My boyfriend and I have just gotten back from our first official trip to The Great Swamp wildlife refuge. We got some flyers there last night at sunset. While we were there, we took a small walk on one of the nearby trails to check it out. I love nature, but I actually haven’t been out IN nature a whole lot… so as the sunlight left, my fear of the sudden and loud rustling sounds increased. Suddenly I saw movement in the dusky light… there it was, right in front of me! Thankfully my “bear” turned out to be a squirrel. ^_^ Evening, the next day we left for the refuge. We were hoping to see some exciting birds listed as “common” in spring at the swamp, like kestrels (nesting), wood ducks (nesting), all sorts of hawks, great horned owls (nesting, I think), and blue birds (neither one of us has ever seen one).
We got there and saw some vocal red-winged black birds on the board walk trail. Red-wings are pretty common, but still make me happy – since I only first saw them last year. Then we got to see many turtles, research at home revealed that they were painted turtles. Most were smallish but not tiny, say about 4 to 5 inches long, swimming around, eating green algae looking stuff (very exciting!), but even more exciting was the massive snapping turtle that some kind people pointed out to us as we walked by. Its tiny nose was poking out of the water, its head was the size of a very large orange, and I would barely be able to put my arms around its shell (not that’d I’d try!!!). It was awesome! Nothing too exciting at the first bird blind we came to, beautiful scenery, two Canada Geese and a bumble bee that seemed to like me a lot more than I liked it. We followed another trail towards a second bird blind and got to see a chipmunk (adorable) and hear lots of mysterious bird calls along the way. Soon, we were seeing lots of movement in the trees – tufted titmouses (titmice?), some sort of woodpecker (didn’t visually ID, but heard the calls and wood pecking noises), white breasted nuthatches, and more red-winged blackbirds. This second blind (“Friends”) has a pretty view, but only two Canada geese. On our way back to find a third trail, I photographed a bird I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. It might have been a tufted titmouse, but the beak seemed thinner and it seemed smaller overall. I immediately suspected some sort of vireo, but I’ve only seen them in books. (I’ve posted the picture to my gallery) We continued backtracking when my boyfriend spotted something big moving through the water – a beaver? No, a muskrat eating / gathering swamp grasses, as another kind group of refuge visitors let us know. We saw a few more muskrats (fantastic) and went to the final trail for the day – the boardwalk trail. When we had arrived, we saw a photographer with a MASSIVE lens on this trail, and he was pointing straight down. I went over to that spot to see if whatever he was taking pictures of was still there. Sure enough, a long, beautiful brown colored snake lay still in the thick, muddy water. Next to him were brave (or foolish) toads just starting to belt out short, quick groans. At the final bird blind of the day, we saw some song sparrows, a possible blue bird streaking by (doesn’t count), and more red-winged black birds.
Well, we didn’t see the birds we were hoping to see, but we ended up seeing a lot of wildlife we weren’t expecting (even though it is a swamp, snakes in NJ just never occurred to me). It was a very nice day and I’m looking forward to going out there again soon.
