Okefenokee 4/28

On Saturday, April 28th, Dot and I were joined with the pleasure of the company of Chuck Hubbuch, our campus horticulturist, and Keith, a biologist for an outing at the Okeefenokee Swamp near Folkston, Ga. Having a horticulturist AND a biologist along, Dot and I couldn't help but learn a thing or two. But admittedly, for a lot of the trip Dot and I left those two alone to 'talk shop'. It was an outing that will be long remembered I'm sure. Besides the 80 or so alligators we saw we also had the huge treat of seeing sandhill cranes. We also saw another spectacularly plumaged bird, a Prothonotary Warbler. A what?? Yeah, that's what we said too until Keith showed us the bird in his bird field guide after we got back to the trucks. But after you see the photos I am sure this is one bird you would want to see for yourself. We also saw the largest hawk any of us had ever seen in our lifetimes. I got some decent photos of him too. In addition to them we also saw ibises, blue herons, egrets, and a night heron. So as far as wildlife was concerned, it was a day to remember. Dot and I also learned a bit more about some of the flowers we have seen. Our knowledge will soon be your knowledge. I like to think that this website isn't just a place to show off some pictures, but is also educational. Dot and I not only have the opportunity to get out into these wild places, but through our photos and videos we can take y'all along with us.

I had some concerns about the smoke from the fires around Waycross and on the way to the park, we did indeed run into some light smoke. Luckily for us (bad for the firefighters) a wind out of the west kept the smoke away from us all day. But as you will see later in the show, we did see the smoke from the fire rising thousands of feet into the air. If you think it gets smoky down here in Jacksonville, think again. As you will see, the smoke we get down here is nothing to the smoke near the fire.

It was a day for alligators. I had taken along a new remote controlled electric powered boat I recently got. Before we took off on our trip, I spun it around the marina for a bit. Very shortly, one of the park rangers came out and said she wouldn't recommend using the boat around there since an alligator would more than likely eat it. We are pretty sure she was serious because we could see 5 alligators in the marina all on the waters' surface checking out the boat. So I put the boat back in the truck. Now I know I have a 'gator magnet'. Interesting.

REMEMBER TO CLICK 'TWICE' not 'DOUBLE-CLICK' on the SMALL WHITE TRIANGLE TO PLAY THE VIDEO

This was one of the first gators we saw out in the canals. Dot said he thought he was hiding because he was in the grass.

Him hitting the water. Sometimes they slide into the water, other times it's like this.

These were some beautifully fragranced flowers growing all along the canal. Just so you know, before y'all see this 'new' website, I have had Chuck and Keith preview it first so I can get the names of the flowers and such correct.

Believe me, they are not meaner and fiercer looking than they look. But their 'look' can be intimidating.

Some more of the fragrant flowers so Chuck or Keith can more easily identify them. Leaves are a major part of the identification process.

We went to Chesser Prairie since the other locales were just too far away and probably near impossible to get to due to low water conditions.

Dot and I were surprised to see all of the water lillies in full bloom. We have been up here before at the same time of day and only saw one or two blooms. Not this day. We saw thousands of blooms.

These are pitcher plants with their flowers, a carnivorous plant. Under the folded over top part of the leaf, is an opening to a chamber that goes down inside the plant. At the bottom of the chamber is a small pool of digestive juices and water. Whatever insect starts down into the plant can't go back up because of downward growing 'hairs' inside the plant that prevent that from happening. We have these growing on our campus as well on Lake Oneida near the canoe put-in area.

These are very small plants called bladderworts, the ones with the yellow flowers. They are also carnivorous. And here is how they 'work'.

Bladderwort is a plant that lives in fresh water. Since it is often found where nutrients are scarce, the Bladderwort must supplement it's diet with an occasional insect or other small organism. When prey touches the trigger hairs, the bladder expands, sucking in the animal. It is then dissolved within the bladder.

The yellow flowered bladderworts we saw are a species that lives in wet soil, not in the water. Their bladder traps are underground. We also saw aquatic bladderworts that weren't flowering yet, but will have yellow flowers when they do. The purple flowered bladderworts are aquatic also.

This is the largest hawk any of us has ever seen. This photo was taken with a telephoto lens at maximum power. The bird was easily over a hundred yards away, I think closer to 150 yards. Chuck spotted it first as it came in for a landing on the tree. Head to tail, this hawk is easily around two feet high. Absolutely huge.

