Elephant Man: 22 October 2015

IBWOH's:  Brian Carlisle, Chris Carlisle.

Summary:  The Carlisle boys hike seven miles through wooded swamps and bottomland hardwood forest, covering much familiar ground in the northern Pascagoula WMA.  Beginning in the clear, cool hour before dawn, we followed Hollow Man Road south from the Hutson Lake area, walking quietly, stopping every few minutes to listen and observe.  Woodpecker activity was high.  We observed multiple individuals each of pileated, red-headed, red-bellied, and downy woodpeckers, as well as flickers and yellow-bellied sapsuckers.

 Photo:  Brian Carlisle.

 Photo:  Brian Carlisle.

Photo:  Brian Carlisle.

Towards the south end of the road, we bore hard right, down a newly-cleared trail that led us to a high bank overlooking the Pascagoula River.  From there we traveled overland, hoping to come to the shallow lake by the baldcypress we call Hollow Man; but we had come too far south, and presently found ourselves in unfamiliar woods, younger than the neighboring bottomland and swamp forest, and which included an odd scattering of middle-aged live oaks.  Presently we came out far below Hollow Man, near a gravel road and boat launch along the shores of an eddy adjoining the River.  Luckily for us, the current drought has much of the eddy high and dry, and we made our way along its shores to Hollow Man with little difficulty, encountering families of both white ibis and otters along the way. 

 A massive red oak.

 A dry cypress-tupelo swamp forest.

Photo:  Brian Carlisle.

A large downed limb, possibly from an oak or tupelo, showing what we thought could be scaling of the still-tight bark. 

A telling sign. 

 We believe it to be marks left by the incisors of a beaver.

 Photo:  Brian Carlisle.

Photo:  Brian Carlisle.

 A large, mossy tupelo showing interesting scaling.  Scaling was evident on both sides of the tree.

 This could be pileated woodpecker work.

 A strip of bark on the ground below the scaling.

Dry, open cypress forest.

 Photo:  Brian Carlisle.

 Photo:  Brian Carlisle.

White ibises, two adults and a juvenile.  (Photo:  Brian Carlisle.)

This family of four watched us and made hissing noises for a few minutes before vanishing.  The fourth one slipped beneath the surface just as Brian took this photo.  

 Otter fare in these parts:  gar.

From Hollow Man we bore eastward, towards the south end of a slough complex where the titan
cypress we call Lord God Tree lurks.  With him in eyeshot, we turned away and hiked southward through mostly dry cypress-tupelo swamp forest bordered on both sides by mature bottomland.  In the late winter and early spring months, a strong channel flows down its middle, and years of flows have left the swamp floor a bizarre network of exposed roots, with the trees themselves forced into strange shapes and ways of growth by the current.  Here and there we happened upon the remains of mammoth cypresses, their stumps washed smooth by the water into the fashion of stones.

 Foot of a huge spruce pine, some yards from Hollow Man.

 The road east from Hollow Man runs through some impressive bottomland forest.

Back into the swamp.  Photo:  Brian Carlisle.

  Photo:  Brian Carlisle.

Photo:  Brian Carlisle.

 Too bad this cavity is not about 20-30 feet higher up...

 The smooth, water-polished bones of an ancient forest lord.

Brian found this wizened, gnarled old cypress among the labyrinthine network of roots, bohemian tupelo, and polished antique stumps.

He is not as large as some we have encountered, but I believe him quite old nonetheless.

I call him Elephant Man, after John Merrick.

About 2 1/2 feet in length.  Cottonmouths seem to favor still, muddy pools in the swamp.

We came upon several of these small, modest flowers along a stretch of the dry stream bed.

 

After some research, Brian discovered that these are Nodding Ladies' Tresses orchids.

 There were several interesting woodpecker cavities in the swamp forest.

Photo:  Brian Carlisle.

 Photo:  Brian Carlisle.

Photo:  Brian Carlisle.

