Wesselman Woods is an urban nature area. It had a lot of
nice trails to walk, but I don’t think we have ever experienced that many
mosquitos anywhere in the world. We had wipes, but they didn’t seem to care.
The other weird thing was the huge amount of spider webs crossing the trail.
It’s normal to run into a few, especially when you are the first ones on the
trail, but this was the worst we have ever seen. To keep the mosquitos at bay,
we had to walk fast which defeats the purpose of birding. We finally gave up and
decided to just leave. They do have a nice nature center where they have
rescued birds. The place seems to be geared to young children to see the
various birds they have in captivity. Inside the center are lots of displays
for kids and places for them to play and even an area glassed in so you can
watch the birds come to the feeders and the forest close to the building. Could
have been a peaceful place to spend some time (on the trails and in the
center), but the screaming children and the mosquitos and the spider webs were
not a big plus.
Downey Woodpeckers at the feeder
Our next stop was to visit the Angel Mounds State Historic
Site. They had a very interesting display of the Indians that lived there and
it seems no one knows why they went extinct. Outside, you could see a
recreation of their village. Honestly, it was better birding there than at the
Nature Center.
Yellow-breasted Chat
female Scarlet Tanager & Yellow-breasted Chat
Indigo Bunting
replica of a house
We searched for a place to have some lunch and went with a
Greek place. The food was good.
Acropolis Restaurant
Gyro
Souvlaki
Greg had checked into a museum that had science/nature
movies, so we went there after lunch. The Evansville Museum of Arts, History
& Science is a general museum located in the Historic District in Downtown
Evansville. We stopped to look at the Ohio River before going into the museum.
the theater
We didn’t tour the museum, but we got tickets to the next
“movie” in the panoramic Koch Theater. Well, it turned out to be a solar system
presentation and not one of their science or nature movies. It was well done,
but it was narrated live by a guy who literally put me to sleep. Ah well, not a
very exciting day as a whole.
Tomorrow, we move from here to Litchfield, Illinois.
Too bad about the bugs...
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