The pine flat-woods in South Georgia are much different than the pine forests of the Piedmont. The southern pines seem taller and less foliated; they are more mindful of each others’ personal space than their crowded Loblolly cousins in the north. With only patches of Saw Palmetto and Broomsedge, the pines stretch beyond and behind, and on either side; like fields of telephone poles ever receding as one approaches. Other than passing shadows cast by the soaring vultures, there is little shade or retreat from the overhead sun.
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We will soon be entering the Okefenokee, the Land of Trembling Earth…

Tuesday, 6:35 PM - As the fading light of dusk was about to force us to our tent site, a couple walking up the road said, “There is a gator behind the boat barn. But be careful; he’s out of the water and he is biiiiigggg.” We walked the quarter mile to the end of the cul-de-sac and pretended not to see the “NWR Staff Only Beyond this Point” signs. We looked around the left side of the shed; nothing. As we came around the right… “Whoa! That is a big one!” He was sprawled out on the grass with his feet facing upwards. He must have fallen asleep sunning himself, for the sun had gone down an hour ago. He was turned away from us, so we snuck up close behind him. There was no sign of movement, not even of breathing. In fact, he didn’t even flinch when pelted with a couple of pine cones.  Wondering if he was dead, I felt the temptation to grab the end of his tail, but figured that was the kind of thing that gets one in the news. ​

In 1895, naturalist Bradford Torrey wrote of the Green Heron being at home in watery woods such as the Okefenokee Swamp:

The old time gator hunters and Swampers used to hunt alligator at night by torch or spotlight. The shiny crystals in the alligator’s eye, called the tapetum lucidem, cause them to shine bright red in the dark night. Once located, a quick shot from the hunter’s rifle aimed between the glowing eyes ends its life.

But sometimes the alligator isn’t killed. And what doesn’t kill you makes you wiser! From that point forward, the eye shine of these wise gators quickly blinks out as the hunters’ lanterns approach as the alligator submerges.
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In his 1935 book, The Alligator’s Life History, E.A McIlhenny writes, “Old alligators are now very shy of man, and as they usually have large underground tunnels in which to hide, they sometimes cannot be gotten either by light or by pole, and an alligator who has been shot at once by the light of a bull's-eye is never again approachable with a light. As soon as an alligator that has been shot at but not killed sees a headlight, it sinks under the water. These alligators are known as ‘blinkers,’ and are entirely shy of night hunters.”  

Shining the spotlight from the bow of our john boat, shining specks materialized across the inky black waters within the searching beams of light. Although invisible with the unaided eye, the glowing red eyes revealed dozens upon dozens of alligators in the lake surrounding our boat. By pursuing the glowing eyes, we were there to capture, tag and release as many gators as we could that night. It was on that 1995 trip our ecology professor taught us the details of the tapetum lucidum.

Many animals have a reflective membrane in the eyes called the tapetum lucidum, which aids in night vision. The crystals in this incredibly designed membrane take the low light coming in through the eye and reflect it, thereby multiplying the amount of light passing through the retina. Built in night vision!

That same tapetum lucidum is what causes that annoying “red eye” in your indoor flash photographs of family and friends. But while in the Okefenokee, instead of spending post-production time on “red eye reduction," I used it to my advantage. As a gator passed by at dusk, I set my camera for a decent nighttime exposure. And even though it was two far for my flash to fill the scene with light, I used just enough flash to cause intentional “red eye” on the alligator, thus producing an eerie, dragon-like appearance in the photograph. 

Excerpt from the 1926 book History of the Okefenokee, by Hamp Mizell and AS McQueen:
“Alligator hunting affords excellent sport, and requires considerable courage, for it is no laughing matter to haul a wounded alligator into a boat on a dark night. They can – and do – become nasty customers at times and are capable of inflicting serious wounds, either with their long teeth or with their tails. A large alligator can very nearly kill a man with a vicious swipe of the tail.”

The most noticeable, or, I should say, most unavoidable sight on the Trembling Earth Nature Trail was the gnats; great clouds of gnats six feet in diameter, swarming at eye-level on the boardwalk. We pass through one cloud - swatting and waving our hands with eyes squinted and mouth shut tight - only to encounter another gnat cloud a few feet further down the boardwalk. Swatting did absolutely nothing; like trying to blow a path through thick fog with your mouth.
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With my eyes squinted and facing down, I happen to notice a quick movement below the boardwalk and a stirring of the tannin-stained blackwater swamp. “A snake!” my daughter shouts. She is somehow always the first to spot the serpents on our wildness hikes. Sure enough, down in the sphagnum moss slithered a Southern Banded Watersnake, Nerodia fasciata. One cool reptile was now off our checklist. But where were the alligators?

As with most wildlife photography, success can be hit-or-miss. After many forays into the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, a 400,000+ acre swamp located in south Georgia, there are days I fill SD cards to capacity, and days where I wish there was more to see than empty branches on tall trees. But never “write off” a particular area. Just because no wildlife was seen during one visit, doesn’t mean you won’t be surprised on another.

