DUCK RIVER UNIT – TENNESSEE NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE.
Day 205 – It was around 50 degrees this morning when we got up, cloudy. A front is coming through & it will be warm today, rain tonight, and tomorrow should be sunny & beautiful. Today we’ll go to the Tennessee NWR Unit closest to the campground, Duck River. There hasn’t been much information about this Unit, so we don’t know what we’ll find. It’s primarily for hunting and fishing. The Unit farthest south is fairly unaccessible, so we’re confining our visits to Duck River today and the much larger Big Sandy Unit with its new Visitor’s Center and lots to do, all day tomorrow; it is located about an hour north of our campground.
We packed our lunches and left before 10 a.m.; it was already in the 60’s. On the way out of the State Park, we stopped and reserved another night here. It took us about ½ hour to get to our destination. The drive was really nice. LOVE those small, winding TN roads through the hills! The trees are filling in more every day. Spring has definitely sprung.
The Duck River Unit turned out to be fantastic. The only literature we’d been able to get our hands on about this specific Unit was brochures about hunting & fishing regulations. We were pleasantly surprised to find many well-maintained roads throughout the Refuge, some in the woods, but most along the waters of the Duck River or the Tennessee River. There were a couple of trails, one leading to a viewing blind overlooking many Great Egrets. One was an interpretive trail called the Blue Goose Boulevard Wildlife Interpretive Drive. There were several boat launches and a long dike we drove over with water on both sides. Also, a beautiful river/swampland with Cypress Trees. It was NOT just all about hunting & fishing, and I guess because it was not advertised as having these roads and being so accessible to the public, there was hardly anyone on the roads. We spent the whole day there. We saw Bald Eagles, Vultures, Osprey, Red-winged Blackbirds, various Ducks, a snake, lots of turtles, beautiful fields of flowers, Woodpeckers building a nest inside a Wood Duck Nesting Box, 90 Great Egrets (we counted them for the eBird Cornell App), Great Blue Herons, Canada Geese, butterflies, Killdeer, Belted Kingfisher, Bluejays, and Crows. And those were the ones we could identify. Awesome. The sky darkened and the scenery was gorgeous with the wildflowers and the dark blue clouds. The temperature topped out at 81 degrees.
Click any picture below to see a slideshow.
It was around 4 p.m. when we got back to the RV. The girls were happy to see us in their own sleepy, lazy way. We went out near the creek and sat out reading our books until it started to rain, close to 6 p.m. A great day.
Love the turtles!!!!