IF YOU GO
Mill Creek Nature Center, an 88-acre wetlands and wildlife preserve in Gwinnett County, adjacent to the Mall of Georgia, owned and managed by the Georgia Wildlife Federation. More than 2 miles of easy-walking trails and boardwalks take visitors through various wildlife habitats. 2255 Mall of Georgia Blvd., Buford. Free and open to the public, dawn to dusk. gwf.org/resourcestewardship/millcreeknaturecenter.aspx.
Directions from Atlanta: Take I-85 North to Exit 115 (Buford Drive/Ga. 20W) toward Buford. Turn right at the first light onto Mall of Georgia Boulevard. You will see the entrance on the right after the second light. There's a small parking area on the right and you then can walk down the sidewalk to the entrance.
Even though I’ve visited most of metro Atlanta’s wild places during my 40 years or so living here, I still come across new (for me) green spaces whose serenity and natural beauty leave me incredulous.
Such was the case last week when we took a walk through the peaceful, 88-acre Mill Creek Nature Center adjacent to the bustling Mall of Georgia in Gwinnett County. I was with a group of folks from Oak Grove United Methodist Church in Decatur, who call themselves the Over-the-Hill Hikers.
Mill Creek is a wetlands and wildlife preserve managed by the Georgia Wildlife Federation, which was given the tract in 2003 by Mall of Georgia developers. Since then, several superb walking trails, boardwalks, duck blinds, an observation tower and two bridges across Ivy Creek have been built there with the help of Boy Scouts, volunteers, corporate donors and others.
The winding trails and boardwalks allow visitors to view several different natural habitats — meandering creeks, beaver ponds, small swamps — teeming with wildlife.
Volunteers also have erected boxes for wood ducks, owls, bats, brown headed nuthatches and bluebirds throughout the tract. Hank Ohme, who manages Mill Creek for the wildlife federation, told us that most of the seven duck boxes now have eggs in them.
We caught glimpses of other wildlife, including a trio of white-tailed deer, a garter snake, a red admiral butterfly and painted turtles. A young member of our group, John Deitsch, who at age 15 already is a master birder, tallied more than 60 bird species during the day, including a scarlet tanager and a blue-gray gnatcatcher sitting on eggs in her lichen-covered nest.
One of the biggest surprises, though, was the preserve’s huge tree sizes — giant oaks, sycamores, pines and some of the largest river birches we’ve ever seen.
In the sky: The Eta Aquarid meteor shower will be visible most of next week and will peak at about 20 meteors per hour Tuesday night, said David Dundee, Tellus Science Museum astronomer. Look to the southeast from about midnight until dawn.
The moon will be full Sunday — the “planting moon,” as the Cherokee peoples called May’s full moon. Mercury sets in the west about an hour after sunset. Venus, also in the west, sets about three hours after dusk. Jupiter, high in the west at sunset, sets just before midnight. Saturn is in the east at dusk and will appear near the moon Tuesday night.
