Reed Bingham State Park - Adel, GA

Thursday Oct 26^th we visited Reed Bingham State Park in nearby Adel. 

It's a really pretty park with a 375 acre lake. We stopped in and paid our parking fee and consulted the ranger on duty about hiking trails. We also inquired about the GA Land Pass since most of the sites we wanted to visit this week require it. It would be $60pp since we aren't residents. So, we will skip that and check out other birding hot spots in the area.

Most of the hiking trails in the park were closed due to Irma damage. We did hike the 2 or 3 miles of trails that were open. The terrain was varied with pine forest in some areas and wetlands in another area. We didn’t see a lot today. Pretty quiet in there for the most part. We did hear a bunch of turkeys. Then, we saw an owl swoop through the forest and there was a lot of commotion from birds not pleased with the presence of the owl. We saw a good sized buck camouflaged in the forest. He was the biggest one we have seen so far. He turned and thundered off so he didn't stick around for his photo op. 

 boardwalk over the swampy area

 at the end of the boardwalk

 male Cardinal

 pine forest area

Brown-headed Nuthatch

We saw a few Titmice, Carolina wrens, Cardinals, Eastern Phoebes, Woodpeckers and the little Brown Nuthatch, but it was more a day of trying to locate weird sounds in the forest. The Turkeys seemed to be distressed and I heard what was probably a deer crashing through the forest under the boardwalk. Then, the owl had some birds upset. Overall, pretty quiet morning.

We stopped to go have some lunch. We saw a place with wood-fired pizza and it was rated well on TA, but we were less than thrilled with the pizza. 

 downtown Tifton

41 & Main Restaurant in Tifton

After lunch we went back to the park and walked a couple of the loops we didn't get to in the morning and walked the boardwalk again. We heard 2 owls calling to each other. We couldn’t locate them and we really searched hard for them as they were quite loud and called to each other for a long time. The call was the Barred Owl.

 I knew the cotton was ready to be harvested

 the lake in the park

 Eastern Phoebe

 Red-bellied Woodpecker

 Pileated Woodpecker

 these 2 Red-shouldered Hawks were on the same sign

We called it a day and headed home. Tomorrow we will check out a couple of other parks in the area.