If you are alert, your ears will tell you more than your eyes. The commotion of cries, croaks, buzzes, whistles, and splashes may resemble a Tarzan soundtrack, but with a little concentration you can isolate each sound. Katydids, cicadas, and tree crickets provide a contrasting backdrop to the bellows of alligators and grunts of pig frogs. Distant choruses of green treefrogs echo faintly as prothonotary, parula, and Swainson s warblers sing from the moss-draped tupelos. As you glide beneath a noisy rookery of squabbling egrets and herons, a soaring swallowtail kite gives its klee klee klee cry.
Barred owls begin their morning hoot-fest, triggering a gobbler to sound off on the high levee.
Despite the clamor, your passing does not go unnoticed. Alarmed deer snort from the banks. Turtles plop from their basking logs. A beaver slaps the water. Wood ducks explode from the shallows and whistle off upstream.