Here’s your guide to the best bird watching around Myrtle Beach, SC this fall

Fall is officially here and as temperatures drop the Grand Strand will welcome snowbirds from colder states — both humans and actual birds. While the Myrtle Beach area is home to a variety of birds year round, autumn is a great time for bird watching because some migratory species only pass through for a limited time.

“A lot of birds that have been breeding up north are going to be heading south … so it can be a good time for both shore birds going on the beach and also neotropical migrants, the little birds that are in the woods, warblers and vireos and things,” said Myrtle Beach State Park ranger Ann Wilson.

General tips

As birds make the long journey south, humans can aid their trip by eliminating unnecessary light pollution.

“It can confuse them, and also it interferes with eating fats and insects … if there’s outside lights that you don’t need to keep on, set them off, because actually that will help migrating birds,” Wilson said.

For those interested in taking up bird watching, it’s important not to flush large groups of resting shorebirds. The long trips south go thousands of miles and spooking the birds can deprive them of the rest they need to survive. Accommodating birds in your path and giving them a wide berth helps keep them safe.

“They need to rest, and if a human flushes them all into the air that could literally be the difference between life and death for some of these birds,” Carolina Bird Club board member and owner and guide at Epic Nature Tours Paul Laurent said.

To get a good look, binoculars are essential if you want to seriously take up birding. While they can be pricey, even more affordable options today are far better than older high-end options.

If you’re interested in trying out birding but don’t want to invest in binoculars just yet, try checking out a pair from the Huntington Beach State Park nature center. More species of birds have been observed at the park than anywhere else in the Carolinas, according to a ranger, so it’s an ideal place to get your start birding.

To find more rarer migrating birds, one trick Laurent recommends is checking with more common species.

“They don’t know where to go, what to do, this is a totally new area for them. They look for a local, which in our case tends to be Carolina chickadee, tufted titmouse, brown-headed nuthatch,” Laurent said. “These are birds that don’t migrate. They stay in one spot all year long, and they know all the good places.”

By observing these local birds, migrating birds can learn where to find food and how to avoid predators like larger birds. So, even if a Carolina chickadee isn’t what you’re hoping to find, following one’s call might lead you to a prize.

“You could walk for an hour and not see a single bird, and then come to one tree with 20 species in it, because you have that pair of Caroline chickadees who are there all the time, and all of these migratory birds that found them, because chickadees are noisy and kind of obnoxious little creatures,” said Laurent.

Whether you’re an experienced birder or just getting started, the Grand Strand offers plenty of top-notch bird watching opportunities. Here are some places experts recommend:

Myrtle Beach State Park

Home to more than 300 acres of maritime forest, Myrtle Beach State Park hosts lots of small migrating birds like warblers in the fall. Visitors can watch for birds in the trees, on the shore and even off the fishing pier.

Every Friday at 3 pm through the end of October, Myrtle Beach State Park will host information sessions about identifying backyard birds. Wilson says the program is suited for absolute beginners.

“If you own a pair of binoculars and you’ve been birding for years, the program won’t be for you,” Wilson said. “You’ve already passed that.”

Huntington Beach State Park

The larger state park features more varied habitats than Myrtle Beach State Park, making it an excellent spot for bird watching, according to Wilson. The park hosts a birding program along the causeway where visitors can observe wading species like herons, egrets, ibis, wood storks and spoonbills with experienced birder Richard Acosta every Wednesday morning at 10 am.

Besides the guided programs, the park’s nature center is a great place to get started bird watching, with a feeding station and an official bird checklist featuring more than 300 species that have been spotted in the park.

The secret to a successful birding trip in Huntington Beach State Park is to visit the jetty at high tide, according to Laurent. During low tide, many different bird species scatter throughout the mudflats to find a meal. When the tide comes in, the birds congregate on a sandbar near the jetty.

“So if you walk out to the beach, and the jetty’s to your right, if you turn left and walk away from the ocean, there’s a big sandbar at the end that you can get hundreds upon hundreds of shorebirds collected, waiting for the tide to fall so they can go hunt again,” Laurent said.

Brookgreen Gardens

Outside of state parks, both Wilson and Laurent recommend checking out the birds at Brookgreen Gardens.

“There’s the gardens themselves, which are wonderful, but even just the woods around it, the whole thing is basically a forest habitat,” Laurent said. Birders visiting Brookgreen Gardens or nearby forest areas have a good chance of spotting warblers.

In addition to self-guided bird watching, Brookgreen Gardens is hosting several Breakfast with the Birds informative walks with Acosta, the expert who leads the causeway birding programs at Huntington Beach State Park. The walks are free to members and accessible with a garden admission ticket for non-members.

Cherry Grove Inlet

Another Grand Strand bird-watching favorite for spying shore birds is the inlet at Cherry Grove, Wilson said. The inlet offers plenty of more conventional diet options for many birds, like fish, shellfish and worms.

During the fall, birders checking out shorebirds should keep an eye out for sandpipers, plovers, dunlins, dowitchers and more.

Horry County Landfill

Perhaps unexpectedly, the landfill is an outstanding spot to eye birds in the Grand Strand, Laurent said. Scraps humans throw out create a limitless buffet for birds not offended by the sight–or the small.

“Last time I did a tour there, I stopped counting bald eagles when I hit 80, and there were more,” Laurent said. “And just huge numbers, I mean tens of thousands of seagulls … I did get some really weird, rare birds for this area, popping up at local landfills.”

Conway Wastewater Treatment Plant

Another unconventional recommendation, Laurent says birds like the water treatment plant for the same reason they like the landfill: waste.

“It’s a little early in the fall. It also smells worse when it’s still warm, but in the winter, an incredible number of ducks flock to wastewater plants because they are, to be brutally honest, high in nutrients,” Laurent said.

If you want to give bird watching in the Grand Strand a go this fall, Wilson says you might spy migratory species like the :

• American redstart

• Red-eyed vireo

• Red knots

• Ruby-crowned kinglets

• Veery

• Common loon

• Common eider

Along the coast, Laurent says right now birders can spot shorebirds like the:

• Dunlin

• Semipalmated plover

• Black-bellied plover

• Piping plover

• Least sandpiper

• Western sandpiper

• Semipalmated sandpiper

• Spotted sandpiper

• Willet

• Short-billed dowitcher

• Whimbrel

• Lesser yellowlegs

• Greater yellowlegs

• American oystercatcher

• Rudy turnstone

• Sanderling

In giant flocks of shorebirds you might also catch the:

• Royal tern

• Caspian tern

• Forster’s tern

• Common tern

• Laughing gull

• Bonaparte’s gull

• Herring gull

• Great black-backed gull

• Lesser black-backed gull

In the marsh you might spot:

• Nelson’s sparrow

• Saltmarsh sparrow

• Savannah sparrow

• Seaside sparrow

In a forest habitat like Brookgreen Gardens, you might find mixed flocks with:

• Carolina chickadees

• Tufted titmouse

• White-breasted nuthatch

• Brown-headed nuthatch

• Yellow-rumped warbler

• Pine warbler

• Nashville warbler

• Black-and-white warbler

• Tennessee warbler

• Cape May warbler

• Magnolia warbler

• Bay-breasted warbler

• Blackburnian warbler

• Yellow warbler

• Chestnut-sided warbler

• Black-throated Blue warbler

• Palm warbler

• Common yellowthroat

• Northern parula