After a few hundred yards, we came out on the gravel road again; but now we continued southward until it ended, making for a distant, lonely oxbow named Pierce Lake.  The road ended well short of Pierce, and we stumbled through thick undergrowth and thick woods until we spied its waters.  By that time, we had been hiking nearly continuously for about six hours.  The day had turned warm and overcast.  Knowing we had a long return hike ahead of us, we resisted the temptation to explore the woods around Pierce, and turned away, leaving him for another day.

Nearly-dry swamp forest near Pierce Lake.  Red-headed Woodpeckers were abundant here.  Photo:  Brian Carlisle.

Photo:  Brian Carlisle.

Photo:  Brian Carlisle.

Thick cypress woods along the north shore of Pierce Lake.

Gulf Fritillary on blue mistflower.  Photo:  Brian Carlisle.

Red-headed Woodpecker (RHWO) feather on a cypress knee.

Conclusions:  It is not an ideal time for the searcher of Ivorybills in south Mississippi, but it is damn near close.  (Upon further reflection, I don't know that there is an 'ideal' time.)  Deer season is not yet in full swing, though we passed the trucks of hunters and their dogs elsewhere in the WMA, and heard shotgun blasts in the woods on the other side of the River.  The day was a good mix of stalking and surveying; and we were rewarded by the discovery of new and interesting woodpecker cavities and the occasional inconclusive scaling, as well as of Elephant Man.  Finding these old relict cypresses, holdovers from another, long-vanished world, has become an unforeseen joy to us, and we now habitually scan the swamp forests for their towering presence.

No effort this challenging can long be sustained without the assistance and encouragement of loved ones and friends, particularly long-suffering spouses who worry and must give up precious time with their husbands for what many would call a fool's errand.  Brian's lovely wife Lindsey, and my own vision of loveliness Susanne, are a constant source of encouragement and understanding.  It makes all the difference.  Thanks, then, to The Wives.

We have made some good friends during our search for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, most particularly Mark Michaels and Frank Wiley of Project Coyote, whose advice and opinions have been both invaluable and enjoyable.  Persons interested in current work regarding the species, as well as Ivorybill lore, would do well to dedicate some time to their website.  I also count as friends "Cyberthrush" at the IVORY-BILLS LiVE???!... site, and Bill Benish at the Campephilus Woodpeckers blog, and would like to thank them (and Mark and Frank as well!) for including our KINTS blog on their list of Ivorybill links.

Thanks also to a fellow Ivorybill enthusiast and new friend, Mr. Dean Hurliman, who has recently been a source of much encouragement.  Dean, I hope that our words and pictures find their way as needed into your art, which will surely long outlast the both of us.

So as I walk in old Ivorybill country with both my brother and those I call brother, I know that we are not alone in the Quest, and in our great hope.

Goff the Great: Big Swamp, 13 October 2015

IBWOH:  Chris Carlisle.

Summary:  I have long sought to explore the four lakes dominating the northernmost reaches of Big Swamp -- Bilbo Dead River, Wells Lake, Goff Dead River, Woodard Dead River, and Peterson Lake, as well as the smaller Hog Pond to their southeast.    Until recently, these lakes have been almost impossible for me to access, due to the Pascagoula River to the east, private property to the north, Black Creek and miles of sloughs and bottomland to the west, and the vastness of Big Swamp to the south.  Recognizing the opportunity afforded by low water levels in the Pascagoula River, I decided to come at the Dead Lakes from the most direct route:  Goff Basin, off the River's east bank.  Within the basin is a small lake, connected to the River by a channel.  (My brother Brian and I explored the impressive second-growth bottomland and swamp forest of Goff Basin last year.)  I planned to launch the kayak into the lake, make my way down the channel to the Pascagoula, then kayak upstream to the bend in the river, near which lay the four lakes of Big Swamp.

