Volunteer Spotlight: Corinne and David Ramage

Francis Beidler Forest is an 18,000-acre bird and wildlife sanctuary tucked away in Harleyville. It has two parts: 1) the cypress-tupelo hardwood forest and swamp, the world’s largest, virgin swamp forest, and 2) the new Grasslands-Woodland Trails that wind through the woods and an open field where young, recently planted Longleaf Pines stand tall.

My husband, David, and I have had an enriching and fulfilling past 3 years of volunteer work at Beidler. Although scheduled to volunteer once a month, we make ourselves available whenever help is requested on special projects. Among my volunteer duties… I have cleaned and filled the many birdfeeders at the entrance to the Grassland-Woodland Trail and also noted the birds visiting for the center’s record. I have seen Painted Buntings, Indigo Buntings, Blue Grosbeaks, Goldfinches, various warblers, many cardinals, doves, chickadees, sparrows, and a few stray turkeys.

Of special note… Once while filling the birdfeeders, I stood on a log reaching for one of the feeders, and when I clunked the feeder on the same log to dislodge some wet seed, I disturbed a Canebrake Rattlesnake with 11 rattles. It slithered away and disappeared into the underbrush quickly, but not before I took a few documentary photos with my phone like a good Master Naturalist.

For two seasons, I gathered data from the Bluebird boxes that span about 2 miles of trails. I was able to observe everything from nest building, egg laying, the hatching, and the growth of the baby birds – all while fighting off fire ants, ticks, and Carolina Wasps. I did get stung twice by one wasp while trying to clean out a used nest. Luckily, I had my BiteMD pen with me. Yikes, that was painful!

While cleaning off the storyboards on the Woodland Trail, I saw two female Bobolinks and one male in a neighboring field, and a black Mink darted across my path only 20 feet away! Sorry no photos. I chased after the Mink, but it was very fast then froze somewhere under the brush, and I had to abandon the mission.

As a volunteer, I have also cleared the boardwalk trail of debris after storms, checked the cumaru planks on the boardwalk for damage, painted shadow boxes for Audubon to be used for birds nesting on the ocean beaches, helped with events at the location, assisted with banding of the magnificent Prothonotary Warblers, observed their nesting habits, helped with the weekly monitoring of the baby Prothonotary Warbler chicks in their nests in the swamp, entered bird banding data into the computer, and reported and documented lightning strikes in the swamp.

Over the past 3 years, I have seen baby armadillos, multiple Canebrake Rattlesnakes, many Cottonmouths and Rat Snakes, turtles (Yellow Bellied Sliders, Cooters, Snapping Turtles, a Mud Turtle and a Spotted Turtle), deer, otters, alligators, Barred Owls, spiders galore and birds aplenty including, songbirds, warblers and Kinglets.

I did not see the Bobcat that visited, but I did see the elusive Winter Wren – and the Otters! There were 2 babies born this year, and it has been fun to catch them eating, swimming in lazy circles, and playfully chasing each other.