White Lake CBC, 12/27/2012

Gary Broussard, my brother John, and I did a section of the White Lake Christmas Bird Count yesterday.  It was a great day, especially compared to the cold, windy weather of the day before.  Our area had a good mix of woods and fields alongside marsh, so we had a good mix of species.

The best bird of the day happened in the morning.  John called out, "Stork!" and both his words and the bird went over my head.  Stork?  Huh? Oh, stork.  I looked up and saw a Wood Stork flying over, put the binos on it, then grabbed my camera...which wasn't set...as the bird passed behind the trees and disappeared.  We all got looks at it, but no photos.  I don't recall ever having seen one in winter, much less on a CBC.  Good bird.

Otherwise, action was pretty steady on all fronts.  There weren't many species of sparrow, but there were tons of what sparrows there were.  Hundreds of Savannahs, flock after flock of White-crowned and White-throated, Swamps all over, and lot of Songs.  Mixed in we also had 2 Clay-colored Sparrows, always a fun find, especially this fall and winter as they've been scarce.

In a nice patch of oaks, we also had an out of season American Redstart.

We ended up with 105 species for the day.  A good day to be afield.

December 23, 2012

Today, Dave Patton and I took a meandering drive through the SWLA interior.  Part of the mission was to scan a few fields around the area where the Mountain Plover was found (and last seen) on December 14.  The rest of the plan was to drive around without any real plan.  We scratched on the plover search, but had an interesting drive.

Near Lacassine, we scanned a flock of thousands, maybe ten thousands of gulls.  Other than a couple of Lesser Black-backed Gulls, nothing unusual there.  South of Lacassine, we hit a flock of bluebirds, Pine Warblers, and Chipping Sparrows.  We estimated about 50 Pine Warblers in the flock.

At the corner of Highway 14 and Harris Road east of Holmwood, we found a Say's Phoebe in a location where I had one last winter.

Throughout the day, we scanned flocks of shorebirds, ducks, geese, and blackbirds.  The biggest flock of blackbirds was a flock in Lafayette Parish that I estimated at around one million birds (it was at least 1000 thousand birds).  I scanned the flock for quite a while, knowing that sooner or later I'd find a Yellow-headed Blackbird.  Sure enough, I eventually did.  I believe it was my first Lafayette Parish sighting of one.

Mountain Plover, 12/14/2012

Michael Seymour has found some pretty memorable birds in Louisiana, including second state records of Jabiru Stork and Gray Flycatcher, and he and his CBC party added another good one yesterday.  The Mountain Plover they found yesterday near Thornwell is the first ever for Louisiana.

Mountain Plovers are birds of the Great Plains (not mountains).  In the past, they were incredibly numerous, but their numbers have dropped steeply in the past several decades.  These plovers nest as near to us as west Texas and winter across south Texas, so it's odd that the first one comes when the fortunes of the species are so low.  It's long overdue.

Congrats to Michael for finding it, and to Mike Musumeche and Jay Huner for relocating it about two miles from its original location after it hightailed it.  

Duck, 12/15/12

This cafe au lait Blue-winged Teal was just north of Kaplan today.  Pale birds like this often called albino, but they're actually leucistic, which basically means they look whitish (leukos = white in Greek; leucistic is pronounced with the same beginning syllable as leukemia and leucocyte).  Unlike albinos, leucistic birds don't have pink eyes.  

The short and sweet of it is that it looked pretty cool.  In flight it stood out among the hundreds of ducks it flushed with.  

Jeff Davis Parish, 11/23/2012

I took a drive to unwind and listen to the Tigers game today.  I headed west to the Lacassine exit off of I-10 in Jefferson Davis Parish.  

First I went north, but got turned around by rain.  Near the turf farm on Turf Grass Road, I had a couple of good sightings.  The cottonmouth may have been moving ahead of the cold weather.  The Long-billed Curlew is a good bird to find inland, and is just plain a cool bird.  

