Donnelley Wildlife Management Area

On Saturday I visited the Donnelley Wildlife Management Area in South Carolina. I moved from Wisconsin to Charleston, South Carolina (about an hour east of the Donnelley reserve) in the fall of 2006. My first fall in Charleston, I learned that a few Whooping Cranes from the eastern migratory flock were wintering in South Carolina. I was excited to learn this, and during a late fall trip to the Donnelley reserve last year, I saw two of the wintering cranes.

My husband and I headed west last weekend to see if we could see the Whooping Cranes that spent this winter in and near the Donnelley reserve. Unfortunately, we didn't see the cranes (they may have already started their spring migration north), but I wanted to share some images with you of the beautiful landscape that surrounds the cranes (and me!) during their winter months in the south.

As we entered the reserve, we noticed that some of the upland areas were recently burned. Land managers do burns like this in the late winter in South Carolina to improve the health of the forest and to help control the risk of dangerous fires (the burns remove fuel - pine needles, leaves and branches - on the forest floor). The reserve also includes a natural stand of longleaf pine - a species of tree that needs fire for its life cycle.

The Donnelley WMA is a wintering area for many different types of waterbirds. We saw many ducks during our visit, including the two mallard ducks pictured below in a tupelo swamp.

Cabbage palmettos (the green, fan-shaped plants below) and live oaks are found in the remaining maritime forests along the coast.

Rice field trunks (below) were historically used to manage water levels in rice fields along the South Carolina coast. Today, staff continue to manage wetlands within the Donnelley reserve using this same method. The trunk (a long hollow box) is built into a dike (an earthen wall surrounding a pond) and doors on both ends of the trunk control the amount of water that enters or leaves the pond. One end of the trunk faces a river or tidal creek, and the other end faces the pond. When the tide rises, water flows from the river or creek into the pond, where it is trapped when the tide recedes. The staff can lower the water level within a pond by simply opening the trunk door and allowing the water to exit between high and low tides (when the water will flow back into the creek or river).

We also say MANY alligators during our visit! In the second image below, the lines in the water are alligators.

Late winter and early spring is when the pine trees release their pollen. In the picture below, the yellow in the water is pollen.

Two signs that spring is near - the live oaks loose their small waxy leaves in the spring (below), and we found these small flowers (violets?), growing in the shade of the oaks and pines.