Louisiana Birding: Stories on Strategy, Stewardship & Serendipity

By John K. Flores

From the bayous of the coast to prairies and rolling hills, Louisiana is home to a vibrant and thriving avian population. Herons, American goldfinches, snow geese and more call the state coastline home during the winter months. The music of neotropic songbirds like the parula and the prothonotary warbler fills the bayous every spring morning. Endangered species like the whooping crane and brown pelican have been reintroduced to the state to great success. The pragmatic conservation efforts of state, federal and private agencies not only led to the successful delisting of some endangered species of birds but also helped develop protocols for the future stewardship of others. Award-winning outdoor writer and photographer John Flores celebrates Louisiana's notable feathered inhabitants in their natural habitats.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Oct 8, 2018
• ISBN: 9781439665398

John K. Flores

John K. Flores is an award-winning freelance outdoor/travel writer, nature photographer and outdoor columnist for the Morgan City Daily Review, Franklin Banner-Tribune and www.stmarynow.com, located in Louisiana. Besides these publications, Flores is a contributing writer for the popular Louisiana Sportsman Magazine. Flores has numerous credits in both regional and national magazines that include American Waterfowler, Fur-Fish-Game, Upland Almanac, Mississippi-Louisiana Game and Fish Magazine, Mississippi Sportsman Magazine and National Wild Turkey Federation's online magazine. Flores has lectured on the "Art of Nature," and this photography exhibit has been featured in St. Mary and Iberia Parishes for the past year (2017-18), with more than ten thousand visitors and guests viewing his work. To his credit, in 2018, Flores's "Water and Nature" photography exhibit was featured during the Thirteenth Annual Eagle Expo & More in Morgan City, Louisiana. Flores is a member of the Louisiana Press Association, Southeastern Outdoor Press Association (SEOPA) and the Louisiana Outdoor Writers Association (LOWA). In LOWA, he has served as secretary of the board and served on the Youth Journalism Contest Committee. Flores is a 1990 graduate of the University of Southwestern Louisiana and served his country in the United States Air Force for six years (1976-82). Flores currently resides in Patterson, Louisiana, with his wife, Christine, where for the past thirty-four years together they raised their four children.

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INTRODUCTION

One summer evening a number of years ago, I sat on the back patio of my good friend Jimmy Wilson’s bayou-side home. He and his wife, Pauline, happen to live on Bayou Teche in Centerville, Louisiana.

Their home rests on the north side of the bayou across the road from perhaps a couple thousand acres of sugar cane fields. Behind the agricultural fields is a levee that separates Centerville from the Atchafalaya Basin. In short, he and Pauline live in a migratory bird thoroughfare.

Jimmy and I have spent many years hunting the marsh together. One evening, beneath the canopy of live oaks in his backyard, we were sipping coffee and reminiscing a bit when, from somewhere above, a prothonotary warbler began to sing.

I asked my friend if he had ever seen the bird that was singing, telling him that I spend a lot of time on Bayou Teche National Wildlife Refuge—down the road near his place—each spring observing neotropical songbirds.

His reply was like so many others. He hadn’t. Moreover, over the years, he had paid little attention to its sweet and beautiful song. Like the sound of traffic in a big city, so often the singing of songbirds goes unnoticed. It has always been there simply as background noise. Therefore, by and large, it is tuned out.

During the ensuing conversation with my friend, I told him I couldn’t believe all of the years I spent hunting our region and never saw these birds either. In fact, sadly, I never took the time to. The consumptive outdoor activities of my lifestyle dominated the non-consumptive. Hiking, canoeing and boating were always activities I’d parlay into some sort of hunting and fishing activity that had, in my opinion, more purpose.

My introduction to birds along the bayou came from another dear friend with whom I spent time hunting waterfowl, not only with a shotgun but also a camera after the season ended. Becoming my mentor, he and I exchanged waterfowl pictures; one day, he sent me an image of a painted bunting. Having never seen such beauty, I asked him where he’d taken it. Come to find out, the place wasn’t far from his home in Lafayette, Louisiana.

I couldn’t believe such birds existed in the marshes and woods I had fished and hunted for so many years. Suddenly, the scales fell off of my eyes, and they were opened to a whole new world of beauty. The songbirds now reappear every time I go to the bottomland hardwoods of the Atchafalaya Basin, the upland piney woods and the coastal marshes.

Today, I miss few birds that dart past my peripheral vision. At times, I find it difficult to hold a conversation with someone outside when a warbler or bunting sings on a cool spring morning. Quite often, I suddenly find myself interrupting the other person for a moment, asking them something related to the bird

In the past decade, I’ve spent time traveling around the state as an outdoor writer covering a wide range of topics and stories. Perhaps none has received more favorable response from readers than those dealing with birds—these conspicuous feathered friends that surround us with their glory.

