Mississippi

While in Biloxi, I had the opportunity to visit Beauvoir, the home of Jefferson Davis. What made it a unique experience were the dozens of canvas tents and cooking fires. Men, women, and children all looked looked as if they stepped out of the 1860s. All in period clothing, and using tools of the time.

Blacksmith at Beauvoir — Blacksmith at work

I was there on the weekend of the annual muster, surrounded by living history. Others like myself had the opportunity to see, hear, feel and taste what life was like when Jefferson Davis was President of the Confederate States of America.

Tents at Beauvoir — Tents set up on the estate

The mercantile shops were set up with their all wares on display. If my time and money would have allowed, I could have picked up a complete Civil War period outfit, sat down around the fire, and blended right in. Providing, of course, that I remember that while visiting a reenactment in the Deep South, that it’s best not to bring up my forefather that marched with General Sherman as they burned Atlanta and continued to the sea, destroying everything in their path.

Books can tell the stories, and movies and TV let you see what it was once like. But walking through this camp, seeing and touching history – with the smell of smoke in the air – is something that can not be duplicated. Such as seeing and hearing the roar of a cannon in real life. The flash, the smell the smoke, the feeling from the percussion from the blast: it can’t be described. It must be felt.

Cannon at Beauvoir — A cannon demonstration for onlookers

If you have never visited a reenactment, I strongly suggest you do, and take a young person or two with you. There is no better place to see and feel what life was like in the 1860s.

Reenactors at Beauvoir — Both Union and Confederate reenactors were on hand

Visiting Beauvoir

Beauvoir is located at 2244 Beach Blvd. Biloxi, Mississippi and is open daily, 9-5. House tours are provided with your admission fee, or you can roam the grounds on your own. In addition to the historic home, Beauvoir is also home to the Jefferson Davis Presidential Library.

Statue of Jefferson Davis at Beauvoir — Statue of Jefferson Davis outside the Presidential Library and Museum

After Davis died, his widow sold the home to the Sons of Confederate Veterans to be used as a veterans’ home and a home for their widows.

It was then to be used as a memorial, which it has been since 1903. Nearly 780 Confederate veterans and their family members are buried in a cemetery on the property.

The tomb of the Unknown Confederate Soldier

Mississippi Sandhill Crane NWR — Much of the refuge protects coastal wet pine savanna habitat crucial to the Mississippi sandhill crane

On our way to visit Biloxi, Mississippi, we noticed two sandhill cranes standing in the median of Interstate 10. In Florida, we see sandhill cranes all the time, so we didn’t think much about it until we picked up a birding brochure later in the day. With only 110 Mississippi sandhill cranes on this planet, we’d just seen a significant sample of the population. It was time to plan a visit to Mississippi Sandhill Crane National Wildlife Refuge.

A Refuge with a Purpose

Bisected by Interstate 10 in Gautier, the Mississippi Sandhill Crane National Wildlife Refuge, a 19,300-acre refuge, protects one of Mississippi’s most threatened habitats, the wet pine savanna, for the sake of one of six sandhill crane subspecies, the Mississippi sandhill crane (Grus canadensis pulla).

Visitor center diorama of Mississippi sandhill cranes in a mating dance

Most units of the National Wildlife Refuge System exist to provide migratory species with a safe haven during their migrations. The Mississippi Sandhill Crane National Wildlife Refuge is one of a handful of refuges nationwide established to protect a specific species and the habitat it requires for survival. This small patch of wet pine savannas north of the coastal bayous is the only place in the world that these cranes are found.

A Mississippi sandhill crane searches for insects along the edge of the pine savanna

“They don’t like to travel far,” said Scott Hereford, Wildlife Biologist for the refuge, and that’s why, with the press of development along the Gulf Coast, the species was in decline. By the mid-1970s, less than 35 cranes remained.

The Pine Savanna

On a guided birding tour to see the cranes, Scott led our small party down a dirt road into the crane’s prime habitat, the open wet pine savanna. The broad prairies must be carefully managed with prescribed burning to keep an optimal balance of open spaces to trees. A wander into the prairie meant soggy shoes, since water flows freely across the landscape.

Wet savanna pitcher plants — Look into the dense prairie grasses and you will find pitcher plants

The boggy grassland was dense with colorful carnivorous plants. Glistening like strawberry jaw, sundews set out their sticky leaves to trap insects. Bladderwort and butterwort thrust small blooms towards the sky. But the showiest of the carnivores were the pitcher plants. Although not in bloom during our October visit – they bloom in spring – their trumpets blared in shades of red against the prairie grasses and saw palmettos.

