Things that go bump in the night

It was a cloudy, windless night. The only sources of light came from the nearly full moon filtering dimly through the cypress trees, and our headlamps bouncing along the boardwalk. The shrieks of caterwauling Barred Owls echoed eerily through the swamp, and the light pattering of falling cypress needles sounded like soft rain all around us.

As we scanned the swamp with our headlamps, we saw that we were surrounded by hundreds of tiny pinpricks of light. Some of these reflections, we discovered, were frog eyes, which frequently disappeared with a loud "SQUEAK" and a plop into the water.

One of the many Cuban Treefrogs we encountered

However in an unexpected turn of events, many more of these iridescent pinpricks turned out to be spiders! And big ones, at that.

Fishing spider with an egg sac

The strangeness continued as we passed through one of the rain shelters and found a round, fluffy object with a feathered tail nestled in a corner of the ceiling. We stared in shock and bewilderment for several seconds before realizing that it was a bird (a Carolina Wren, to be exact). But what was it doing? Is that how birds sleep? We were making quite a lot of noise -- why didn't it wake up and flee?

It turns out that dozing beneath the cover of these rain shelters is fairly common practice for the Carolina Wrens that inhabit Corkscrew. As we continued on our nighttime escapade, nearly every shelter that we came across contained at least one fluffed up wren snoozing the night away, seemingly oblivious to the curious humans blundering about beneath them.

Among the frogs and the spiders and the birds, we also bumped into a few other critters in the night, including some elusive geckos, a surprised raccoon, and even an opossum staring inquisitively down at us from its perch up in a tree.

With Halloween fast approaching, it's easy to get into the spirit of wandering the swamp after dark. Who knows what unexpected things we may find next time?

~Lara