Necedah NWR and Roche-A-Cri State Park

There was a lot of wildlife to be seen at Necedah National Wildlife Refuge. Our list included snapping turtle, painted turtles, sandhill cranes, a rose breasted grosbeak, white tailed deer, ducks, geese, coots, trumpeter swan, squirrels...but no sign of caterpillars or chrysalis of the Karner blue butterfly.

We weren't even all the way to the Visitor Center when we ran across Wildlife Biologist Jon Olson and his just captured snapping turtle.  She was enormous, and very unhappy to be in the back of his truck.

Many thanks to Jon for sharing his time and his experience with us!  At one time snappers were being killed because they ate baby ducklings, but research indicated this was not their most common meal and not a threat to the survival of their species.  Lots of interesting information on snappers here. 

The Visitor Center was almost a let-down after that encounter, but I gotta admit that they had a really nice trail system that traversed a couple of different habitats.

While we were walking along the boardwalk we noticed there was a controlled burn going on, and we got to see it a little closer up when we drove around the refuge.



It looked like some carp might have gotten stranded when the water rose with all the spring rains.  Something was dragging them up onto the boardwalk and helping to clean up the mess they left behind.

Kind of gross, so I'll move on to some nicer wildlife shots.



We were very curious about what might be living in the burrows...anyone have any ideas?

After we left the refuge we had a quick lunch and headed over to Roche-A-Cri State Park to see their petroglyph/pictograph panel.  Unfortunately it was quite disappointing, but maybe anything is after seeing the ones in Utah.

The wall was thick with graffiti, and even with the help of the sign all we could locate was the above pictograph of a humanoid figure in red.  We stuck around as long as we could, but the first mosquitos of the season were swarming around the platform and we had to escape!  More stories from Wisconsin tomorrow!