I would like to make a note here for the propsective kayaker.  My own small craft, a 10-foot fishing kayak, sports what its manufacturer calls a "self-baling" feature:  four small holes in the pilot area (two near the feet, two near the seat), which allow any water that might get inside the kayak to simply drain out the holes.  Seems good, in theory; but in practice, my brother Brian and I have found that it simply lets water in, albeit in small quantities -- but enough to get one's ass wet; and no one likes a wet ass, not in the field, anyway.  So, a couple of days before this particular trip, I sealed all four holes with waterproof silicone.  I imagined it would keep me dry enough.  More on that later.

I launched my kayak, the Kuhn, about twenty minutes after sunrise, interrupting a duel between two Belted Kingfishers.  It was cool but muggy, and the overcast skies soon produced an intermittent light drizzle.  The water of Goff Eddy (as I call the lake) was very low.  There was no other human activity.  I paddled around the shoreline, following a snowy egret.  American coots peered at me from here and there among the cypress knees.  The egret led me to a wide channel, which narrowed to a trickling stream among river birches and black willows.  Eventually, the egret winged away, and after scouting ahead, I dragged the kayak the hundred or so yards through tall grass and muck, following the course of the stream to where it drained into the Pascagoula.

Goff Eddy.  Beaver dam at center of photo.

The channel from Goff Eddy to the Pascagoula, now a mere trickle.  There were many freshwater mussels in the channel nearer the River.

There he lay, the "Singing River" as he is known locally, friendly and lazy, now withdrawn far from his normal banks.  A great blue heron struggled into the air from the opposite shore, croaking at me before disappearing south beyond a bend in the river.  Behind the narrow bank where he'd been fishing, a timber-strewn bluff rose, topped with what looked to be loblolly pines, an uncommon (but encouraging to me) sight so close to the Pascagoula, which normally suffers only spruce pines.

 Piney bluff overlooking the River's east bank.  Pines give mixed forest habitat greater dimension, providing additional food sources in the form of pine nuts; mature pines are often killed by lightning, and rot quickly thereafter.  I believe it no coincidence that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker's dramatic disappearance from much of its historic range coincided with the destruction of the South's great longleaf pine forests in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.

Here, I stage a photo with a large, pretty musselshell.

The sky to the north had turned a dark, gunmetal gray.  Now a trio of small shorebirds (probably Least Sandpipers -- I am terrible at shorebird identification) guided me, twittering and flying a few yards northward along the wide, sandy riverbanks whenever I drew too close.  Not far along, I spotted a large, dark bird, squatting very still atop a dead pine on a bluff above the eastern shore.  I drew my binoculars, but it was too far away at first; I decided that it was probably a fish crow.  After some minutes of paddling and watching the shorebirds, however, I was surprised by a flash of large white and black wings from another bird near the first, which promptly flashed its own similarly colored wingfeathers.  I hurriedly put down my paddle and fumbled beneath my life-vest for my binoculars, but by the time I had withdrawn them, the current of the River had turned the fickle Kuhn nearly 180 degrees.  I struggled to regain my composure, and craned my neck around to see the birds; but then I heard the familiar laughing call of a Pileated Woodpecker.  I replaced my binocs, resumed my course, and did not curse the bird.

 There's that 20% chance of rain they forecasted.

I humbly ask that if the reward for solid evidence of the Ivorybill's continued existence still stands, that it be doubled to whomever is skilled enough to get a photo of it from a moving kayak.

As before, the kayak ground along the riverbed when I was not paying attention; but I was in no hurry, though I knew I likely had a decent hike still ahead of me.  I passed a tattered blue tarp and an old camper shell, seemingly tossed thoughtlessly upon a high bluff above the west bank.  I wondered how they got to that place, where I have wanted to walk for so long.

After a half mile or so of paddling upstream against the gentle current, I beached the kayak on an enormous sandbar on the west bank, beyond which I planned to hike into the forest and find one of the big lakes of Big Swamp.  I had to rely on printed maps of Google Earth, since my cell phone had no reception in those parts; I was utterly dependent on my maps, and my compass, the latter a gift from my father years ago.  I wonder sometimes what he would think of my brother and me, prowling these often trackless places, dodging cottonmouths, talking to trees, chasing ghosts.

