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| baby bog turtle |
The bog turtle is rare in New York State, but has been found in nine different locations in The Great Swamp. The turtle has an official State designation of "endangered", and has a Federal designation of "threatened". The eleven fen community sites found in The Great Swamp, including three rare fens, are prime habitat for the bog turtle. Read more about the bog turtle on the New York State DEC website.
| The following Amphibians and Reptiles are rare and found in the Great Swamp: |
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| The following rare butterflies are found in the Great Swamp: |
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Beaver lodges can often be spotted at the edges of ponded areas. Beaver are both famous and infamous for building their dams and lodges. Their dams have created ponds where there were running streams, and altered our landscape.
The pond provides protection for the lodge the beaver needs to house his young and to hide from predators. A beaver lodge is built by piling up a mound of sticks and mud. The Beaver then gnaws out a chamber inside and packs mud around the outside. If there is fresh mud, it is probably an active lodge. Once inside with his stored food the beaver seldom needs to leave all winter.
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| beaver damage to tree trunks | beaver lodge once located near Rt. 164 in Patterson | beaver prints |
Rabbits are active in this area all year. If you follow the tracks of a rabbit for a few feet along the wet meadow, you may discover a group of twigs cut off from the ground about 1 foot high. The twigs of small shrubs at the edge of a wet meadow make an excellent meal for rabbits.
White-tailed deer are found everywhere in our woods. Deer find the grasses of the wet meadow and the young shrubs of the shrub swamp an excellent place to browse in winter. The wooded sections of the SWAMP are also places to hide during the day.
A welcome sign of the Spring season to come is the sound of the Spring peepers. These small frogs return to the wetlands in late Winter or early Spring to breed. Northern Spring Peepers are about 3/4 - 1 1/2 inches in size and are brown or olive in color. They can jump up to 28 inches and arfe good climbers. Females are typically larger than males, but it is the males that make the distinctive call - females are voiceless. The "peep" can be heard up to 1/2 mile. Eggs are laid in vegetation submerged in water, and tadpoles emerge in 1-2 weeks. The adult frogs leave the wetlands for a woodland habitat. Tadpoles are herbivorous, while adults eat insects, mites, spiders, snails, and just about anything similarly sized that they can find in the soil or leaf cover. Peepers are hard to find because they are well camouflaged, but there sound is hard to miss.
Woodpeckers abound in the wooded sections of the Swamp in both winter and summer. All six of our local woodpeckers can be found in abundance. Not only do they find great meals from the insects hidden in the bark of the many trees in the wooded sections of the Swamp, but the red maples and silver maples and the dead trees make the best nest sites for these cavity nesters. The largest of our local woodpeckers, the Pileated Woodpecker, finds both excellent nest sites and the solitude this bird needs to breed successfully.