I headed south and then west, toward Lake Arthur.  East of Thornwell I found a couple of tractors busting up plowed soil, shooting huge sheets of dust into the air.  Apparently, this was pretty attractive to hawks, because the field was full of them.

There were 11 Swainson's Hawks there at least, which is pretty odd for this time of year.

There was also a Ferruginous Hawk in the field, as well as a couple of Red-tailed Hawks.  Quite a nice field full of hawks.  

A few recent photos

Dark Red-tailed Hawk, I assume a "Harlan's."  

Young "Harlan's" Red-tailed Hawk.  This bird was in a group of 31
Red-tailed  Hawks over a field that was being plowed
today in Jeff  Davis Parish.

Marsh Hawk, a.k.a. Northern Harrier

Swainson's Hawk, Cameron Parish, 11/11/12

Sprague's Pipit, Acadia Parish, 11/17/12

Western Accent

There was a bit of a western flavor to today's birding in Cameron Parish.  I was down with Dave Patton, Mac Myers, and David Muth.  Among the birds we saw were Calliope Hummingbird (found by Dave Patton), Spotted Towhee (below), Western Tanager (below), Say's Phoebe, possible Townsend's Warbler seen by Mac Myers, plus more regular westerners like Swainson's Hawk, and Franklin's Gull. 

Conditions started off as horrible but improved to pretty bad as the day went on.  Gusting south winds and morning rain gave way to steady but manageable winds, then steady rain late in the day.

Spotted Towhee, Peveto Sanctuary (found by David Muth)

Western Tanager, Peveto Sanctuary (found by David Muth)

Say's Phoebe, near Willow Island (stakeout)

Cameron 10/16

Olive-sided Flycatcher

Buff-breasted Sandpiper

My son returning to Earth after 24 mile free-fall at Mach 1.24. 

Leech

With all of the recent rains, pastures are flooding and flooded fields are overflowing.  Ditches are full, and some roads are getting covered with water.  On a flooded road shoulder today, I saw this leech working its way along through the water.  I scooped it into an Icee cup (the pink stain in the water is strawberry, not blood).  I wanted to bring it home to watch it, but I realized I'd need to find something to feed it.  There's not really a lot of blood in the fridge, so I decided to let it go.

Cool Birds, Hot Boudin

A few quick notes and photos.

Yesterday I took a non-Atlas trip to the Gueydan area to study swallows.  I was hoping to look at young Cliff and Cave swallows to see how much room for confusion there is with the pair, and to look for clues for how to sort them out if they can and do look alike.

But funny things happen when you're trying to put the blinders on.

Among the swallows was a Bank Swallow that hadn't been recorded yet for the Gueydan Quad.

That meant I should spend an hour counting birds in the Gueydan Quad.  I was driving away from the swallow spot when I noticed a wet field along the highway.  In it were shorebirds, which the Gueydan Quad also needs.  And among the shorebirds there were two godwits, a Marbled and a Hudsonian.

These are probably the same godwits Steve Cardiff and Donna Dittmann found a few miles to the west last week.  Wet fields dry up quickly in summer, and when they do, birds move on.

Gueydan Quad:  10+ hours.  

This morning I headed to the Fenton Quad to put the final hours in on it.  It was tremendously birdy.  A Common Ground Dove flew up off a roadside and started singing.

Storks and other waders filled up flooded fields.

And there were swallows everywhere.  Caves and Cliffs, Barns, and young of all three.

Juvenile Cave Swallow

Adult Cave Swallow

Juvenile Cliff Swallow

Fenton Quad:  10+ hours.  

Next I found myself in lovely Iowa, Louisiana.

And, lo and behold!  It was time to eat.  Of course, when boudin is on the menu, it's always time to eat.

I parked between the lines, and porked out.

Pretty decent boudin.  I'd had Rabideaux's before, but this was better than I remembered.  Good flavor, good texture, nothing bad about it.  I added salt, of course.

