As I am sitting here writing we are on the fourth day of our trip south. The drive through Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia were easy and occasionally interesting. We always stop at the Tennessee Welcome Center on I-75 because they have nice bathrooms and a nature trail. It’s always where we find the first warblers of the trip and a whole bunch of interesting plants – including cranefly orchids. Now on to a few photos.
It was interesting to find what appears to be an evergreen bagworm moth cocoon in a maple. Why? Apparently this is not entirely unusual.
Our first morning we had this beautiful adult Cooper’s Hawk facing the sun in the parking lot of where staying.
For me I know we in the south when we start seeing oak mistletoe, which is Kentucky. I’m wondering why this species doesn’t move further north? We do have a mistletoe in the north (dwarf mistletoe, which parasitizes evergreens)?
Striped wintergreen (also called spotted wintergreen) on the left and the leaf of cranefly orchid on the right. We spent an hour at the Kentucky Welcome Center searching through leaf litter untilwe finally found the orchid. Much of the time we were listening to Yellow-rumped Warblers and Carolina Chickadees among other species of birds.
I do not believe that I have seen and heard more Red-headed Woodpeckers on a single trail in many years (since Point Pelee in the 1980s). It was nice having them outnumber the Red-bellied Woodpeckers nearly 2:1.
This is the first year since a hurricane caused the closure that the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge Wildlife Auto Trail north of Savannah in southern South Carolina was open. We spent close to three hours there yesterday. One of the highlights was a large number of Black-bellied Whistling-ducks.
But as we were watching and listening to the ducks Susan found what at first I thought was a Purple Gallinule, wow was I wrong. It was a Gray-headed Swamphen, an invasive species that has moved north from Florida.
But just when we were both wondering how things could get any better, and as the the was setting – things did.
In the fading light we spotted a bobcat. My camera would have liked more light, and I could have gone to a different setting, but time with a bobcat is always brief so I just took a few photos – this is probably the best.
More later…
Michael's Place 