Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge的日誌

Okefenokee Swamp Journal, April 19, 2024...

Photographer: William Wise | iNat Observation: 232046373 - Pig Frog on a Yellow Bonnet Lily pad; Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia. April 19, 2024. ©williamwisephoto.com

Pig Frogs are the big Lithobates of the Okefenokee Swamp. Although they may not be readily seen among the floating green lily pads of the blackwater swamp, they are definitely heard! Its name derives not from its looks, but from that deep, guttural call. Growing up to a beefy 5 inches long, I can imagine that these amphibians are a regular part of an alligator’s diet. But when not being preyed upon, the Pig Frog is an active predator itself, being an opportunistic feeder that will swallow anything from crawfish, dragonflies, insects, and small fish to other frogs! Lithobates grylio is found in the Southeastern United States, from South Carolina to Texas.

Photographed in the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia on April 19, 2024. Paddling from Kingfisher Landing to Maul Hammock overnight shelter.

• Location: mile markers 7 to 11; N31.01532° W82.19236°
• Sunny, high near 91; low around 64
• Sunrise 6:55 AM; sunset 7:59 PM
• Daylight hours: 13 hours, 4 minutes (+1m 44s)
• Moon: 83% Waxing Gibbous

Photographer: William Wise | iNat Observation: 29932812 - Green Heron along the Trembling Earth Nature Trail boardwalk in the Stephen C Foster State Park; Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia. March 10, 2015. ©williamwisephoto.com

As with most wildlife photography, success can be hit-or-miss. After many forays into the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, a 400,000+ acre swamp located in south Georgia, there are days I fill SD cards to capacity, and days where I wish there was more to see than empty branches on tall trees. But never “write off” a particular area. Just because no wildlife was seen during one visit, doesn’t mean you won’t be surprised on another.

I have walked the short boardwalk within the Okefenokee’s Stephen C Foster campground dozens upon dozens of times. I can walk the distance to the dead end and find nothing. But upon turning around just a few minutes later find a colorful Green Heron that had been skulking down in some scrub on my first pass, only to be flushed out for a photography by the returning sound of my footsteps.
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Take it slowly on your hikes and paddles. Even if you don’t photograph any animals, the landscape and macro-photography opportunities abound. Take in the sun and fresh air; feel the texture of the cypress bark and leaves; breathe in the aromas of wildflowers; search the shadows for fiddleheads and mushrooms. Never be reluctant to make a second trip. You may see something now, when before you didn’t!

March 13, 2019 nature journal - A loud call breaks the warm, still afternoon air..."

Photographer: William Wise | iNat Observation: 21592342 - Pileated Woodpecker in the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia. March 13, 2019. ©williamwisephoto.com

A loud call breaks the warm, still afternoon air. “Are there monkeys in the Okefenokee Swamp?”, my young daughter asks. “No. That’s a bird”, I tell her. “Watch over there.” In a moment, a flaming red crest appears from behind the trunk of the tree, peering in our direction as it searches another soft spot in the bark to hunt for an insect meal.

“The Pileated Woodpecker is one of the biggest, most striking forest birds on the continent. It’s nearly the size of a crow, black with bold white stripes down the neck and a flaming-red crest” says Cornell’s wonderful website.

I’ve come across several Pileated Woodpeckers in the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia; more often hearing them than seeing them. But a few in particular have given me the privilege of a swamp photo session!

Excerpt from the 1926 book, History of the Okefenokee, by Hamp Mizell and AS McQueen:

Photographer: William Wise | iNat Observation: 30501783 - White-tailed Deer traversing the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia. March 11, 2015. ©williamwisephoto.com

"When Bugaboo Island was first discovered, it was then traversed by various trails and paths made by the numerous wild animals on this particular island. There were quite a lot of deer on this island, and it is said by the oldest inhabitants that very few islands of the swamp had more game than Bugaboo. Although there were several larger, this prairie gives the deer good feeding grounds, as there are several different kinds of water plants that are choice food for deer."

Photographer: William Wise | iNat Observation: 46607211 - Southern Blue Flag; Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia. March 11, 2020. ©williamwisephoto.com

In the spring, there are splashes of purple and blue along the canoe trails of the Okefenokee Swamp. I have primarily found this beautiful Iris along the Suwannee River Middle Fork (red trail) where the channel is still wide, but taller trees provide some shade. The leaves protrude from the water a few feet and the beautiful purple bloom rises just above them. According to a USDA Plant Guide, the Southern Blue Flag swamp iris, Iris virginica, is perfectly suited to the Okefenokee habitat as it prefers wet, acidic, boggy soils. It is native to the coastal plains from Virginia to Louisiana. The source also states that Seminoles may have used this plant to treat shock following an alligator bite.

Photographer: William Wise | iNat Observation: 30037682 - Red-shouldered Hawk with a fish perched along The Sill Recreation Area; Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia. March 13, 2015. ©williamwisephoto.com

Noises carry in strange ways in the Okefenokee Swamp. A silent solitude lies upon the blackwaters as one paddles through the refuge. But the dead stillness is suddenly broken by the scream of a Red-shouldered Hawk. Its call seems to emanate from over your shoulder, but the echo carries ahead, to the left, and to the right. It may take a few squawks from the raptor to pinpoint its location.