Louisiana is known as the sportsman’s paradise when it comes to hunting and fishing. Yet few states compare when it comes to the diversity of birds, including passerines, wading birds, raptors and shorebirds, that people have the opportunity to see throughout the year. In fact, Louisiana is considered one of the top five birding states.

However, Louisiana is more than a birding state. The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries—working in concert with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and numerous stakeholders, agencies and academic institutions such as LSU, Audubon Louisiana, the Nature Conservancy, Ducks Unlimited, Delta Waterfowl and others—has literally supported and brought certain species of birds from the brink of extinction and supported conservation efforts for other species that flourish in the state today.

My hope is that Louisiana Birding brings to the forefront the achievements made by these state, federal and private agencies, and moreover, recognizes the collective investment of capital, time, science and physical effort the various departments have put in over the years with the hope of preserving the avian heritage of our state.

Additionally, just like the sun that gives light to each new day, may this work brighten your path in the Louisiana wilds of learning. And may the birds you’ve never seen before on these pages give you as much pleasure as they have given me.

Prothonotary warblers are the greeters along the bayou. Their song is a tribute to the beauty of the basin.

1

ACADIANA SUNRISE SYMPHONY

The Annual Bird Migration

From above the canopy of the bottomland hardwoods, rays of light stretch through the tree branches to the forest floor below. Much like a child yawning, pushing his arms through the air, the light reaches the understory and once again ushers in a new day.

Kissing the leaves of the cottonwood, sycamore and overcup oaks, the sunlight spills onto the briars, rubus and ferns below that make up the hardwood’s carpet—creating brilliant hues of yellow and green.

Somewhere, a red-breasted woodpecker taps like a conductor. The chirping sound from insects that gathered before daylight quiets, and suddenly, the morning is filled with music provided by a choir of songbirds.

The surrounding woods, swamps and marshes of Acadiana that make up the Atchafalaya Basin are not only major thoroughfares for some migrating birds, they also act as important wintering and breeding grounds for others. As certain species leave, others arrive, and early spring is the perfect time of year to enjoy watching these temporary visitors around the state of Louisiana.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s executive director, John W. Fitzpatrick, during a winter tour of southwest Louisiana, once referred to Louisiana’s river and delta regions as the Amazon of North America. It’s a major system, rich in productivity, he expounded.

Michael Seymour, a non-game avian biologist for the Louisiana Heritage Program, which is an arm of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, calls the Atchafalaya Basin a phenomenal place with tremendous bird densities and breeding habitat. And in fact, it does have one of the largest populations of songbirds in the entire United States.

The red-bellied woodpecker is a year-round resident of the swamps and hardwoods. Its noisy vocals are a giveaway to its presence in the woods.

Red like a northern cardinal and often mistaken for one at first glance, the summer tanager spends the spring and summer months in the bottomland hardwoods of Louisiana.

Some 20 miles wide and 150 miles long, the Atchafalaya Basin’s land mass represents 1.4 million acres. Moreover, it is the largest existing wetland in the entire United States.

During the early part of spring, you have wintering birds that are still hanging around and some waterfowl leaving. Some of the wading birds that may have gone farther south are starting to return to the basin. Birds like American gold finches, known to nest north of Louisiana, will stick around for a long time in this rich habitat following winter. The blue-winged teal will often lazily hang around until May before making its trek north to the breeding grounds of the upper Midwest and Canada.

There are over three thousand species of birds that live in the neotropical region of Central and South America. For millennia, many of them have made a northern trans-gulf migration by crossing—in some cases—over eight hundred miles of open water each spring, only to repeat the process south in late summer and early fall.

Rarely observed in its summer plumage as pictured, the American gold finch is a common winter resident of Louisiana.

Beachcombers walking the high tide wrack lines of Rutherford and Holly Beaches in southwest Louisiana and Elmer’s Island and Grand Isle Beaches of southeast Louisiana will often find the carcasses of dead birds. Sadly, their destiny was a watery grave because they lacked the energy in the form of body fat to make the trek across the Gulf of Mexico.

Approximately 150 of those 3,000 species of birds migrate to North America each spring to their breeding grounds. Considering there are roughly 900 species of birds in North America, a significant number make the Atchafalaya Basin their destination of choice. It is the richness of the ecosystem in both habitat and food sources that makes the basin so important and popular to these travelers.

A white-eyed vireo’s striking eye leaves no doubt as to its identity. White-eyed vireos are common throughout the spring and summer along the bayou.

Seymour, who has been a birdwatcher from a very young age, said of these visitors:

In general, things come south to find food resources. Ducks, for instance, are forced south because the waters are freezing and they’re trying to find open water to forage. For things like