Birds and Hobcaw Barony

It's so nice to be at the beach.

We've seen a couple of the beautiful birds (painted buntings) pictured in the previous post. That is always one of the highlights of coming to this place. We now know where they usually "hide out," and they are so beautiful that it is always a treat to see one. (Mike and my mom got the best look at one three years ago--it is a reclusive bird to some degree--but we usually see at least one when we are here.) Other than that, the temperatures are so hot that there isn't much to see.

Yesterday we (Mike, Andrew, and I) toured Hobcaw Barony, the 17,500 acres of private land right next to DeBordieau that has a rich history--deeded in 1715 as a reward to a baron of King George, later carved into 11 rice plantations, and purchased in the early 1900s by Bernard Baruch, a self-made wealthy financier who was a counselor to presidents from Wilson to Kennedy and who was a SC native (that's the important part). His daughter Belle, who later purchased his land, deeded it to a foundation for research, so it will never fall into the hands of developers as so much beach land has. The land is rich with natural habitat of many types, and contains much history.

As part of the tour we went through Hobcaw House, the large home built by Baruch for use from November through April. We saw the room where Franklin Roosevelt loved to stay, Winston Churchill's favorite chair, and much other historical memorablia. The guide told us how the guests to the home would get up and hunt ducks until late morning (sometimes bringing down 100 per person per day), come in and rest awhile, then go to a nearby plantation and hunt quail, and worked into all this was fox hunting and deer hunting also. I could see Mike wistfully imagining what this kind of lifestyle would be like. I poked him in the arm and said "Too bad you weren't born into fabulous wealth, isn't it?" He immediately shot back, "Or at least married into it."

Sorry, buddy, you've got who you've got!