January 21, 2015 Ocean Springs, Mississippi

We got up before the crack of dawn to go on a tour of the Mississippi Sandhill Crane wildlife refuge.

The Mississipi cranes are an endangered species and non migratory. At one time there were only 30 left in the world. Their habitat the wetland pine savannah has almost disappeared, so they had no where to nest. At this refuge they have brought the number back up to 130 and working on raising that number.

We only saw about 3 cranes- some of the better bird watchers saw a few more. But we saw a great egret in the tree, a bald eagle on the nest.  After the crane tour we returned to  Davis Bayou where we are camped and  kayaked the bayou. In the first photo the third photo are mussels attached to the grass stems at low tide, a snowy egret and barnacles.  The bayou has marsh grass and here long leaf  and slash pine trees. We learned that since robins winter in the south , they know when spring is when the robins leave. Totally different from the north where when you see robins you know spring is around the corner. Another woman told me that when they see robins they know it will be cold.

 

John ahead of me in the bayou. Me with the snowy egret.

 

When we went out of the park there were some houses along the waterway. This pier had crab traps on it. Can you imagine throwing a couple off the pier, then having crab for dinner?

The channels eventually got very narrow, here I am paddling more grass rather than water. John coming out of one of the channels.

 

Parts of the bayou had live oaks instead of pines lining the banks. After boating we went into Ocean Springs – the nearest town to check it out and grocery shop.

It is a lovely little town with oak lined streets. You don’t want to drive your motor home through town, many of the oaks are very low clearance.  The oak trees are protected, it is against the law to cut off the branches and builders have to build around them. But we had the car and forged on.  On the south side of town is the gulf and a white sand beach. The slips in the marina had hooks ups, you can live on your boat here.

  

The Crooked Feather sculpture  is a thirty foot  sculpture depicting Ocean Springs original  colony of American Indians carved from a cypress log 5 feet wide and 11 feet thick.