This is a pair of sandhill cranes. Again they are pretty far away from us. We saw four of them in this area and we all felt great at having seen any at all.

This is one of Dot's favorite flowers, an iris. We saw quite a few of them up here in the swamp. These flowers were set back into a drying out area, so I had to get out of the kayak to get these photos. When one is in gator country like the Okeefenokee, the first thing one does is take a very good look around. Not just in the water but in the grassy areas as well. Some of these gators may be large but is amazing at how good they can be at staying out of sight in tall grass. So I took a few minutes to take a really good long look around.

This is another kind of bladderwort. It was hard to get a good picture since the wind was blowing.

This is a cricket frog. I had gotten out of the boat to get the previous iris photos. Chuck soon followed and he was the one who spotted the frogs. It was Keith who identified it. Keith wasn't going to get out of his boat . . until we had spotted the frogs. Then his curiosity got the better of him. A biologist at heart. Pretty good camouflage eh? And these little guys [about the size of a nickel] were pretty amazing jumpers, jumping up to three feet on a hop.

The white flower with the wasp on it belongs to a species of "sagittaria" or "arrowhead".

This is a killdeer. These birds are pretty cool to watch. They do not build a nest of any kind, they lay their eggs on bare ground. The eggs are a mottled green color and darned near impossible to spot. When their nest is threatened [like by us] the parents go into a 'wounded bird' routine. They make themselves appear to be injured to draw off any potential predator from the nest site. The accompanying videos will show that quite well.

This is mama. I had remained quite still taking photos and she came from over 30 yards away right up to me. She got to within 15 feet of me. It wasn't until I let the camera hang free around my neck and took my Canon Powershot A540 out of my pocket that she went into the wounded bird routine again.

I believe this is called a grasspaint flower. It looks like a tiny orchid. Chuck identified this one for us. At the time it was funny. We had neared the end of our trip and we were joking with Chuck about 'what was around the next turn'. So we went down to the next turn and that is where we saw these flowers, the only ones we had seen on the whole outing. So venturing to the next turn was a small bonus for us.

From Chuck: The one you called grasspaint flower, I thought it was a grass pink, a type of orchid. Instead, it is another type of orchid, the rose pogonia. Now we know.

The "grasspaint flower" is actually a flower of a plant called a "rose pogonia" or "snakemouth orchid", which is a type of orchid. It looks like an orchid, because it is an orchid.

The night heron is a juvenile yellow-crowned night heron. Because it is a juvenile, it looks different from the adult yellow-crowned night heron. Juvenile black-crowned night herons and juvenile yellow-crowned night herons are very similar, but I'm fairly sure that this is the yellow-crowned.

That 'low cloud' on the horizon is actually the smoke cloud rising from the forest fire near Waycross. So like I said, if you think the smoke down here is bad, it is nothing compared to the smoke near the fire.

Putting it into perspective. And Waycross is probably over twenty miles away from this spot. It's easier to understand how this is putting fear into people.

This was a real added treat on our way back to the takeout. It was Chuck and Keith who spotted these sandhill cranes off a small channel of the main canal. Dot and I had already passed this spot and failed to see these birds back behind the trees. There was another small inlet not far past the area where the birds were and all four of us were able to pull our kayaks into the spot and observe these magnificent birds from about 40 feet away. They were cleaning and grooming themselves and our presence didn't bother them in the least, as you will see.

These sandhills were so at ease with our presence they actually laid down. This is the advantage of kayaks and canoes over motorboats . . quiet.

And here was one of our last treats for the day. This is a Prothonotary warbler. I had seen one earlier in the day and I exclaimed to Dot that I had seen a bird with a bright yellow head flying over the canal from one side to the other. It wasn't until we were on the way back home that we were able to get these pictures. My stills and Dot's videos. What a gorgeous bird. Dot [who is a sometimes oil painter] called the color cadmium yellow.

It was difficult to get a clear shot of this bird as it was always on the move, flitting from one branch to the next.

So ends a terrific day at the Okeefenokee Swamp in Georgia. I am sure we are all happy to have spent this day here, I know Dot and I are.

My sincere thanks to Chuck Hubbuch and to Keith for their identification expertise.