Many of you know that I am taking a Master Naturalist class through Charleston County Parks and Rec.  Former island Naturalist Mark Madden, who works at Caw Caw, was instrumental in bringing this class to the area.  Like the Master Gardener program, the class is under the supervision of the Clemson extension department, and graduates agree to provide a certain number of hours of community service.

Each week, the class meets at a different site– in the last five weeks, we have explored the North End of Folly beach, a future county park site in Meggett, and the awesome resource that is Caw Caw itself.  We have helped restore an oyster reef, learned about sustainable seafood, toured the sea turtle hospital, explored the Sewee Shell middens, and visited the Center for Birds of Prey.  I am really enjoying learning about all sorts of different things… one week we even had a short class on how to identify skulls by looking to see what niche the animal occupied in the community.   (If the eyes are closely set, it is likely a predator that needs binocular vision to hone in on prey.  If they are spaced farther apart, perhaps they need to keep a wide view of predators.)

The point of this post is to HIGHLY recommend Caw Caw as a field trip sometime– even if you can’t find a day to set aside for an entire thirteen weeks for the class.  It has a wide variety of fresh and salt marsh ecosystems, and provides a great chance to see most of the unique plant and animal communities found all over the entire state — all in one place. Here are some photos from the first trip at Caw Caw: