Panther Swamp National Wildlife Refuge 7/24/2011

You know how it is on a lazy Sunday afternoon when you want to do something but not sure what to do? Well Becky and just hop in the hummer and see where it takes us. This past Sunday afternoon it decided to drive north towards Yazoo City. Which is the home of our Governor Mr. Barber. As you approach Yazoo you take a left and end up at Panther Swamp. We didn't know what to expect and hadn't heard a whole lot about it. Panther Swamp is dominated by Delta bottomland hardwood forests interspersed with numerous wooded sloughs, cypress-tupelo brakes and bayous.
During the afternoon Becky kept saying that she hadn't yet made the shot of the day and then there it was... You'll have to read below to find out.

Here's a little slough with a bunch of white egrets.

And of course we always like to get a good Gator shot.

Reaching for the Sun

this was a very beautiful field

We turned down this one dirt road still looking for the shot of the day and there they were. A humungous field of full grown sun flowers. I knew as soon as we saw them we'd be here a while... ;-)

 It was a very overcast afternoon that eventually gave us a good down pour at home.

Here is the most beautiful flower in the field.

 Another beauty.

What a nice surprise just outside the swamp.

Then we really got a surprise in that we were just about to leave when Becky spotted what she thought was an alligator swimming through the algae. We jumped out real quick and she started snapping off shots. I took the binoculars and looked but it wasn't an alligator. This guy was a little ways off from us and this was the best shot we were able to get. I told Becky that it wasn't a beaver or an otter but it looked like something I'd seen in wildlife shows from South America. I thought is was a Capybara which is a large creature that lives in the amazon region of south America. With doing some more research and talking to a few people it became clear that this was a Nutria Rat. It was a very large one at about 3 to 4 feet long. No one we talked to had ever seen one before. But we learned that they have a paid bounty on them in Louisiana. It seems that the French fur traders brought them into Louisiana to build up a population for the fur industry. They are an invasive and destructive creature. It is believed that they are to blame for burrowing into the levees in New Orleans and weakening them so as they gave way during Hurricane Katrina. In my research I even found some tasty recipes for Nutria Rat. So you never know where the yellow hummer will take us or the sites we will see. Until next adventure.