Fifty years ago, Wood Storks and Roseate Spoonbills were uncommon in south-central and southwestern Louisiana. Yellow Rails were likely present in southwestern Louisiana but not detected. Non-migratory Whooping Cranes had been extirpated over 35 years before. Today, in the proper season, all can be encountered. The four species are ones most birders want to record on their life lists.
So, why the change? The simple answer is that crawfish became a component of the region’s 460,000-plus acres of rice-growing “working wetlands.” The broader answer is that economic development sometimes can benefit birds or other wildlife. The rice-growing regions of Louisiana are proof.
Over the last several decades, Wood Storks adjusted their annual post-breeding dispersal to the Lower Mississippi River’s drying swamps and marshes. The species migrated primarily from the Yucatan to the southern U.S., and secondarily from Georgia and Florida to the west, to “flock” to a new wetland area, arriving in late spring and early summer. Similarly, Roseate Spoonbills as well as all native wading birds expanded their populations dramatically in the region.
Alert birders in Jefferson Davis Parish in the early 2000s watching farmers harvesting second-crop rice in the fall became aware of large numbers of Yellow Rails flushed by rice combines.
