Our Hilton Head boat tour, Tale Hunter, offers cruises to explore Pinckney Island where you can see dolphins and do bird watching of the area. Pinckney Island NWR was established December 4, 1975. The refuge is located in Beaufort County, South Carolina and is 1/2 miles west of Hilton Head Island.
It was once included in the plantation of Major General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, a prominent lawyer active in South Carolina politics from 1801 to 1815. Few traces of the island’s plantation in the 1800’s exist today. From 1937 to 1975, when it was donated to the Fish and Wildlife Service, Pinckney Island was privately owned and managed as a game preserve.
The 4,053-acre refuge includes Pinckney Island, Corn Island, Big and Little Harry Islands, Buzzard Island and numerous small hammocks. Pinckney is the largest of the islands and the only one open to public use. Nearly 67% of the refuge consists of salt marsh and tidal creeks. A wide variety of land types are found on Pinckney Island alone: salt marsh, forestland, brushland, fallow field and freshwater ponds. In combination, these habitats support a diversity of bird and plant life.
Wildlife commonly observed on Pinckney Island during our Hilton Head dolphin tour include waterfowl, shorebirds, wading birds, raptors, neo-tropical migrants, white-tailed deer and American alligators.
Pinckney Island National Wildlife Refuge is an important link in the chain of wildlife refuges along the Atlantic Flyway, attracting thousands of migratory birds annually. The refuge also provides nesting habitat, called a rookery, for colonial wading birds leading to large concentrations of white ibis, egrets, and herons.
If you want to take a dolphin tour or bird watching cruise of Hilton Head Island, SC, contact Tale Hunter! A Pinckney Island boat charter is the perfect way to experience the low country.
