On 8 May, we had breakfast at Slice of Heaven Cafe on the island of Jamestown, Rhode Island —

— btw, best oatmeal ever: steel cut oats and 9-grain cereal served with plump raisins, walnuts, fresh berries, and drizzled with pure Vermont maple syrup — after which we let Zillow show us houses for sale, then we drove off the island and south through part of North Kingstown, part of South Kingstown, Charlestown (where we walked in the Kettle Pond part of the Ninigret National Wildlife Refuge), and eventually toddled back up through Narragansett, where we had a great early dinner at Georges of Galilee (happy hour buck-a shuck oysters!), on a tip from a Facebook friend, and walked the Narrows beach.  More on some of that later.

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Today’s field trip is to Trustom Pond National Wildlife Refuge in South Kingstown, which we might have missed, though it was on my list of places that sounded good, because we were running a bit short on time. But the staffer at Kettle Pond was fervent in her unprompted praise for Trustom Pond NWR, which she said was the best place to walk in the area, with many habitats, and it was on our route back to the motel, so we decided to check it out.

Trustom Pond is one of the walks described in the Trails & Walks in Rhode Island blog that I mentioned in an earlier post. It’s comprised of a small loop trail around a field (Farm Field Loop Trail), which leads to a large loop trail (Osprey Point Trail + Red Maple Swamp Trail), an extension of the loop (still Osprey Point Trail), and a 1/2-mile side-shoot off the loop trail (Otter Point Trail). In all, it’s about 2.5 miles of basically flat walking through a field,  grasslands, a red maple swamp, an upland forest with wetlands, shrublands, woods, and a saltwater pond. Trustom Pond is the only undeveloped salt pond in the state. If we had had more time, I would have walked it twice.

Plants

 

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Animals

First, the turkey photo shoot; there were three of them, in tall grass, a ways away:

Then the rabbits:

Three young deer were hiding from us; you can sort of make out faces and tails:

And the birds!

There were dozen of swallows flying around the pond grasses; they are fast, have a slim profile, never seem to land, and make themselves hard to photograph. But it was breathtaking watching them swoop.

Then there were warblers. I was lucky to get a decent couple of shots of one, a yellow warbler, and her nest, which we were accidentally standing near:

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Landscape

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“Approximately 300 bird species, more than 40 mammals, and 20 species of reptiles and amphibians call Trustom their home.”