Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge的日誌

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)

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.