Tybee also offers its visitors and their families numerous hotels, inns, vacation rentals, and top notch restaurants as well as several historical sights and many other activities that will make each visit unforgettable.

Tybee Island, part of the Colonial Coast Birding Trail, is an excellent locale for birders to visit. Tybee is a coastal barrier island that is part of the Georgia’s coastal salt marsh system. Georgia has close to 500,000 acres of salt marshes which are home to many species of wading birds: egrets and herons (9 local species), white ibis, and the endangered woodstork. These conspicuous birds can be seen from the roads that cross the marsh, including McQueen’s Island, next to Tybee Island (part of Ft. Pulaski National Park), or from one of Tybee’s several restaurants that overlook the marsh. The best way to see the marsh birds is to charter a boat that will take you through the marsh creeks.

North Beach Birding Trail
The north beach, near Tybee’s famous lighthouse, is the best place on Tybee to view seabirds and shorebirds, many of which are only here in the winter. While visiting the trail be sure to allow time to climb the historic lighthouse and tour our museum.

The black skimmer, a year round resident, is a unique bird whose lower beak is longer than its upper beak. The skimmer regularly gathers to rest on the north beach in flocks ranging from 100 to 1000 birds. Another unique bird, the oystercatcher, also a full time resident, uses its flat red bill to pry open oysters. Small flocks of up to 30 birds can often be found on the north beach. However, the winter is the best time to see shorebirds who migrate from the Arctic tundra to spend the fall and winter on Tybee’s beach.

The north beach of Tybee is the best place on the coast of Georgia to see the purple sandpiper. Expect to see these migrating and wintering shorebirds at north beach: sanderlings, turnstones, dunlins, western sandpipers, knots, willets, black-bellied plovers, semipalmated plovers, and sometimes the endangered piping plover.

The north beach of Tybee is at the mouth of the Savannah River, where it meets with the Atlantic Ocean. In the winter scores of Northern Gannets circle and dive into the waters at the river’s entrance. The river’s mouth is also the winter home for loons (common and red necked), scaup, bufflehead, black scoters,
ruddy ducks and mergansers. Of course, it is also a year round home for terns, gulls, pelicans, and cormorants. In the winter look for Caspian terns, greater and lesser black-backed gulls and Bonaparte’s gulls.

Note: The north beach is also the best place on Tybee to find shells and fossil shark’s teeth.
Also keep an eye just offshore for one of our friendly bottlenose dolphins.

In the winter large numbers of shorebirds gather to rest on its beaches including whimbrels, dowitchers, and piping plovers. Egrets, herons, ibis, and storks are numerous and there are a few nesting spots on the island for these birds. In the summer oystercatchers, Wilson’s plover, and the endangered Least Tern nest on its undisturbed beaches. These birds are easy to see but you are requested to stay away from the posted nesting sites.

Fort Pulaski National Monument
Located just off of Highway 80, just before reaching Tybee Island, rests the 5,600 acre Ft. Pulaski National Monument. The monument consists of McQueen’s Island, Cockspur Island, and the adjacent salt marsh. These diverse habitats are home to 200 species of birds. In the spring and summer look for the painted bunting along the edges of the woodlands. This is also an excellent place to spot migratory songbirds in spring, late summer, and the fall. There is a small fee to enter the monument.

Special thanks to Mallory Pearce for supplying text and drawings.