The Iowa Quad wasn't quite as good.  The most interesting part for me was hearing Gray Catbirds singing.  I don't get to hear catbirds very often.  I had four catbirds, and every one of them had incorporated the caw of a crow into its song.  Do they often do that, or are the Iowa catbirds really talented?  Whatever the case, it was a perfect imitation.

I also got to hear a Bobwhite giving wacked out calls from a perch in a short monglier shrub.

Iowa is a good area for Scissor-tailed Flycatchers, too.

And this Common Nighthawk was kind enough to fly around and land where I could get a photo.

Dusty Old Dust, 7/3/12

I spent some time out around beautiful Gueydan today.  As the day got hotter, I started seeing white columns rising from the horizon in every direction I looked.  I thought they were hot fires making white smoke.  Some were distant bright lines that I could have passed off as my imagination or as the beginning symptom of some kind of heat illness.  Others seemed closer and were definitely real.  As I moved from an area of green fields to one of plowed fields, the columns began to pop up in spirals right in front of me.  They were what I called "dust devils" when I was a kid, little tornadoes of dust rising quickly over hot bare fields.

The dust devils started as puffs of smoke, and eventually built up like the smoke rising from a growing fire.  A few then died down while others rose high into the air to form thin tight spirals, kind of like waterspouts but on dry, hot land.  As I scanned the horizon I could see dozens at any given time, some near and some farther off.

Here's a brief clip of a short, shaky scan of the horizon.  I hope it gives an idea of the scope of the setting.  I also hope these fields got as much rain this afternoon as Lafayette did.  They needed it.

 

Bayou Vermilion, Vermilion Parish. 6/29/2012.

Yesterday, I had a great day on the water courtesy of Dave Patton.  Dave took his boat out to survey the birds around Intracoastal City.  I.C. is an entry point for several waterways, including the Intracoastal Canal and Bayou Vermilion.

As a resident of Lafayette, I know Bayou Vermilion as a sleepy bayou lined with nice houses and immaculate yards.  On the south end of town, the bayouside becomes more natural, the houses blend into nature a bit more, and the bayou heads down toward Abbeville.  Yesterday, I got a different look at Bayou Vermilion altogether.  

Intracoastal City is south of Abbeville, and the stretch of the bayou between Abbeville and Intracoastal was something I'd never seen.  We headed out of Intracoastal City in the boat, and turned north into the bayou.  Intracoastal City is on the edge of the marsh, without much in the way of trees along the waterways around the launch.  A short way upriver, near where the "pogey plant" processes Gulf Menhaden (fish), things started to change.  Cypress trees began to appear, and the banks of the bayou became lined by hardwood forests.  We headed farther north through thick forests that made me wonder if this is what the bayou looked like when my ancestors first saw it over 200 years ago.  

After a while, the sense of wildness became a little more pronounced when we spotted Swallow-tailed Kites circling in the thermals above.  

As we slowly worked the channels leading into the bayou, the kites came lower. 

It's hard not to marvel at Swallow-tailed Kites.  Everything about them is remarkable.  They can glide effortlessly, turn in midair, dive at lightning speed, and then swoop back into a lazy, unhurried glide--all within seconds.  And they do it for hour after hour.  They seem to delight in flying.  And when they do flap, it's also slow and unhurried.  They make defying gravity look easy.  

We noticed that one of the kites was carrying something in its talons.  We realized later it was a paper wasp nest, which I'm told is something they like to eat the larvae from.  The nest was the object of several chases, but some of the chases we saw seemed to be nothing more than a game.

We were able to enjoy the kites all the way back to Intracoastal City.  At times, the kites flew below the level of the trees and gave us excellent views.  The most we saw together at one time was eight birds, although there might have been more.    

When we came out of the woods, I had to remind myself that all of this happened just a short drive from Lafayette.  This stretch of Bayou Vermilion is a treasure, and I hope it stays that way forever.  

If you don't have a friend with a boat, another way to enjoy the area is by visiting Palmetto State Park.  We docked there for a few minutes, and it's a first class facility.  Their website is: http://www.crt.state.la.us/parks/ipalmetto.ASPX