Never mind that a passing fisherman

can't see me through the darkened windows of the pilot house. My fear

of being perceived as snobbish compels me to throw up my hand as he cranes

his neck to check out Alice III.

"Eat your heart out,"

I think, mean-spiritedly. "I bet Betty Sue would be more likely to

come fishing with you if you'd get her a boat like this. Assuming you

want Betty Sue along."

We share two different worlds,

even if on the same river. He's fishing and we're birding, and "birding"

doesn't mean catching birds on a hook any more than "fishing"

means looking at fish through binoculars.

This has been a fine April

cruise. It started out cold but we had enough blankets to fend off a 37-degree

morning. Soon we had afternoon highs in the 80s and welcomed our chilly

river-water baths.

Our romance with our green

and white trawler is still new enough to provide memorable firsts. This

time we dragged her to Clarks Hill Lake, the reservoir and recreation

area also named for South Carolina's Sen. Strom Thurmond. A dam bearing

his name impounds the Savannah River and dozens of its tributaries, most

of them worth a day's cruise just to see what's there.

What wasn't there, we were

puzzled to note, were (1) many fishermen and (2) a lot of the waterfowl

we were eager to observe. The lack of human impact, we learned, may be

traced to the fact that nearly half of the lake's 2,500-mile shoreline

is publicly held, in national forest lands, state wildlife management

areas, Corps of Engineers recreation areas, and state parks. Unlike lakes

we prowled last year on the Tennessee River, there is virtually no development

on Clarks Hill. We had a delightful sense that it was all ours ­

but that also meant few marinas with fuel, water and the occasional package

of sandwich rolls.

As for the birds, I learned

later from a Georgia wildlife biologist that the lake is healthy, productive

of fish and drinking water, but birds like great blue herons, wood ducks

and Canada geese are nesting and less conspicuous just now. We did see

two pairs of common loons, not uncommon into May, the agent said, and

bald eagles. One flew up from a beach directly in front of us one morning

as we turned out of an overnight mooring, and while we were gawking at

him, his mate arose to follow.

There are three pairs nesting

in the area, survivors of a sequence of tragic events that killed 14 of

the big birds last year. A mysterious toxin producing a brain disease

in coots poisoned the eagles when they preyed on the sick coots.

For the first time ever on

a river trip, we watched a wild turkey hen land on a nearby beach, where

she began walking and scratching among the grasses in that typical way

of barnyard fowl.

At one unforgettable anchorage,

during breakfast, a family of rough-winged swallows began swooping around

and over the boat. One landed tentatively on the bowsprit, cocked his

head to look around, then flew off, but returned again and again, staying

longer each time.

We knew he couldn't see in,

so we got close to the windows, practically holding our breath watching

him. He hopped down to the seats and examined the forward cockpit carefully

before swooping away again.

I took my second cup of coffee

aft to watch the swallows dancing in air, when God bless if our little

friend didn't land on the engine cover, peer at me only a yard away, then

begin systematically checking out lines coiled on the stern. Rough-wingeds

are plain little brown guys, but this one was so full of lively curiosity,

I doubt I'll ever think of them as plain again.

This was our first trip using

a Global Positioning System, our "big" Christmas present to

each other last year. All right, it's a bit of a toy. After all, how could

anyone get lost on an inland lake that forms the border of Georgia and

South Carolina?

Very easily, actually. The

bays and coves on each bank look an awful lot alike, and often not at

all like the chart by which we navigate.

"We came through there

when we turned into this creek, Dave. You're going right by it."

"It just looks that way

because we're approaching from the opposite side. We make a right turn

after that next headland."

"Right turn? We turned

right to come in here; we have to turn left going out." At which

point the beep of the depth alarm let us know we were out of the channel.

No more. Now we have as many

as nine satellites bouncing signals off the little white mushroom atop

the pilot house, telling us where we are on a postcard-sized map on the

instrument panel. Where we are, where we've been, which way we should

have turned back there, what time the sun will set and when it will rise

in the morning.

Never mind that the scale is

so coarse (they want you to buy pricey more-detailed programs) that the

triangle representing the A 3 just sliced across a peninsula.

Our track looks like the sticky trail left behind by a slug on a saucer,

but by golly, we know where we are, down to the hundredth second ­

which, FYI, is a distance of less than a foot on the earth's surface.

Billions of dollars worth of

navigational technology up there ­ to tell us we're on the Georgia-South

Carolina state line about 50 miles north of Augusta.

Makes us proud we paid our

taxes.

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