areas in South Carolina.
Losing our leash laws in 2022 — despite the good work of Beaufort County to require leashed-dogs at all times, on all beaches throughout the county —impacted our birds detrimentally. Hilton Head Audubon is working to institute a compromise that will satisfy all of us, dog-lovers, bike-riders, joggers, and bird-lovers alike. We are working with models successfully implemented elsewhere, such as on Seabrook Island, that allow dogs to run off-leash in most beach areas but are leashed at important bird areas like Fish Haul Beach, Hilton Head’s most important migratory beach area. You can get involved in our efforts by reaching out to us at conservation@hiltonheadaudubon.org .
Conclusion
Please help us spread the word on why giving our shorebirds space, free from disturbance, is so important. At Hilton Head Audubon, we are pro-dog and pro-beach. And we are pro-birds. We can all co-exist together with minimal impact on our birds and very little change from us. With small adjustments like giving our shorebirds lots of space and leashing our dogs in certain areas, we can help our shorebirds rebound in numbers and health — and still enjoy our love of being at the beach.