Special Red Bird Highlights ACE Basin Trek

 

Our trip Saturday, June 26 to the Hollings National Wildlife Refuge didn’t start well. As soon as we parked here a downpour began. Would we have to turn around and go home after the hour-plus drive? 

We took cover and waited for a bit in hopes the rain would cease. And it did before too long. This photo was taken a few hours later after our nearly four-mile hike around the ACE Basin sanctuary. 

A fortunate decision was to begin our walk through these woods that served as a canopy protecting us from rain that continued for several minutes once we got going on the trail. 

Fortunate also because within minutes a red bird caught my eye off to the left. 

At first I thought it was “only” a Northern Cardinal. 

I quickly realized through my camera lens that this was no Cardinal. This is a Summer Tanager. Not your every day bird, though some folks have had them at their backyard feeders, 

One tell is the light-colored Bill. A Cardinal's is black. 

Thank you Mr. Tanager for settling on this open branch so I could snap several photographs! 

This was my third or fourth time capturing this brilliant bird.

And I actually had a female Summer Tanager come to our feeders one time (that I know about). See her here. 

My day was made already thanks to getting some good shots of a rare bird like this. 

To follow are some other scenes from the outing. The rain would stop and we’d be out in the open. The clouds were amazing and the temperatures and humidity would get steamy. 

The path at the Hollings NWR is long and circuitous. 

I use the Snapseed photo processing app to enhance many of these images. My Canon SX 50 takes quality pictures but the HDR tweaking, as shown in the following before and after example, really makes them pop. 

Snapseed, owned by Google, is free to download and fun and easy to use!

Here is one of the many Rice Trunks you see here and at other wildlife areas in the region. They were used for irrigation purposes and looked this way long ago when African slaves toiled in the rice fields of vast plantations. 

Today the large wooden structures are still used to control the flow of water to the ponds, impoundments and streams to and from the nearby South Edisto River. 

That’s the River in the background and another trunk that helps regulate (by the park’s workers) the flow of water.  

A display shows how the system of dike trunks works. The technology hasn’t really changed sine the 1700s. 

Many of the trunks look new, their wood still with a greenish tint. Many are new. They had to be replaced or rebuilt due to damage from hurricanes and tropical storms in recent years. 

I can remember coming here a while back, several months ago, and not being able to trek this trail because it was closed for repairs. So glad it’s open again! 

Other than the Summer Tanager I only photographed a few other types such as this Great Egret. 

And this Great Blue Heron. 

The same Great Blue Heron. 

OK this isn’t really a bird but it kind of looks like one right? I posted this photo on two South Carolina bird Facebook sites. I was trying to have some fun, asking what kind of bird is this? I few people took the bait and came up with some funny names. I wish I had written them down because after a while, well fairly quickly for one site, my posts were taken down. Just trying to have some fun! 

This critter is legit! It’s a Fox Squirrel that I only was able to get this single photo of before it ran up a tree. I followed it to the tree but it did a good job hiding from me. 

I spotted the Fox Squirrel on the grounds near this old (but restored for the park service offices and welcome center) antebellum plantation house, one of only a few to be found today in this region. It's called Grove Plantation and it dates to 1828. 

The house’s entrance faces the river because that’s how visitors would arrive, back in the heyday of water transportation. 

Here is the view from the “back” of the house which today is how visitors come to it. 

The big house has this bell and I rang it to signal a successful adventure. I had hip replacement surgeries in January and May of this year. I did this long hot walk pain free and it felt great to be able to do so! 

A couple pretty flowers to wrap up this post. 

And a pretty Monarch butterfly. 

And a not so pretty Armadillo that Alesia spotted near where we parked as we were loading the car to leave.