Berry College Campus Again

I daydream about living in Georgia when it was a wilderness unmodified by man, and I spend a lot of time thinking about the flora and fauna as it used to be.  So it’s nice when I get a chance to take a real stroll in nature, even if it is just the ruined remnants.  My favorite accessible natural area is Berry College Campus.  I always see more wildlife there than anywhere else I’ve ever visited.  Deer are abundant here but I couldn’t get any decent photos of them yesterday.  The bird life is varied: bald eagles, peregrine falcons, turkeys, Canadian geese, crows, killdeer plovers, bluebirds, pileated woodpeckers, and many others.  Like the deer, the birds didn’t want to cooperate with my camera either.  I had time for just a short walk yesterday and found some interesting trees.  Trees are much easier to photograph than animals.

A view of Lavender Mountain in the background.

I think this southern red oak, also known as Spanish oak, had a diameter of about 4 feet.

I was impressed with a southern red oak (Quercus falcata) that I had found.  It appeared to have a diameter of about 4 feet at human shoulder height.  But then I looked up the record.  Georgia has the national champion southern red oak in Upson County with a diameter of about 11 feet at 4.5 feet above the ground.  Wow!  I’d like to see that one.

Montane chestnut oak.  Also pretty thick.

The same tree as above from a different angle.  Note how twisted it is at the base.

I think this montane chestnut oak (Q. prinus) had a diameter of at least 4 feet, but it was hard to judge because of the twisted shape.  The state record montane chestnut oak tree in diameter is found in Fulton County and it is between 5 to 6 feet.  This tree might come close to that tree in circumference.  I’ll have to bring a tape measure with me next time I visit Berry College campus.

White oak with a diameter of about 4 feet.

The white oak (Q. alba) pictured above doesn’t even come close to the Georgia state record white oak which is found in Fayette County and is at least double in size.

This is the Georgia state record white oak.  It’s double the size of the specimen I saw yesterday.

Note the squirrel’s nest up in this white oak tree.

The squirrels are happy with all the oak trees on Berry College Campus.  Fox squirrels are listed as a species that occurs on the Berry College Wildlife Management Area, but I’ve only seen gray squirrels.  I won’t believe they really have fox squirrels here until I see one myself.

This view from Little Texasville Road in Berry Wildlife Management Area.  I love this kind of landscape…big old trees surrounded by open grassland.  I envision Pleistocene landscapes in Georgia resembling this.  Just add some bison, horses, and mammoths to this scene.

The Berry WMA located behind Berry College Campus is the largest wildlife management area in Georgia.  This time of year, hikers aren’t supposed to walk on the trails.  Hunters might accidentally shoot them.

 

 

Trail #97 in the Cohutta Wildlife Management Area

I think the name of Trail #97 is the Etterle Creek Trail, but I didn’t write it down and now I can’t remember for sure.  

Our trip 2 weeks ago to Land Between the Lakes was an 8 hour drive.  I decided to break 1 of the travel days in half and stay in Chatsworth, Georgia, so we could hike the Birdsong Trail on Grassy Mountain.  When we got to the mountain the paved road became a gravel road.  The gravel road was in good condition, but  I’m never too thrilled with driving on unpaved roads.  I would have kept going because the trail sounded like a great bird-watching destination, but my daughter suggested we stop and walk on any of the perfectly lovely trails that we kept passing by.  On the route to Grassy Mountain, CCC Road turns into Lake Conasauga Road which leads to the Birdsong Trail.  I didn’t know if we had reached the latter road yet and had no idea how long it would take to get there.  Winding mountain roads are slow-going, so because we had a 4 hour drive to Clarkesville ahead of us anyway, I agreed to stop at Trail #97 instead.

The trail is little more than a wide ledge between a steep mountain rise on one side and a creek gorge on the other.  The trail is about 400 yards long and dead ends at a gorgeous shoal on the creek where enormous Paleozoic-age boulders rest.  Dominant trees in the adjacent forest are white oak, sweetgum, and hemlock.  The white oaks include 2 different leaf variations.  Some of the white oak leaves had such fat leaves, I thought I was looking at a different species, however, upon studying a tree field guide, I learned that some white oaks do grow much fatter leaves than others of the same species.  Sweetgum prefers warm moist conditions; hemlock prefers cool moist conditions, so both species reach a happy medium in this locality which is southern but at a high elevation.  I only saw 1 dead hemlock tree here.  I walked about a half mile up the road where the trail begins and could see in the distance a whole hillside of healthy hemlock trees.  Evidentally, the trees here are still unaffected by the scourge that’s wiping them out elsewhere.  Also growing in the nearby woods were mountain laurel, beech, white pine, river birch, loblolly pine, shortleaf pine, and post oak.

Big boulders across the trail make for a bit of a rugged hike. 

View of the gorge.

A healthy hemlock tree.  Almost all the ones I saw at this locality were healthy still.

Another view of the gorge from the trail.

The trail is a wide ledge with a gorge on one side and steep rock like this on the other.

I thought prohibition ended. 

Boulders at a shoal at the end of the trail.

A ten inch tall waterfall!

The creek is eroding through to bedrock.

The hillside in the background is an almost pure healthy stand of hemlocks.

I saw 2 species of birds–a belted kingfisher, and a common crow, but it was the latter that had successfully captured a fat minnow.  I’d never seen a crow catch a fish before.  Kingfisher’s are interesting birds that burrow and nest in muddy creek banks.  Two human fishers were fly-casting for trout at a bridge down the road.  The water here was cool and tasted good.