Buzzard Swamp Wildlife Management Area is a partnership project area shared by the Pennsylvania Game Commission and the Allegheny National Forest. We visited this vast wetland system and hiked an out-and-back on its main loop trail for about 2.5 miles. Pleasantly surprised by the beauty and the richness of wildlife here, we could have stayed the whole day but decided to make a half-day of it due to the heat and biting flies and my big black dog being uncomfortable with both.
We took our time and admired every view, pond, meadow, and lake and were pretty much awed by it all. With over 1,200 acres of protected wetlands, a chain of ponds and lakes with large wetland marshes is partly managed by humans with small culvert and sluice gates but the real water managers were the beavers and muskrats. We found evidence of both everywhere we went from beaver dams and beaver lodges to muskrat cattail huts along a main gravel road. There were deer, so many birds, and plenty of scat on the path - coyote, mink, raccoon, even fisher.
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| Beaver dam against the road |
Butterflies and dragonflies were everywhere in the road, most feeding on salts found in scat piles or preying upon the flies that hung around the scat. Monarchs were common thanks to vast meadows of Milkweed, Indian Paintbrush, and other host plants. The beaver-made wetlands are critical habitat for two Clubtail Dragonfly species of concern in Pennsylvania. We stopped at Pond #5 (out of 15) for a water and snack break and watched families of Barn Swallow swoop out of the culvert we were sitting over, We could hear the young begging from the nests inside the culvert.
An Osprey adult flew with her two newly-fledged young who were just earning their wings over the largest lake behind us. A juvenile Broad-winged Hawk flashed through a spruce woods that ringed with Red Maple and grassy marsh. We had just experienced an adult Broad-winged Hawk wheel at eye-level over the truck on the rough road up from the Clarion River, so seeing a juvenile within the hour was a treat.
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| Milkweed |
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| Spruce opening |
This is the kind of place that whispers to you when you hike through. The wind in the meadows creates a kind of sigh that is perfectly punctuated by Red-winged Blackbirds. You can almost hear the flap of Tiger Swallowtail Butterflies as they cruise close to your ears. Green Frogs and Red-eyed Vireo compete to be the loudest until the Marsh Wren shows up. To not stand still and listen to the chorus of meadow insects and the whirrrr of dragonflies over the ponds is a mistake. Take the time to stop and do nothing else but listen.
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Looking out across this vast basin of ponds and marshes I felt somewhat reassured that everything will be alright. Migrating waterfowl will begin arriving by September and Atlantic Flyway will again be full of birds moving steadily south. There was something tremendously hopeful in how this wetland complex was so full - absolutely crammed - with animals, birds, bugs, reptiles, and amphibians. We came across a Snapping Turtle nest that had survived predation and showed the prints of tiny turtles fanning out from the nest to the edge of a pond. The cycles of life large and small wound round and round, full of promise.
While on our camping break in the Allegheny National Forest I had learned about the passing of Joanna Macy, American Buddhist and great lover of all things wild. I'll write more about Macy in my companion blog Uphill Road over on Substack later this week, but here in the middle of the great wet meadows I had the sense that this was a place I could find her if I needed her, a traveling poet spirit on the breeze in "widening circles" through the watery landscape not unlike and nor far from her Western New York childhood home.
“To be alive in this beautiful, self-organizing universe—to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it—is a wonder beyond words."
- Joann Macy, World as Lover, World as Self (1991)
Notes:
Allegheny National Forest trail map for Buzzard Swamp WMA https://www.alleghenysite.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Buzzard-Swamp-Trail.pdf
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