female ruby throated hummingbird drinking from a cardinal flower?

appalachian brown

red-spotted purple

damselfly

sycamore creek

striped mud turtle

bass and sunfish

After the cold snaps but before the mosquitoes emerged we headed up to the Great Dismal Swamp NWR in southern Virginia in early April.

We hiked out and back along Washington Ditch, which takes a straight line for nearly the entire 4.5 miles to reach Lake Drummond.

Although there was lots of birdsong, most birds chose to stay high in the treetops. The bright prothonotary warblers were nearly the only ones to come down to human eye level.

Skink and bee

Pearl crescents

Usually a rare sighting for us, there were crowds of zebra swallowtails puddling

Likely a red-bellied watersnake

We also stopped at Merchant’s Millpond, a North Carolina State Park containing a proper cypress swamp. We’d like to go back and rent a canoe at some point.