The Animal Park in The Charles Towne Landing State Park in Charleston, SC

While in South Carolina visiting family, one of the great places we got to see was Charles Towne Landing. There were animals, remains and re-creations of old buildings from the first SC settlement, a great old boat, and a ton of nature to enjoy! 

Fair warning now, I suppose: I do enjoy taking photos of insects and insect-like creatures, so there is one picture below of a very small, very harmless spider. No other insects or arachnids, however, just lots of animals we found in the animal park part of this state park.

Enjoy!

The Aviary Enclosure

Bear with me, folks!

This big guy was right up front near the fence, working the same place over and over with his teeth and paws. He's probably brighter than the average bear and is slowly but surely weakening the structure of the fence so that he can be free. You can't see the rather large enclosure behind him but I assure you that he has a very big place to call his own.

Really, with him only a couple of feet outside of arm's reach, I wanted to pet him. He just looked like a really large, lovable, pet-able puppy dog.

Thankfully, I know better.

Total size, including legs, smaller than the nail of my thumb.

There were a bunch of these little guys dotting the sides of the paths but nothing large and you could easily stay clear of them as long as you didn't wander off the path itself. It was obvious that the staff takes really good care of the grounds, allowing wildlife and wild plants to flourish directly off the walk paths without encroaching on the guests.

As we left, he said "It was good seeing you. Bison!" I didn't even know he was my dad!

It's amazing to think that these huge, alien-looking creatures once roamed this area freely. They simply do not look as though they belong here but would rather be at home in the west somewhere, on a prairie. Instead, they were once indigenous to South Carolina, a state not very well known for its prairie-like climate.

Who you callin' "chicken?"'  ...you thought I was going to go for the easy pun, didn't? Oh no, I'm better than that...

Did you know that the turkey was once put up as an idea to be the national bird of the United States? It's true! Look at the wattles here and you'll see why: You have red, white, AND blue! Apparently they change colors/intensity when excited, which I think means the turkey in front really wanted to be in my friend.

You wanna go, punk?

Does it seem like a bad idea to anybody else that they had the turkeys in the same enclosure that they had the turkey vulture in?

I do understand that the name 'turkey vulture' is because of its coloring and not because turkey is its primary meal but has anybody explained that to the vulture?

Hey, hey, hey!

If you click to make this picture bigger (something you can do on any of the photos in this blog, by the way) you'll see Fiddler Crabs, and in the bottom right there's a bunch of oysters all bunched together!

These were actually over near the boat, nowhere near the animal park part of the park, but I figured they belong here anyway, with the other animals.

I've never actually seen Fiddler Crabs, OR oysters, so this was pretty cool!

The whole trip was a lot of fun and there's a part that we missed so I'm sure we'll have to come back next time we're in the area! I'm told there are often alligators here and I look forward to seeing some; for some reason I'm a bit obsessed with seeing alligators in the wild.