Brenda's Place and Two Pine Savannah Heritage Preserves

Brenda's Place

    Yesterday, Otis and I set out to visit a Pine Savannah and was hoping to go to a BBQ place in Lamar, SC for lunch. Ace's BBQ was not open when we arrived and I did not have a back-up plan. We took a drive through town and on the Main Street found a business with a sign with a catfish and shrimp around a pot, but no other sign or name to let the passer by know what it was. I decided to stop and find out what it was and it did end up being a food spot, just not seafood like the sign suggested. Inside a menu board informed me it was Brenda's Place. I placed our order at the counter with a friendly cashier, who was kind enough to also tell me what the Egg Scramble Jamboree was. When you enter the town of Lamar, you see a sign stating the Home of the Egg Scramble Jamboree and she informed me that it was similar to a local fair. I also asked about the mural that encompassed most of the restaurants walls and she stated that the establishment had formally been a cajun food place. That also explained the catfish and shrimp sign out front. After ordering I went out to the car to check on Otis and in not too long the food was ready.   

I hope Brenda's place keeps the artwork on the walls. It was unique and does liven up the place even though it is no longer a cajun style restaurant. The place has character.

My favorite touch on the wall murals was this swamp rat paddling through the cypress.

   We drove to a state park in the area to sit down and eat. I had ordered a 3 piece wing meal for us, which came with three whole wings and fries. I do not like giving any sort of criticism to a restaurant and I really wanted this to be a good meal and have a good review. With that said, the fries were bad. They tasted like old oil and did not seem to have any salt on them. The chicken was decent, either it was fried in a separate frier or the breading was just good enough to hide the old oil taste. We did have someone else with us and they picked up a chicken sandwich and said it was excellent. I would still say if you are in the area, stop in and give Brenda's Place a try, personally I would avoid the fries, but maybe I just caught them on a bad day. It is a unique place, the staff is very nice and a simple oil change on their frier would turn an okay meal into a great one. Otis had absolutely no complaints and scarfed down both fries and chicken. 

Brenda's Place

125 W Main St

Lamar SC

Longleaf Pine Heritage Preserve: Walk #1

    Our first stop of the day was the Longleaf Pine Heritage Preserve in Lynchburg, SC. It is one of two preserves in the area that seek to manage the properties as Pine Savannah/Savanna. Pine Savannas were once a large portion of the South Eastern United States. They are characterized by large longleaf pine species that compose the canopy and typically grasses blanket the forest floor. Fire is a main component that doesn't allow for much of an understory to develop. In managed areas like this one, the fire componant is manmade and is accomplished through controlled burns on a regular basis. 

    Otis and I hit the trail, which for the most part is a nicely maintained access road. Further in there were some sections that were torn up, likely for fire breaks for recent controlled burns. Otis enjoyed keeping his snout to the ground sniffing away and I enjoyed the vibrant greens of the new growth coming into the forest floor coupled with the charred trunks of the pines. We have done this hike multiple times and it does change throughout the seasons with wildlife and looks. There wasn't much to see as far as wildlife on this trip, with birds singing high in the canopy, Pine Warbler, Brown-headed Nuthatch and American Goldfinch all could be heard. There weren't too many flowers in bloom either, the new vegetation is just springing to life now after the fires, so there were not too many insects around either.

    These Savanna preserves hold a good diversity of Butterflies. This trip although there weren't too many, I did get to see and photograph a new species for me a Gemmed Satyr (Cyllopsis gemma). If I identify insects to species in this blog, I will try to add scientific name as well. Common names can be different in some cases between guides, especially if you are using an older guide to make the ID. For Butterflies I use Butterflies through Binoculars: The East by Jeffrey Glassberg. 

    Though there were not too many birds below the canopy, there was this female Eastern Towhee that came out to give both Otis and I a look. 

