Atchafalaya Swamp

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Flickr is now limiting the number of photos I can have so these will age out in a year or so.

click photo to enlarge		 We stopped at the Atchafalaya National Wildlife Refuge to take a swamp boat tour. The refuge is between Baton Rouge and Lafayette LA. The water was up 6 to 8 feet above normal because the Mississippi was up high. Because of that, we only saw one alligator, but we did see plenty of wildlife like Osprey. There were also a number of houseboats in the swamp used by hunters. They will come out on weekends to go hunting.

click photo to enlarge		 The young man below was a true Cajun who did the swamp boat tours. The refuge covers 44,000 acres so is very large and is encompassed be 1.5 million acres of hardwood swamps, lakes and bayous. The basin's wooded wetlands also provide vital nesting habitat for wood duck, and support the nation's largest concentration of American woodcock. Bald eagles, ospreys, swallow-tailed kites, and Mississippi kites can occasionally be seen soaring overhead.

click photo to enlarge