The Mississippi Sandhill Crane’s range is thought to have extended to Florida’s Panhandle and into Louisiana, tied directly to the range of this habitat. Acidic in nature and always wet, the pine savannas weren’t touched by settlers, as they didn’t make good farmland. But after World War II, timber companies plowed under the savannas and planted commercially-viable pines for timber and pulpwood, destroying the majority of this fragile ecosystem in a great swath from Jacksonville, Florida to the bayous of Louisana. Less than 5% of wet pine savanna habitat remains along the Gulf Coastal Plain.

Pine savanna wildflowers Mississippi — Wildflowers are abundant in the savannas in both spring and fall

Revitalizing a Species

The first plans for Interstate 10 through Mississippi’s Gulf Coast helped spark a furor over more loss of habitat, and a population of cranes at great risk of extinction. When Congress enacted the Endangered Species Act in 1973, the Mississippi Sandhill Crane was one of the first species put on the list. By creating Mississippi Sandhill Crane National Wildlife Refuge in 1975, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service began the longest and largest crane re-introduction in the world.

Working at first with the Patuxent Research Refuge, established in Maryland in 1936 specifically to preserve endangered American wildlife species, the refuge expanded its partnerships to include the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo, Wisconsin; the Audubon Nature Institute in New Orleans; and the White Oak Conservation Center in Florida.

As of our visit in 2013, there were 25 breeding pairs of Mississippi sandhill cranes, and a population of 110 that stay mostly close to home in the savannas of the refuge. Occasionally, motorists will see a pair in the median of I-10, as we did. “We wish they wouldn’t go there,” said the staffer at the visitor center, “but they just don’t read the signs!”

Nesting occurs in April, with both parents incubating the two eggs. To grow the tenuous population of these cranes, the refuge works with its partners to remove eggs from nests and raise the chicks elsewhere. “Normally, a pair will raise only one chick at a time,” said Scott. “If the second egg hatches at all, the chick rarely survives.”

Bird blind Mississippi sandhill crane — Bird blind used by biologists

Scott drove us around to the open-roofed pens where mature chicks, known as colts, are released with wing restraints to get them acclimated to their natural habitat. Fellow cranes can visit and socialize with them, but an electric fence keeps predators out.

“We started releasing chicks into these pens in 1981,” said Hereford, “up to eight at a time. We’ve released over 400 of them since then.” The program has been so successful that 90% of the cranes you see in the wild today were captive-reared and released into the refuge.

On our return to the savanna, we spotted our third crane, browsing her way across the open grassland. Scott knew her by name. Each carries a radio transmitter so biologists can track their movements. Three more winged overhead as we sat in the van. Seeing 5% of all of the Mississippi Sandhill Cranes on this planet in our first 48 hours in Mississippi was a great start to several days of birding adventures.

Visiting Mississippi Sandhill Crane NWR

The Mississippi Sandhill Crane National Wildlife Refuge is just north of Exit 61 on Interstate 10 in Gautier at 7200 Crane Lane, Gautier, MS 39553-2500. It is open daily, sunrise to sunset. The Visitor Center is open Tue-Sat 9-3, except Federal holidays. There is no charge to visit the refuge, but donations are gladly accepted. Because of the extreme sensitivity and biodiversity of the wet pine savanna habitat, visitors are asked to stay on marked trails only through areas designated as open. As these are fire-dependent habitats, portions of the refuge may be closed at times for prescribed burns.

October through March is the best time to see the cranes. The refuge offers special biologist-escorted birding tours – such as the one we took – to view the cranes in their natural habitat and to let you see the pens where the young are acclamating to their surroundings. Check the refuge website for details.

Adjoining the Visitor Center, the interpretive Dees Nature Trail is less than half a mile long. It loops through savanna, pine woods, and along the edge of a bayou.

It showcases a bounty of spring and fall wildflowers including blazing star, deer’s-tongue, bearded grass-pink orchids, and several species of pitcher plants. We walked it and enjoyed the diversity of wildflowers, reminiscent of coastal savannas in Florida’s Panhandle.

Dees Nature Trail — Our favorite reason to hike in the pine savannas of the Gulf Coast

A second interpretive nature trail, the Fontainebleau Nature Trail, starts south of US 90 in Ocean Springs adjoining Ocean Springs Middle School and leads to the edge of Davis Bayou.