I have walked the short boardwalk within the Okefenokee’s Stephen C Foster campground dozens upon dozens of times. I can walk the distance to the dead end and find nothing. But upon turning around just a few minutes later find a colorful Green Heron that had been skulking down in some scrub on my first pass, only to be flushed out for a photography by the returning sound of my footsteps.
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Take it slowly on your hikes and paddles. Even if you don’t photography many animals, landscape opportunities abound. Take in the sun and fresh air; feel the texture of the cypress bark and leaves; breathe in the aromas of wildflowers; search the shadows for fiddleheads and mushrooms. Never be reluctant to make a second trip. You may see something now, when before you didn’t! 

Tuesday, 6:29 PM - We failed to see any gators out on the swamp boardwalk, so before heading back to camp we decided to check the boat dock and canoe launch up the canal. Amanda called out, “GATOR!” as a ripple splashed in the middle of the boat bay. “It went under right there.” We watched and waited for a minute. When it resurfaced, our gator turned out to be a rather large soft-shelled turtle. Soft-shells aren’t the most attractive turtles. In fact, my nephew described one we encountered on a Disney Resort as, “the ugliest turtle I’ve ever seen!” Their slender, long heads look like old fashioned Coke bottles capped with an unattractive pig’s snout. Their shells are relatively flat like an oversized, gray, rubber pancake.

A little bit further on, the water stirred and swelled just beyond the “Danger, Alligators Present” sign. Again we waited. After a minute we spotted a foot-long scaled creature just below the surface. But it wasn’t an alligator. We had been tricked again, this time by a Gar. Often, Gar resemble alligators (in fact, one subspecies is named an Alligator Gar). They possess long, scaly-armored bodies and long snouts filled with jagged teeth. An outdoors magazine once contained an article about a sportsman fishing for Gar with a crossbow that was pulled from his boat and dragged through the water after spearing an impressively large Gar. It was a neat fish to see, but not the alligator we were looking for.

Twice tricked, but not giving up while there was still some light, we decided to walk further down the canal. Out towards the swamp we spotted a dark object in the lane between the lily pads. By the v-shaped ripples breaking in front, we could see it was travelling rather quickly in our direction. Finally, a gator, and heading our way! I began snapping photos even though it was low light. It swam all the way in and circled the boat bay; quite comfortable in close association with the visitor’s office. As the sky darkened, I tried some low-light manual camera settings. Using the flash brought out some beautiful red-eyed gator shots that turned out to be my favorite photos from the entire week.

We later learned from the park staff that this was Sophie, the “resident gator.” She frequented the boat bay and had babies along the bank opposite the rental canoes.  Each morning and evening for the rest of our trip we stopped to say hello to Sophie. She calmly patrolled the boat bay in the evenings and occupied a small opening or harbor in the lily pads during the day. Just behind her daytime resting spot was a ramp of loose dirt up the bank; no doubt a convenient ascent to her nesting site. Our final morning of the trip, we were finally able to catch a glimpse of one of Sophie’s babies crawling out of the duck weed.

Tuesday, 4:13 PM - After pitching camp in the Stephen C Foster State Park campground, the game with my daughter was to see who would spot our first alligator. So we headed down the Trembling Earth Nature Trail and onto the boardwalk that heads into the swamp. On our way, two woodpeckers chased each other, spiraling around and through the trees; a doe and fawn casually fed on the grass near the cabins, and a Green Anole darted across our path.

Being primarily hikers, I was a bit disappointed to find only a short, 2-mile hiking trail. But it isn’t any fault of the park services, seeing as the majority of the refuge is under water! The trail gets its name from the English translation of the Indian word Okefenokee. The wide, ADA portion of the trail loops on solid, dry ground and is lined on either side with palmettos, downed wood and patches of standing water. A few tall pines and snags stand within the loop. Other than Catbirds and other small, flitting birds, we didn’t encounter any wildlife on that first portion of the trail. Near the back of the loop, a spur of the boardwalk heads 2,000 feet out into the standing water of the swamp. Underneath lies 2 to 3 feet of dark tinted water, but very clear to the bottom, revealing submerged debris, logs, grasses and vegetation.

​We arrived near 4:00 PM at the ranger station. I found the park more populated than I had imagined; several cars in the parking lot, retired couples occupying the rockers of the registration office porch, and sauntering along the drive. Each pier was occupied by a lure-casting hopeful.  As we toured the two campgrounds hunting for a suitable spot, our first wildlife encounter was a single Wild Turkey jenny. We selected the yellow-placarded site #9 as our home. Our first order of business was picking a shady retreat, for the day had considerably heated up, and dousing ourselves with bug repellent to back off the annoying “flocks” of gnats and stinging mosquitoes.

Upon arriving to work this morning, my eye was again attracted to the willows and taller pines above the small creek between the shelter and the jail. Hundreds of birds were perched in the trees and making a good bit of noise. I first recognized the red breasts of over 50 American Robins, but had to take aim with my zoom lens to identify the rest… gray backs, yellow bellies, black masks… over a hundred Cedar Waxwings (Bombycilla cedrorum) perfectly disguised among the pine cones, like masked bandits hoping to hide from the law! Groups would take flight, circle a bit, then return to the same or nearby tree.

The 8 o’clock forced me into the office to begin dealing with the day. A voicemail and email from Channel 2 News let me know the anti-tethering proponents were busy last night. Another day of winter weather and this is how it goes. At least we got off work at 3:30 PM due to the threat of wintery precipitation. 

Walton County, Georgia