I think most people just see a sandbar and maybe some birds flying over it
but they don't realize the incredible birdlife that lives and roosts there.
I've been going to Deveaux for decades and we go during the day to monitor the pelicans,
the terns, some of the shorebirds that nest there. [oh my gosh] but it's very rare that I go to Deveaux
at night. [there's so many...the point it looks black but those are actually all whimbrel]
I started realizing there's maybe a lot more going on at night than we see during the day.
[oh my gosh]
Deveaux Bank is a large sandbar. It's actually shaped like a horseshoe.
In the interior are broad marshes and some dunes, some grasses, some low shrubs.
It has wide, fairly exposed beaches.
A couple years ago I was anchoring the boat on the back side and I just happened to be
there right at dawn. I could just hear swirls of birds passing over my head.
Thousands of whimbrel came off the island. I was just amazed and I thought: how had I never
seen this before? I realized it needed further investigation and documentation.
A whimbrel is a type of curlew. It has a long decurved bill for probing in the sand for crabs
and invertebrates and it's a long-distance migrant.
They are spending six, seven months of the year down on the northern coast of South America and then they're making this jump up to
the Atlantic coast of the U.S. From there they're making flights up to their Arctic breeding grounds.
We're talking days, sometimes even a week without stopping, without food, without sleep. What that
means though is that the places that they do choose to stop are really critically important.
On the northern migration a lot of the whimbrels stop in South Carolina for a month, a month and a half.
That whole system of marshes and undeveloped coastline is critical to the survival of this species.
They spread out all across the coast throughout the day to forage in the mud flats
and then they come together to spend the night. And in South Carolina that's at Deveaux Bank.
It's May 16th, and it's pretty close to a full moon so the tides are extreme and the
whimbrel will be concentrated at a few spots so it's a really great time to count them.
So Abby's stationed at the southwest point of Deveaux kind of on the sand spit, the very tip.
We're kind of right in the middle looking for the birds coming mostly from northeast.
Here comes our first big group, maybe about 80 just came in.
These birds could theoretically be coming in from a tremendous distance away.
As the tide rises and night falls, they're leaving those foraging areas where they've been eating all day
and coming out to these areas that are a little bit more remote where they're safe from predators.
That was another 40 that just came in.
Curlews worldwide are a group of birds that we know is prone to extinction and whimbrel are among those.
So this group here is like 180 flying over us right now.
Somewhere around forty thousand whimbrel
use the Atlantic flyway of North America.
Hundreds and hundreds of whimbrels over the marsh.
That population already represents a decline of about half from where they were 20 years ago.
By now there's literally thousands of birds all around us.
It's the craziest thing I've ever seen.
207...We won't be able to count them much longer because it's just too hard to see them but you
can hear them calling still as they're coming in. There's another group and another group.
Oh my gosh, the entire the entire point all the way to those signs is covered in birds now.
We were all tallying our numbers and it took quite a while to go through our notes.
64. 175. I remember I wrote down the numbers from all the parties 140...700. And could not believe it.
65...400...750...207 Holy Moly that's a lot of birds...a lot of whimbrel. Yeah. It was about 19,500 birds
That blew my mind because that's half – literally half of estimates of how many whimbrel there are
on the Atlantic coast. For all of them to be coming in to roost on this one
tiny island that just...that blew my mind. We've never encountered this many whimbrel in any one
spot anywhere else in the world. That is unique. That means that Deveaux is a really special place.
A discovery of this size really seemed impossible. How could there be
a half of the estimated population at one place and personally in my backyard in South Carolina.
There are certain things that we should refuse to destroy and those things that we should refuse
to destroy are those things that really define us, that make us unique, that bring us together.
And in South Carolina, by preserving those places, we have refused to destroy
the best part of us. We've created good habitat for whimbrel to give
them a chance and we just have a responsibility to do what we can to
keep them from becoming extinct. Because we know that the future of that species is in our hands.
We know how the decline of whimbrel potentially ends. We know how that story could end.
But their population size is still large enough at this moment,
that we have the time to do something before it's too late.
Seeing thousands of whimbrel come in to roost at night, it kind of just gives you hope that that you know so many birds exist.
It's one of the most phenomenal sights I've ever seen in my life.
I don't think there is anybody that doesn't love a beautiful thing. You don't even have to
know what they're called, what the birds are, and you watch them come in on that sunset
and you have to be amazed, you have to be astounded, and you have to be proud to know that that's here.