For many decades, the Red-shouldered Hawk has been one of the most common raptors in the Okefenokee Swamp. In 1913, Albert Wright and Francis Harper published “A Biological Reconnaissance of Okefinokee Swamp: The Birds” in The Auk, the scientific journal of the American Ornithological Society. Of the Red-shouldered Hawk, they wrote,

“Buteo lineatus alleni. FLORIDA RED-SHOULDERED HAWK: ‘Hen Hawk’; ‘Chicken Hawk.’- Very common. This is one of the most widely distributed birds, as its scream is one of the most characteristic sounds, of the Okefinokee.”

The call of the Red-shouldered Hawk is still piercing the stillness of the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge today.

Photographer: William Wise | iNat Observation: 29933071 - Southern Banded Watersnake; Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia. March 10, 2015. ©williamwisephoto.com

The most noticeable - or, I should say, most unavoidable - sight on the Trembling Earth Nature Trail in the Stephen C Foster State Park is the gnats; great clouds of gnats six feet in diameter, swarming at eye-level populate the boardwalk at certain times of the year. We pass through one cloud - swatting and waving our hands with eyes squinted and mouth shut tight - only to encounter another gnat cloud a few feet further down the boardwalk. Swatting did absolutely nothing; like trying to blow a path through thick fog with your mouth.

But I must thank the gnats. If it not had been for the gnats forcing my eyes to squint and face downward, I would not have noticed a quick movement below the boardwalk and a stirring of the tannin-stained blackwater swamp. “A snake!” my daughter shouts. (She is somehow always the first to spot the serpents on our wildness hikes.) Sure enough, down in the sphagnum moss slithered a Southern Banded Watersnake, Nerodia fasciata. One cool reptile was now on our Okefenokee checklist.

N. fasciata inhabits most freshwater environments such as lakes, marshes, ponds, and streams.
Banded water snakes are active both day and night and may be seen basking on logs or branches overhanging the water or foraging in shallow water. (https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/29317-erodia-fasciata)

Okefenokee Journal, October 23, 2020...

Photographer: William Wise | iNat Observation: 64375795 - American Alligator with transverse rows of epidermal scutes lining back and tail; Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia. October 23, 2020. ©williamwisephoto.com

Friday, 10:58 AM - "​Paddling upstream against a slow but constant current, the canoe run gets darker and darker. Although it is only nearing noon and night is far off, the senses are lured into believing that dusk has arrived. Little sunlight penetrates the thick vegetation. Barred Owls, typically creatures of the night, are calling aloud. Like skeletons draped in aged rags, the overhanging Cypress limbs become more and more covered with Spanish Moss until practically nothing of the host tree is visible, and it further blocks out the beams of sunlight struggling to shine through. You glide along the river in silence. Then something big and rough brushes the bottom of the kayak. No shape or figure can be seen in the tannin blackwaters. Is it just the rough bark of a submerged branch? Or the boney hide of a large alligator? "

• Middle Fork Suwannee River; Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia.
• Friday, October 23, 2020
• Sunrise 7:04 AM, sunset 5:27 PM
• Day length: 10 hours 20 minutes (-1 hr 8 min)
• Temperature - high 84; low 65

A 2015 Okefenokee Journal excerpt:

Photographer: William Wise | iNat Observation: 29977854 - Brown Watersnake; Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia. March 11, 2015. ©williamwisephoto.com

In the early 1990s as a young unmarried man, I was usually out in the rural areas and swamps of Georgia, Florida and the Carolinas flipping pieces of tin and digging through piles of debris hoping to find snakes. Reptiles became a lasting interest, and much of what drew me to the Okefenokee Swamp in first place. Twenty years later I found myself back in the Okefenokee with my daughter. Thankfully she shares her dad’s love of snakes and is always hopeful for a reptile find as well!

On our 2015 trip, we weren’t disappointed as we quickly came across a Brown Watersnake along the swamp boardwalk in the Stephen C Foster State Park. I’m not sure how we spotted this perfectly camouflaged dark, black and brown snake laying in the dark water choked with brown leaf litter. There are several species of Nerodia found in the Okefenokee. I usually recognize N. taxispilota by the squarish blotches that run in equal spacing down its back, cady-corner with the patches that run alternatingly down each side.

Okefenokee Journal entry from March 13, 2019...

Photographer: William Wise | iNat Observation: 21510857 - American Bittern; Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia. March 13, 2019. ©williamwisephoto.com

My daughter and I were only ten minutes into a four-day canoe trip through the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia and already we nearly had missed something! As we were paddling up the channel to Billy’s Lake from the Stephen C. Foster State Park boat ramp, we pulled to the side to let a tourist-laden pontoon boat pass by. As they went by, the naturalist on board pointed out an American Bittern camouflaged in the marsh grasses. We had paddled right past it, hidden in plain sight!

But we can’t be blamed. Even one prominent ornithology website says, “You’ll need sharp eyes to catch sight of an American Bittern. This streaky, brown and buff heron can materialize among the reeds, and disappear as quickly, especially when striking a concealment pose with neck stretched and bill pointed skyward.” With his bill pointed upward, he blends in perfectly with the tall brown grasses that line the water’s edge. Again, perfectly hidden in plain sight.