Here let me say that my modification of the Kuhn's hull was an abysmal failure.  It is true that no water seeped in from under the kayak, as it had before.  However, my paddling invariably drips a not inconsiderable amount of water directly into the kayak, which due to my sealing of the self-baling feature, now had nowhere to go; so it was not long before I sat in a puddle of river water.

I was obliged to drag the Kuhn again, (emptying it, too) this time across a football field's worth of crunching white sand and waist-high grass, to hide it behind a shrubby sycamore.  At that point, the intermittent drizzle became a steady rain.  I quickly donned my rain poncho and surveyed the dark woods before me.  I was not impressed, in part no doubt due to the rain.  The tall grass thinned out to a wild tangle of greenbriar, muscadine, and blackberry briars festooning the willows near the forest edges.  I checked my compass, and plowed ahead.

After a short hike through some wild young woods and a deep, muddy gouge in the forest floor, the trees quickly matured to very nice second-growth bottomland, with many oaks and sweet gums of impressive size.  The going got much easier, as areas that were often flooded were now nice and dry.  Bird life was muted, but I could in any case hear little over the din of rain on leaves.  Now and again I came upon cypresses in the lower areas, and the vines and briars and young trees barred my way again; but presently I spied a large opening in the forest canopy; and a few more yards further in, the glint of water.

Several steep ridges later I looked upon him:  Goff Dead River, still and quiet in his well-aged muddy bed, wrapped in a shroud of mature cypresses.  Then I was faced with a choice, for I knew that I stood above one of the northern (top) ends of the "U" that Goff, being an oxbow, makes: I could continue directly south, along the lakeshore, hoping that I was on the east "stem" of the U, so that I could strike off eastward at some point for the faint trail that my map showed to be not far away.  If, however, I was on the west stem of the U, I would simply walk down to the bend, and be forced back up the east stem.  Goff being a large lake, such a hike would take much of my time.  I decided to take my chances, and continued on a straight line southward, hoping that at some point I would see the lake begin to bend westward, away from me.  Then, I could strike out overland in search of the trail, and possibly explore nearby Wells Lake, too.

But Goff is huge, and his shores are a wild, rugged forest of mature cypress, tupelo, and shagbark hickory.  Magnolias and 50-60 year-old pines crown the ridge overlooking him; many of those pines had blown down years before, probably during Katrina, to rest their crowns in the lake.  I spent the better part of an hour clambering over and under their slick, mossy boles, and stumbling among the cypress knees, before I saw Goff begin his slow bend westward, and knew that I had guessed right.

 The orb weavers are nearly all gone now.  This one makes an impressive last stand by the lakeshore.

Part of the mixed upland/cypress forest surrounding Goff.

 Magnolia grove.

 The reddish tree to the right is a cypress that has had a large part of its bark stripped away.

I have seen cypress bark stripping elsewhere, but this was the most dramatic I have encountered to date.

A likely culprit.

Sadly, even this remote, mighty oxbow is not pristine.

A beer bottle and an old plastic bottle.  There was other garbage evident here and there along the shoreline. 

An old piece of styrofoam.

I was reminded of a quote from one of my favorite films, 1968's Planet of the Apes:  "Beware the beast Man, for he is the Devil's pawn.  Alone among God's primates, he kills for sport or lust or greed.  Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land.  Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours.  Shun him; drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of death."

ATV motors droned in the distance, reminding me that this section of the WMA is open to such motorized traffic.  I grew angry, for the garbage to me defiled this beautiful place; I had a fleeting wish for others to have had had to work as hard as I had to get there, or they would have perhaps felt some reverance.

Shagbark hickory. 

