Thu 3/3/22
This was just a lazy-around day. Except we had to go get dog food. We pride ourselves on traveling fully prepared and never, ever, having to make a shopping run midway through a trip. We're good at it, too. Except this time we had a little mix-up in the matter of "just who was going to fill up the dog food containers." They came out of the RV empty, went into the house empty, then went back out of the house empty and were reloaded into the RV. It still eludes me as to how an empty plastic container can be mistaken for a full one, but there you have it. It happened.
but first I had to bring in the game cam, which I'd left pointed down the trail. I found several shots of raccoons. I suspect that in these modern times when humans neither wear nor eat raccoons, they are overpopulating the world. I certainly see them everywhere. Hope they don't spread rabies.
The park really cuts back the palmetto here:
But they left signs of spring -- violets!
After a slow morning and a walk around the little loop trail, I did lunch and then we went to fetch dog food. Ed preferred to drive an extra five miles to Walmart, but I would have been fine with a Kroger. No matter. Funny, that--there's still an awful lot of people here wearing masks. The news I've heard is that masks were no longer recommended for vaccinated people without underlying health issues.
After that Molly and I took off for a walk. The plan was to go all the way to the end of the lakeside trail. We sneaked past some people who were exercising their dog by letting it swim out to retrieve stuff. Molly never saw the dog and I doubt if it saw her, so we were able to mosey on by without altercation. Then we crossed a couple of little wooden bridges on the footpath. And right then I heard a peculiar bird call. Like a squank or a squeep or a smikk or something that wasn't a Downy woodpecker or a red-bellied woodpecker, but sounded a little like them both.
I looked up and over, found the origin--and what to my wondering eyes should appear?!?! No, not reindeer, stupid. Red-Cockaded Woodpeckers! I only saw one at first, but later I saw more.
Funny thing was, even though I knew they'd been seen in this area, the day before I'd been looking a Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker for a ridiculously long time, trying to get it to come around the tree so I could see it well enough to ID it, and that caused me to go check my bird book to make sure that I'd know a red-cockaded woodpecker if I saw one. But according to the bird book, they were rare and local, living in long-leaf pine forests, and an endangered species. So I wouldn't be seeing one...I wasn't in a long-leaf pine forest, for one, and I wasn't in a place that was preserved specifically for the species.
But sure and to be honest, that is what I saw. I jog-walked back to the Mammoth RV, got my camera, and came back as quickly as possible. And lucky to behold, they were still there!
The next day--leaving day--I saw them again from our own campsite. They weren't shy at all, just busy. When they hammer on pine trees from seventy feet up, a shower of bark comes drifting down. My theory is that they're endangered not because of habitat destruction but because they peck all their favorite trees to death!
No, just kidding. They seem to have a strong preference for pine forests with a lot of open space in and around the trees. Like the one we were camping in. All those years of humans suppressing fires had caused old-growth forests to be choked with underbrush, vines, and too many tiny trees too close together. Now that the forestry service is doing controlled burns, things are looking better.
That episode provided more excitement than the law allowed. After craning our (my) necks for a very long time, Molly and I continued to the end of the trail. It stopped at the road just this side of the bridge. Actually...it might not have stopped. I got to the end and then went down to poke around on the lake shore a little, and I never went back to finish the trail all the way to the pavement. It might have crossed over and kept going. Then I got a little lost coming back--there was a "social trail" at the lake shore, and I mistook it for the real trail for a minute or two. Eventually without having seen a trail marker for an uneasy amount of time, I backtracked to the starting point. Easy peasy.
Here's a pine warbler. Horrid picture, I know.
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