Salt marshes are found around the world, but the one you are about to tour can be found right here in South Carolina on the North American continent. Salt marshes are located only along the coast. This is because a salt marsh is an area that is flooded by saline (salty) water. The salt marshes are better developed as you move farther south in South Carolina.
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The hard clam, or quahog, is common along our coast. The clams are sold commercially as littleneck, cherrystone, or chowder clams, depending on size, with littlenecks about an inch in diameter and...
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The wrens build their nests in the tips of living Spartina. The nests are made out of dead Spartina. They are not open, but are covered, so the nest looks like a ball of dead grass. There is a hole on...
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Boldly patterned in black and white, the stocky American oystercatcher is hard to mistake. It has long red legs and a large red bill. As the name suggests, they feed mainly on oysters, although they...
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The Eastern oyster occurs along the entire East Coast, from Canada to the West Indies. It varies somewhat in habitat along this area. Oysters build reefs because the young oysters, called spat, are...
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At low tide, the periwinkles crawl down to the base of the stem, where algae grow best, and graze the algae off the stems. When the tide rises, however, the periwinkles crawl up the stems. Why don't...
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These tiny balls of sand or mud, perfectly round, are called pseudofeces because they look like fecal pellets. Like true feces, they are bits of indigestible material, but they have never passed...
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Salt grass sends underground stems called rhizomes into the salt flat. Sprouts from these rhizomes make stems and leaves above ground. You can see where the rhizome lies underground because the stems...
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This scat is from the same animal. It ís full of seeds and the shells of fiddler crabs. Who ate them?
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Three different species of shrimp are collected commercially from offshore and from the salt marsh. They are the pink shrimp, the brown shrimp, and the white shrimp. They are large, up to 10 inches in...
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Snowy egrets are smaller versions of the great egret. They have white feathers, black legs with yellow feet, and a black bill. Snowies sometimes wade slowly through shallow water, stirring the mud...
