Last week I went to Tulsa’s Oxley Nature Center. I went in search of otters. The staff reports that they are active on Coal Creek at 8 am in the morning. Well I got out there at 8:30 and I didn’t see them, I don’t think. Near the old beaver lodge which they reportedly have taken over I could see that something was moving under the water chasing fish. I didn’t know if they were otters doing the chasing or if it were bigger fish chasing the smaller fish. So another otter failure but for some reason I didn’t mind.

So I started hiking around looking at what I could see.

Oxley has nice wooded areas, lakes, ponds, streams, and swampy areas. All sorts of terrain and it is pretty flat and the trails are all in good shape so it is easy to move around the preserve.

I saw a great blue heron flying around.

And a closeup, sorry for the fuzziness.

I came upon a limpkin. A tropical wetland bird that has a large range in South America and in the USA in Florida. It is an apple snail eater but they can eat other snails. As apple snails have migrated into south Louisiana the Limpkins followed them. Nobody knows why they are in Oklahoma now. Supposedly Oklahoma has seven of them now, three of them at Oxley. They have been here a few years so I guess they like it. You can read the Cornell Labs writeup here.

And way off in a swampy area I saw these waterfowl feeding.

I saw several groups of deer in the preserve.

And a couple of ducks of some sort.

And more deer. I think I saw four small groups of them.

They were staying in the woods. They were being careful but not skittish like deer in hunting areas get.

They are beautiful animals.

I didn’t find the otters but you know the fun is in the looking for, right?

I am linking with Saturday’s Critters.