The Wave

Weather, hot weather, is leading the news this summer (June was Earth's hottest month ever recorded, according to the NOAA), and although for us it's undoubtedly a Lowcountry summer out there, we're fortunate in having a nearly constant sea breeze to moderate temperatures somewhat during this typically warmest month of the island year. And it's been considerably hotter in past years on the island - near one hundred degrees back in 2015, for example. The highest temperature recorded to date in greater Charleston was 105 degrees on August 1st of 1999, the hottest the city's ever been since records started being kept in 1893. A close second was in June of 2021, at 102 degrees recorded at the airport.

Heat waves can be stubborn. Formed when a high pressure system forces warm air closer to the ground, that same system pushes other, potentially cooler systems aside until too much static charge builds between the systems and thunderstorms develop. And if that trapped warmer air continues to heat up for too long, the dreaded "heat dome" forms that can last for weeks at a time. So far, though, we're experiencing mostly average temperatures for the island thanks to coastal winds.

Acclimating to southern heat spells can be challenging, sometimes taking more than week of exposure to adjust. We all know, too, to keep outdoor activity to morning and early evening hours (just like our wildlife does) to avoid the signs of pending hypothermia - profuse sweating , nausea and red, sensitive skin. And, of course, stay hydrated, even ifyou don't feel thirsty while you're outdoors, especially if you're jogging or otherwise engaging in physical activity. Make it a cool summer!

Give A Hoot

A SINHG member shared with us this wonderful photograph of a Barred Owl (Strix varia) seen perched in a backyard palm tree on the island during a recent spring afternoon, an unusual time for these normally nocturnal birds to appear. It remained there calmly observing its surroundings for several minutes, then silently swooped away, perhaps to hunt for mice, voles or insects to feed to a nearby nest of hatchlings.

Barred Owl in flight (courtesy National Audubon Society)

We may tend to think of our island in terms of the abundant shore and pelagic birds with which we're seasonally blessed, but owls are permanent residents of our swamps and maritime forest habitats. We share the neighborhood with three other species in addition to the Barred Owl - Barn Owls, Eastern Screech Owls and Great Horned Owls. During the winter, we may also be visited by migrating Northern Saw-whets, Short-Eared and Long-Eared Owls. They're all a rare sighting for birders, not only because of being active mostly at night but because of their preferred roosting spots high in the tree canopy, often concealed in holes or nests abandoned by other animals or in the cratered snags of dead trees or, in the case of Barn Owls, in derelict structures.

Eastern Screech Owl (courtesy BirdFeederHub)

Camouflage, too, keeps them hidden from all but the most determined eyes, particularly the diminutive Eastern Screech Owl with a mottled plumage that blends perfectly with the bark of trees. Their vocalizations, like the Barred Owl's that sounds to human ears like "who cooks for you?", are often the only clues to their presence.

Once thought to be mostly solitary hunters, researchers have only recently become aware of how social these birds can be, forming longterm mating pairs that share hunting and feeding duties for chicks and communicating with one another through a complex language of hoots, grunts, chittering and cooing.

A coin with Athena and her owl

Owls have long been a part of Gullah/Geechee folklore, associated on the one hand with sickness and death as denizens of the night and on the other as a symbol of freedom for the enslaved, who believed that owls, with their powerful and silent flight, would carry the souls of the deceased back to African homelands. Ancient Egyptians, too, connected owls with the underworld, while Greeks associated them with Athena, the goddess of wisdom. In some South American traditions, they're either bringers of bad luck or harbingers of good fortune. But A.A. Milne's owl in the Hundred Acre Wood was merely a bad speller, naming his home the Wolery.

(If you're interested in learning everything owl, check out Jennifer Ackerman's recently published "What The Owl Knows")

Hands Across The Marsh

One of the Lowcountry's defining characteristics is its network of marshes, rising and falling in synchrony with the tides. In an encouraging example of cooperative governance, three disparate entities have come together to protect these critical environmental buffer zones from encroaching development.

Forming the South Atlantic Salt Marsh Initiative (SASMI) are South Carolina's Department of Natural Resources, the non-profit Coastal Conservation League and the U.S. Defense Department, along with a host of local land trusts and 75 concerned individual citizen supporters. Funding for the initiative comes from a network of local, state and federal sources along with additional support from the already-existing Lowcountry Sentinel Landscape program. SASMI is modeled on the Longleaf Restoration Initiative, a public/private partnership established in 2005 to protect longleaf pine forests in the Southeast.

Bulkheads like these prevent marshes from migrating shoreward with rising seas

Three years in the making, SASMI is intended to protect and restore tidal marshes while conserving the naturally formed and shifting channels that allow marshes to adapt to rising sea levels. Other threats to healthy marshes are polluted runoff from ill-conceived waste treatment systems and ecologically unsustainable developments located too close to marshes. SASMI's partners plan on using strategies ranging from elevated roadways, retrofitting barriers to allow marshes to shift with sea levels and acquiring land along marshes for conservation. An important first step is already underway, mapping marsh migration patterns to provide accurate data to local marsh conservation efforts.

Birds like these clapper rails rely on marshes to raise their young

SASMI draws on the expertise of a diverse coalition of partners from North Carolina to the east-central Florida coast. More than 300 military and governmental authorities, conservation groups like the CCL, scientists, community leaders and fishermen are involved in the initiative. The Conservation League, for example, is partnering with the state's DNR to create a "Living Shorelines" training course for contractors, providing guidance in designing and building properties that preserve the ability of marshes to absorb rising tidal flows and provide critical habitat for fish, birds and other wildlife. "Our marshes are the lifeblood of our ecosystem," says the Conservation League's executive director Faith Rivers James, "and we must protect it so those who come after us can experience it in the way we have been blessed."