New birding center near Port Royal would move Beaufort County birds up in batting lineup

Birds can get overlooked in Beaufort County where charismatic critters like alligators, dolphins and turtles can take the spotlight, says Jenn Clementoni.

“They are like the 9th batter,” says Clementoni, using a baseball analogy to describe their rank.

As executive director of The Carolina Bight Birding Center whose mission is enhancing the profile of birds along with preserving their numbers and diversity, Clementoni is ready to pencil in a change that will move Beaufort County’s birds up in the batting order of Lowcountry wildlife where she says they belong.

The center is registered as the Carolina Bight Sanctuary, a new Beaufort-based non-profit registered in January.

The most highly visible part of the effort will be construction of a new educational birding facility near the tidal salt marsh on the western edge of Port Royal. The location is an example of the type of local habitat that attracts hundreds of bird species and millions of birds to Beaufort County, making them big fish in the Lowcountry.

“Millions of birds pass right over head,” says Clementoni, “especially in the spring and fall migration.”

The ambitious birding center and the not-for-profit behind it take their name from the Carolina Bight, which is part of the South Atlantic Bight, a region of the U.S. coastline from Cape Hatteras, N.C. to Cape Canaveral, Fla.

The location of the center

The birding center will be located on eight acres along Mudbar Road near the tidal marsh of the Chechessee River off of Highway 170, across from the Port Royal Sound Maritime Center. The property is located just outside the border of Port Royal.

Clementoni can’t think of a better place than Beaufort County and the marshlands near the Chechessee River to build the facility.

“It’s a fantastic area,” says Clementoni.

The center will include an interpretive center, indoor and outdoor classrooms, sculpture gardens with native planting, bird feeding stations, a dock launch for kayaking bird tours, a restaurant and the region’s first bird triage center where injured birds can be stabilized before being transported to facilities where they can recover.

“From our research, we really feel this is a first of a kind educational center that’s just focused on birds,” Clementoni says.

There is no timeline for construction, which will depend the generosity of residents, but Clementoni is promising to “be aggressive with our fundraising.”

Birds can be the ‘canary in coal mine’

Beaufort businessman Dick Stewart, who is retired from property manager and developer 303 Associates, has agreed to donate the land for the birding center. Stewart also donated land for the Port Royal Sound Maritime Center across the highway.

“Birds are often overlooked because we’re so focused on the water here,” Stewart says.

Birds, Stewart adds, can be the canaries in the coal mine as their health can serve as a measure of the quality of the salt marsh and water. He envisions the center as another piece of an “ecological node” near the Broad River. The area includes the Maritime Center and the 95-acre Mobley tract that was bought and managed by Beaufort County Rural and Critical Lands program and the Port Royal Sound Foundation in 2016.

But it will be up to the community to decide on how much it wants to support the building efforts financially, he says.

Center will include triage

The triage part of the center might be the most significant, Clementoni says. Right now, volunteers need to transport injured local birds almost 100 miles to the The Avian Conservation Center in Awendaw north of Charleston, which provides medical care for injured birds of prey and shorebirds. Having a center where the birds can be patched up before making that long journey can be the difference between life and death, she says.

“We’re hoping we can help bridge the gap in that area and be able to save more birds because they will have treatment earlier,” she says.

Bird guide author coming to town

A flurry of social media announcements from the group already is promoting its first large event, the “Wings over Beaufort Birding Festival” Sept. 23-26 where David Sibley, author of the “The Sibley Guide to Birds,” one of the comprehensive guides for North American ornithological field identification, will be the keynote speaker.

Spotting rare or threatened species or birds with brilliant colors is not rare in Beaufort County, says Clementoni.

Two of her favorites to see are the painted bunting, a songbird (males are a rainbow of stunning colors), and roseate spoonbill, a shorebird that turns brilliant pink.

The county also is an important stop for many migrating birds, including red knots and whimbrels, which refuel on seafood before continuing migrations between South America and the Arctic. Red knots, for instance, are known for rooting for horseshoe crab eggs in mudflats.

Giving birds their due

While dolphins and sea turtles often get more notice from the public, Beaufort County’s bird populations, especially the diversity of species, stand out in their own right, says Clementoni.

Some 300 species, from shorebirds to raptors to songbirds, either live here or migrate through Beaufort County where 50% of South Carolina’s remaining salt marsh are located. The rich, salty water creates a smorgasbord for birds, from fiddler crabs to blue crab eggs.

A mapping system that uses Doppler radar to track bird movements called BirdCast has documented 6 million birds taking flight in a single day in Beaufort County, she says.

From New Jersey to Harbor Island

Clementoni has been on her own journey when it comes to birds.

She didn’t know a thing about them when she and her husband John moved to Beaufort County’s Harbor Island from New Jersey during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic after their son joined the Marines and they started looking at the map for a new home. They ended up on the barrier island east of Beaufort after seeing a feature on HGTV, the real estate and home improvement channel.

“Believe it or not,” says Clementoni, “I had never had birded in my life.

After arriving, she taught herself photography because, she says, there was no other way to convey the beauty of the birds she was witnessing in the area. She studied and became a master naturalists. “I just fell in love with it,” she says.

Over the kitchen table, she and John mapped out a bird guiding business called Birding Beaufort. The photos helped tell the story of the Beaufort County birds, and the business grew from 40 to 133 tours.

Fast-forward five years, and Clementoni is now Beaufort County bird ambassador.

As she transitions to executive director of the The Carolina Bight Birding Center, she wants people to know how amazing a birding place Beaufort County is. She also wants the public to know that birds continue to face threats. The 2025 State of the Birds report concluded that about a third of all American bird species are of high or moderate concern due to low populations, declining trends or other threats. Among the bird species that have raised concern in South Carolina are the painted bunting, eastern towhee, American goldfinch and red-breasted nuthatch.

“There’s a large population in our area who love birds and we think we will have a lot of support for our project,” Clementoni says.

-Karl Puckett, The Island Packet