Nope, don’t panic – this post isn’t about crows! Instead it’s about our visit to Caw Caw, a 654 acre nature preserve / park in Ravenel, South Carolina, approx. 14–20 miles south of downtown Charleston. The park is open Tuesday – Sunday: 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. and is closed on Mondays, except for Memorial Day and Labor Day. There is a $2 per person charge.

At the Interpretive Center, we learned about the history of the preserve. Much of the land once belonged to multiple 18th and 19th century  plantations where the landscape was engineered: creating canals, impoundments, dikes and floodgates, all built by enslaved Africans to transform the swamps and cypress wetlands into productive rice fields. Another piece of history occurred here – in 1739, the Stono Rebellion which was the largest slave revolt in the British mainland colonies occurred on portions of the land at Caw Caw. during the rebellion 25 colonists and 35 to 50 African slaves were killed.

With over 6 miles of trails including various loops like the Habitat Loop, Bottomland Hardwood Forest loop, Rice Fields Trail, Marshland Trail, and Woodland Trail, under bright sunny skies it would be a perfect day for us to partake in a long nature walk.

The trails wind their way through several habitat types in close proximity: cypress swamps, bottomland hardwood forests, marshes (tidal and freshwater), former rice field impoundments, and upland forests.

Along each of the trails, there are numbered kiosks (signs) showing our location on the map, describing what we were looking at and in some cases, outlining the history of that particular area.

The park is home to over 270 bird species so it is a bird watchers paradise! We had been told at the Interpretive Center that there was a nesting pair of eagles in a tree not too far from the Rice Fields Trail. Hidden in a huge tree, the nest would be pretty hard to spot without the help of a volunteer equipped with a telescope and binoculars, eager to point out the nest to visitors. Pretty cool! Although we were unable to catch a glimpse of the eagle in flight, we were able to capture a very distant photo of the nest in the nearby tree.

And, of course, we spotted several alligators, lots of turtles and a variety of other waterfowl along the way!

Out of all the trails, though, my favorite one was the Swamp Sanctuary Trail, a 0.4-mile loop with boardwalk sections that winds through a cypress and maple swamp.

If you want to escape all the hub bub in the city of Charleston, this is a great place to enjoy the peace and serenity of nature. Here is an excellent YouTube video by the Charleston County Parks about Caw Caw.