Chapter Two - The Wild Center!

I continued my tour of the Wild Center in Tupper Lake. I was especially interested in the mushrooms, as I so often see and photograph them while hiking. I have only once seen a green mushroom and I don't think it was these, but I'll now be able to identify one if I see it in the future:

There were lots of wetland displays as the Adirondacks is filled with bogs, ponds, lakes, creeks and rivers. Water, water, everywhere:

The displays on the right were about peat bogs and that giant fish tank on the left contained several indigenous species:

Including Lake Trout:

And Sturgeon:

There was a giant Pitcher Plant display:

And all about flooding, shallow water fish and nighttime species:

More about wetlands:

And Brook Trout:

This was the otter display, a big favorite. The swim tank was very large and L-shaped. The part you see here was merely a small portion of it. The happy, playful otters also had dry land on which to live and you can see that over on the right, above that cave opening. The cave was for children to explore:

I took many photos of the otters but they were moving so rapidly that none of them were useable. So I admit that this photo and the next one are from the internet:

When I studied Wildlife Biology in college, my Adviser specialized in River Otters and kept several of them as research animals which, I could tell, were secretly pets as well. I had my photo taken with them and it appeared on the cover of a pamphlet about the Honors Program. But there was still more to see at the Wild Center and I'll post Chapter Three tomorrow: