Crawdad Road March 27 & 28, 2026

De Soto National Forest road 406B

Patty and I are very fortunate to have the De Soto National Forest within minutes of our house. This weekend, Friday morning and Saturday evening we drove the mile long Forest Road 306B or better known to us as the Crawdad Rd. We named it that years ago because someone dumped a couple baskets full of the remains of cooked Crawdads on the creekbank. I caught sight of a few birds Friday morning but never long enough to raise the camera, while Patty, walking and riding in her birding chair, identified 32 species. As many of you know, I’d be lucky to hear Janis Joplin belting out Piece Of My Heart from the front row, but Patty’s ability to identify bird songs constantly amazes me!

Because I was not seeing birds I entertained myself by taking nature photos and listening to the end of The Correspondent, by Virginia Evans, which I recommend — I’ve added a review in Reading Room READING ROOM, Recommendations.

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I won’t tell you what I said right before clicking the shutter

Orb weavers
Parawixia auday species of Orb weavers (Araneidae) (I am not positive of this identification)

Long Leaf pine -Buds and "Candle": The bud is large, prominent, and covered in silvery-white, papery fringed scales. When the tree breaks the grass stage, a white, candle-like shoot emerges, which later turns brown and scaly as it turns into bark. — Long Leaf pine -Buds and “Candle”:
Long Leaf pine -Buds and “Candle”: The bud is large, prominent, and covered in silvery-white, papery fringed scales. When the tree breaks the grass stage, a white, candle-like shoot emerges, which later turns brown and scaly as it turns into bark.

On Saturday evening we went specifically looking for the Red-cockaded woodpeckers returning to their nest for the night. The red-cockaded woodpecker’s recovery is a tremendous victory for the Endangered Species Act,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The woodpecker is a fantastic umbrella species whose recovery benefits hundreds of other plants and animals across the Southeast. This recovery shows we can recover the ecosystems, in this case long-leaf pine forests, that species need to survive.

Unfortunately, the love of and preservation of Nature and our fellow creatures has taken a dramatic negative turn in the past year; I will leave those comments for a future opinion in, ON MY MIND, in Ideas & Open Forum.

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