Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge

Went to the Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge on Good Friday. I hate to admit that I had never been out there before. The morning was finally clear and the sun cut through the small grove of cypress trees at the first walkway. I read an article in the Commercial Dispatch supplement about Larry Box and a bunch of folks from Starkville who volunteer there. Larry's been going out there since he was a youngster. I made my first trip as an oldster. After checking out the walkway to the edge of the cypress grove, we walked down the opposite side of the road on a path that said Beaver Dam. We probably walked a mile and a half down the trail through the low country -- didn't ever find the beaver dam, but did see the largest cypress tree I have ever seen and a lot of animal tracks, deer and raccoon.

We were following the rather muddy trail when it crossed a slew that was too wide to jump across and too muddy to slog through without tracking a lot of mud back to the car. The little stream working its way through the forest seemed to be an outlet stream from the lake, but I couldn't swear about that. The area was a low area that obviously flooded when the lake was high and after a long, hard rain, but this was early spring and the mosquitoes weren't out in full force.

Retracing our steps we worked our way back through a large cane patch back to the car. The cane patch was the large Asian-type cane, reminding me of the large canes I used to split and cut to make troughs for my grandfather's artesian well in south Mississippi. One summer when I was about 12 or so, I had time on my hands and made cane troughs all over the yard for the water to run ... I must have been studying mill races or something, because I tried to make a water wheel along the way, but couldn't seem to get the wheel loose enough to spin freely. I had probably been attracted to mill races since seeing the old working mill in Cades Cove in the GSMNP.
You see a lot of bamboo cane along the roads all over Mississippi, but you don't see a lot of the canes four or so inches in diameter.
Returning to the car we drove down to the fork in the road and I stopped to get a picture of a flowing crab--actually, that's a guess. It was a beautiful flowing fruit tree, but I'm not positive that it was a flowering crab apple. The honey bees were loaded from the flowers. I got very close to one for a picture and she wasn't concerned about me, just concentrating on loading the pollen.
After visiting the facilities, we headed down the road to the Woodpecker Trail. The woodpeckers in this area are red cockaded woodpeckers--an endangered species with which I was not familiar. These woodpeckers bore into tall loblolly pines about 40 feet from the ground. The people of the wildlife refuge have been cutting into the trees and putting a box-type insertion in which the woodpeckers can nest. One can see where the nest boxes are located because the pine trees pour sap all around the hole and the area turns greyish-white around the nest. However the nesting trees are easy to find because the wildlife people have painted a wide band around the trees.
As we were looking at the boxes, we noticed one tree on which an artificial nesting box had not been inserted, a large (3-1/2 to 4 feet) snake was hanging on about six feet below the hole waiting for a young bird to emerge. I don't think I have ever seen a snake that far up a tree. Remember these are big loblolly pines and don't have limbs on which the snake can rest. He just has to climb straight up the bark and hang on with his stomach muscles. Don't know how he is able to hang on, but he was doing it well. I would like to see the kill to know how he moved quickly enough to grab a bird.

What a great way to spend a morning in the woods of Mississippi.