Muscatatuck National Wildlife Refuge & Ewing Bottoms

...Dawn in Ewing Bottoms


Two of my favorite places that I try to visit at least a couple times a year are Muscatatuck National Wildlife Refuge & Ewing Bottoms in south central Indiana. At Muscatatuck nine miles of gravel roads are open sunrise to sunset seven days/week plus eight hiking trails ranging from a fifth of a mile to four miles. These wind thru 7,802 acres of river, creeks, and wetland. In 1966, Muscatatuck Refuge was established using money obtained from the sale of Federal Miratory Waterfowl Stamps, commonly known as Duck Stamps. Muscatatuck is the place to see a river otter BTW. River otters were officially considered extinct in Indiana in 1942. In 1995, state wildlife officials began releasing otters captured in Louisiana into several locations in Indiana. The 25 otters released here have reproduced with such success that several hundred of the critters now call the area home. If you spend any time at all here you will see a river otter. Plus over 280 species of birds have been seen at Muscatatuck!







Waterfowl abounds here



A big piliated woodpecker trashing a dead tree





A familly of otters on the ice



And then every winter there is the spectacle of the sandhill cranes at nearby Ewing Bottoms.








Low wet fields stretch for miles and miles and thousands of sandhill cranes overwinter here. This trip a freight train came thundering by and as I watched several thousand of these huge birds took to the air at once filling the air with their odd cries in a spectacle right out of National Geographic. If you live anywhere within driving distance and like birds this is a cant miss show. Just fill up before leaving town this is literally the middle of nowhere with one lane gravel roads being the main way to get around. In winter when the cranes are there many of these roads flood so its best just to have a full tank and wander around rather than have a set route. And listen every now and then the sound of four or five thousand cranes in a field carries for miles.









If your like me and love old barns you will be in heaven here.

The cranes

Sandhill cranes from Ewing bottoms and Muscatatuck in southern Indiana. With wingspans of six to eight feet and standing close to five feet tall when they gather in flocks of thousands in the flooded fields in winter it's an awe inspiring sight. Their loud calls can be heard for miles. One of the reasons for this remarkably loud and penetrating call is an unusual windpipe. In most birds the trachea passes directly from the throat to the lungs, but in Sandhills it is elongated by forming a single loop which fills a cavity in the sternum. With their wierd calls and odd appearance it's easier to believe that birds are the descendants of the dinosaurs, Sandhills are omnivorous. Sandhill Cranes are generalists and feed on a wide variety of plant tubers, grains, small vertebrates such as mice and snakes, and invertebrates such as insects or worms. Cranes do a great deal of digging with their bills, often penetrating several inches below the surface in search of a morsel. Animals such as snails, crayfish, worms, mice, birds, frogs, snakes, and many kinds of insects are consumed. They also devour acorns, roots, various seeds and fruits, and browse vegetation. Most of the cranes I saw spend the summer in Canada and will leave in the next couple weeks.Sandhill Cranes mate for life and pairs return to the same nesting locations year after year. Cranes can live up to twenty five years at least in the wild and have lived for fifty in captivity.