Change

We're in the early stages of an addition project here at our home in Lafayette.  When we bought our house in 1995 from the Vermillion family, we figured that someday after the stork came we'd need to expand.  Well, our child is approaching teenhood, and the time has come to add on.  The wheels are rolling on the project, in which our breezeway and garage will be demolished and replaced by living space. 

What does that have to do with birding? you might ask.  A lot, actually, unfortunately.  When we bought the place it had the foundations of a great birding yard, courtesy of esteemed omnologist Bill Vermillion.  Bill added the beginnings of a great understory to the existing plantings his grandparents had established decades before.  Bay laurel, kumquat, fig, pomegranate, Indian pink, and many other plants were tucked below live oaks, holly, camellias, and a volunteer wild cherry.  In the years since we moved in, generous plant lovers such as Dave Patton, Bill Fontenot, and Donna Dittmann have added dozens of other plants, including a dense thicket of firespike, a red buckeye, buttonbush, soap aloe, agave, and honeysuckle azalea.  We added satsuma, bromeliads, milkweed, and a variety of hummingbird and butterfly plants.  And all of that was just in one tiny corner of the yard!

The neighborhood where we live is an older one that exists in the shade of huge live oaks and magnolias.  For the most part, our neighbors subscribe to a different philosophy of landscaping than we do, with well-mowed lawns beneath the canopy.  As a result, our yard acts like a magnet for understory birds that the community canopy pulls in, and our yard list of migrants and winterers is pretty attractive.  Seven species of flycatcher, six of vireo, four wrens, thirty warblers, and eight species of hummingbird, among others, have been recorded in the yard. 

Sadly,  some of the yard needed to be cleared to in order to demolish and construct.  Yesterday, the treecutters came and did what they must.  Here are some before and after shots:

 

This side of the yard, above, had buttonbush, pomegranate, Satsuma, kumquat, bay laurel, azalea, and Abutilon. 

 

 

 

A huge holly that was a favorite of winter hummers and a cherry laurel filled the space in the pictures above, with a mixed understory of hummer plants. 

 

 

 

Another angle of the side yard, before and after. 

 

Let's hope that the cut worm forgives the plow, and that in a year or two, our new living space is hidden behind a dense new crop of green. And let's hope that in that thicket Hooded Warblers and White-eyed Vireos can find shelter when they find themselves in the neighborhood, and hummers can find a safe place to spend the winter.  For now, though, it's a new and brutal nakedness.

      

Cameron Parish, 7/17 and 7/25

We say, “Le chien qui va a la chasse perd sa place,” but I could just as easily say, “Si sa place est la chasse, le chien qui va pas a la chasse va perdre sa place.” 

No chasse for me; I’ve been in suspended animation for most of the summer--most of the year, actually-- with projects and plans.  However, I did manage a solo trip to Cameron Parish last week, and one yesterday with Mac Myers. 

In the woods last week, the only real action was the movement of Orchard Orioles and insects.  Some woodlots were so dense with mosquitoes that each step would result in hundreds of mosquitoes rising up.  

The beaches offered fewer chances to donate blood, but great looks at terns, including young Sandwich Terns with pale bills and intricate dark markings on their backs, and adults with their plain backs and yellow-tipped black bills. 

In the woods, a White-tailed Kite was conspicuous, perhaps a bit too much so for an Eastern Kingbird.

Yesterday, Mac and I stuck to the beaches.  Highlights were Wilson’s Plovers, of which we saw about 130, including this juvenile blending in with a wrack line of sargassum. 

On the way home, we lucked onto a Western Kingbird that was picking off angry wasps from a nest high on a power pole.  This species isn't expected to nest locally, so this may have been a summer wanderer. 

Hopefully my schedule will level out soon and give me more chances to head out soon.  There are good things out there right now, waiting to be seen.