Tickfaw State Park

Sunday morning we drove out to the Albany/Springfield area near Hammond to visit Tickfaw State Park, one of my favorite parks! This park has many boardwalks venturing out into the swamp. If you're quiet, you will see plenty of wildlife while on the boardwalks. We saw a doe, squirrels, a crow, cardinals, turtles and alligators!

These are pictures from the boardwalk trail off the visitor center.

This crow was being so loud! He probably didn't like Dave and I walking by him. He kept squawking at us until he finally gave up and flew away. I didn't realize how big crows are until I saw him.

Lots of cypress trees and cypress knees.

There were so many Beautyberry bushes along the trails! Cardinals love them.

Now we moved on to the river trail. We saw so many lubber grasshoppers and orbital weaver spiders.

Raccoon tracks! There were several areas of soft mud, so we saw many animal tracks.

We finally reached the Tickfaw River! Dave reached the river first and we heard a big splash....it was an alligator getting back in the water! It was sunning on the bank and we scared it off. We saw two alligators swimming in the river and we sat on the bank and waited to see if they would swim back to us. Eventually one of them swam near us and I got a few pictures of him. I'd say he was about 5 feet long. Hopefully I will see some huge alligators soon. On Saturday, we are going paddling in the Blind River. Can't wait to see all the wildlife there.