    I find the more open areas with large pines and blue skies just breathtaking. If you are wondering why the pine in the center has a white band around the trunk there is a good reason. This preserve is home to Red-cockaded Woodpeckers. This is a Pine Savannah specialist that needs the large old trees in order to make nesting cavities. They live in family groups and when you do see them it is often not just one or two but multiple individuals. Due to the loss of Pine Savannah habitat the Red-cockaded Woodpeckers, a once common species, declined significantly and was headed towards extinction. Efforts by the USFWS, other federal, state and local entities helped establish areas like this heritage preserve. In these preserves artificial nest cavities were put in many trees and programs to monitor this species and specific nest sites were put in place. As of October, 2024 the Red-cockaded Woodpecker was downgraded from Endangered to Threatened.

    An artificial nest cavity for the Red-cockaded Woodpecker. The hole is specifically sized to work for the Cockadeds and the metal prevents other animals like squirrels from expanding the hole to make it their own nesting space.

    I am not sure how much monitoring and maintenance is done at this specific site today. A number of the artificial cavities that can be seen from the trail are in disrepair. For this species success into the future more does need to be done. In my opinion greenway corridors connecting these small "island" preserves with tracks of similar pine habitat would be the best way of connecting populations and keeping a higher genetic diversity in them. To my knowledge no such plans like this exist today. I was unable to locate any Red-cockadeds on this walk and we covered more ground than we usually do here.

        Here you can see the half torn up access road. This really was a nice day to walk, a cold front just moved in and temperatures were in the 60s. 

Another beautiful view.

    Throughout this area there are small patches of vernal pools. It has been extremely dry this year and even with recent rains there was no standing water in them. The change from longleaf pine to cypress with knees sticking out of the ground still show the areas that would typically be holding water in spring. In all we walked over a mile out and then back. It was a delightful day to be out and a nice walk. 

Longleaf Pine Heritage Preserve

Parking on Mc Knight Rd

Lynchburg, SC

Lynchburg Savanna Heritage Preserve: Walk #2

    After eating I knew we would pass this on our way home and decided to do an additional walk. This heritage preserve is very similar to Longleaf Pine, just a little smaller. Same type of habitat, same goal of preserving pine savannah. Again, this is a walk that Otis and I have done multiple times and we have a regular route on the access roads when we do go.  

    Like the Longleaf Pine Heritage Preserve, since our last visit there were prescribed burns done. Here about half of what we walked by had new green growth popping up and the other half was burned more recently and looked burnt to a crisp.

    If you decide to take a trip to this preserve just know if you go after a rain the access roads will be muddy. This is not the first time we ran into this and by the end of our walk my shoes were caked with mud. I found it funny that the ditch along the road and the vernal pools along it, all were dry. The road though retains water. Otis seems to like walking through the puddles. 

    These Hooded Pitcher Plants (Sarracenia minor) can't typically be seen from the trail due to the other vegetation being higher. Since the burns were just done recently though, they were in plain view. I will mention that all plants on DNR Heritage Preserves are protected and should not be disturbed. Hooded Pitcher Plants are carnivorous, luring insects into the pitcher shaped leaf and trapping them in liquid where they are digested.  

A Brown Thrasher taking cover in some recently burned myrtle.

    The smell of char was still in the air as we walked by these most recently burned areas. These trees looked like they were scorched all the way to the top, which I haven't seen on prescribed burns before. Some of the trees looked like they may have been killed by the fire. It will be interesting to see what things look like at this spot the next time we walk through.

    Again like the Longleaf Pine Preserve, I did not hear any Red-cockaded and I have seen them at this site before too. I wonder how they deal with the fires. If the hunker down in nesting cavities or leave the area and return when it is over. 

    This Brown-headed Nuthatch likely has a nest in this box. This year I have them nesting in one of my own bluebird boxes too, so I think it may be relatively common that they use them. In reading more about them on Cornell Universities All About Birds site, I learned that they have been recorded nesting as high as 88 feet in tree cavities. We heard them at several points along this walk and most of the time they are higher in the pines foraging through the canopy. 

    The walk was relatively short and we did not see much, but it was such a nice day and the recently burned pine savannah is a nice change of scenery. Otis and I hope you enjoyed going along with us through the photos. We have some ideas for next week, but still not sure where we will be headed. This is a walk we will likely do again for the blog, but at different times of year to show the changes not only in seasonality, but species as well. 

Lynchburg Savanna Heritage Preserve

Parking on C C Rd

Lynchburg, SC