The rain finally passed.  I shed the cumbersome poncho, and climbed one of the lower ridges to rest.  I had a Milky Way bar in memory of Mr. Kuhn.  After a few minutes, I dug out my compass, stood up, and bid farewell to Goff.

At that point I noticed that I did't have my long-suffering walking-stick.  It's the same color as nearly everything in the woods.  I looked around the ridge, then remembered letting it rest upon a doubled cypress knee while I took pictures of garbage.  Being rather tired already, and knowing I still had far to go, I briefly considered pressing on without it; but I could not bear to leave it without at least looking, given all the adventures I'd had with it at my side.  I retraced my steps as best I could, and luckily found it where I'd left it.

I climbed back up the low ridge and bore generally eastward, passing through mixed bottomland interspersed with wild, tangly thickets and a series of interconnected sloughs.  Making my way through the muck along the edge of one slough, I spied this fellow:

This cottonmouth never moved as I made my way around the slough, giving him a wide berth.  I think he might have been asleep.

 Extensive scaling on a mostly-dead snag, likely Pileated Woodpecker work.  I could not determine the tree species.  The bark was still tight upon the dead wood, though the wood itself was soft and easily broken apart near the top.

Downed water oak.  It is actually two trees grown together, nearly fused at their base.

The path I'd been searching for came into view soon enough, and I bore north along it, deciding to make my way back to the River, and leaving Wells Lake for another day.  There were ATV tracks along the trail, but they were rather old.  Many splendid old dominant oaks and sweet gums peopled this part of the forest, along with a goodly number of mature old pines.  A big flock of blackbirds passed through the canopy, and for a long while I heard nothing but their bickering and muttering.  Presently, a beautiful swamp forest came into view to my left; I resisted the urge to go down and walk the open forest floor among the cypress and tupelo trees.

Loblolly pines the size of this one, on a ridge overlooking the dry swamp, are typically 50-60 years old.  This would have been a sapling at the time of the last "selective" timbercutting operation in Big Swamp.

The blackbirds departed.  The trail ended rather abruptly at the bluff overlooking the River where I had spied the old camper shell and the ragged tarp.  Turns out it is an "ATV Storage Area," and there were several of the vehicles there, along with some old aluminum boats and trailers, the rusted corpse of an old Jeep, and quite a bit more garbage strewn about.  

I spied the big sandbar where I'd made landfall earlier, and made my way north along the bluff, down a steep ravine, and walked along the riverside until I found the line in the sand the kayak made as I dragged it to the sycamore.

 Black vultures circle in the direction of Goff Dead River.

I collected some driftwood for my aquariums in the shallow water near the riverbank.

I have heard others speak of the "Singing River," and some have even said that they have heard it sing.  Before I launched the Kuhn for the return paddle, I stood at the water's edge, closed my eyes, and listened, in the manner I have read others do.  I heard the trickle of water, the quick gurgle of fish striking at insects, and the distant calls of birds.  I listened a long time before opening my eyes, and heard little else.

But it'll do.

Conclusions:  The quality of the habitat exceeded the least of my hopes.  Further exploration of this northern corner of Big Swamp is required beyond this brief scouting trip; in my haste to cover as much ground as possible, I was not able to give the forest the kind of close survey needed to find promising cavities and feeding sign.  Unfortunately, it is not likely that I shall return to Goff Dead River any time soon.  Within a month or so, the deer hunting season will be in full swing, and I expect the area is heavily hunted, due to the motorized access.  Later, in December, the waters will likely rise again, making my easy swamp trek of October 13 impossible to duplicate.  But I consider scouting trips such as this one to be necessary, adding to our knowledge of the Pascagoula River Basin and allowing us to make better decisions about where to conduct focused surveys.  Given the enormous size of the area -- the protected lands of the Pascagoula River and its tributaries, along with the DeSoto National Forest, encompass an area that rivals Great Smoky Mountains National Park in size -- there may well be many, many years of scouting expeditions and close surveys ahead.  That is both sobering, and heartening.