White Ibis flock

Southern Louisiana: Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge, Nunez Woods, Palmetto Island State Park, and Atchafalaya National Wildlife Refuge:  20-29 April 2018

Cerulean Warbler male

Drive to the Deep South

After two very successful visits to Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge and Nunez Woods along the Gulf coast of Louisiana in 2015 and 2016, I decided now was the time for another visit, to catch the arrival of the Neotropical migrant songbirds coming across the water from the Yucatán. I wanted to get a better understanding of the movement of the birds and their sojourn in Nunez Woods before they moved on to the interior bottomland forests of the Deep South, where food and water resources are present in much greater supply. Samantha Collins, Research Biologist at  Rockefeller, kindly extended an invitation to return for a third spring.

Yellow-throated Vireo male

I drove to the Gulf in two days. Day one I drove 900 miles to Meridien, Mississippi, arriving around 9 PM after a long day on the road. The second day I drove to Scott, Louisiana, to lunch on several types of Boudin at the famous Billy’s Boudin and Cracklin' Restaurant, and then arrived at Rockefeller around 3 PM, heading out to Nunez Woods by 5 PM to get into the woods during the height of southern spring... After a long winter in my basement office, I needed to get  into a woods filled with greenery and birdsong, and that is partly why I was here, where spring had already arrived in force.

Scarlet Tanager male

The Woods is again site of a bird-banding operation of the University of Southern Mississippi, and I spent time with the banding-team when they were not being overwhelmed by Northern Catbirds in their mist-nets. The team is continuing to study the biology of songbird migrants that cross the Gulf, initiated by ornithologist Frank Moore a number of years ago.

Looking across Rockefeller marshes to Nunez Woods (in background) 

Nunez and Rockefeller

Nunez Woods is a “chenier”—a small patch of coastal oak woods about a mile long and 1,000 feet wide at the widest. The woods is surrounded by marshlands and pasturelands, and the nearest extensive woods is Laccasine Bayou, about 15 miles north of Nunez. Because it is the only woods in the area, it acts as a magnet to migrant birds exhausted after a 600-mile flight across the Gulf. It is a bit like Central Park in the vast urban wastes of NYC—drawing in all the woodland-dwelling birds because there is no other favorable habitat available within view....

Hooded Warbler male

Just to remind the reader: the songbirds depart from the north coast of the Yucatán, Mexico, as the dark of evening falls, then they fly for ca. 18 hours (depending on winds) across salt water to arrive on the coast of Louisiana ca. 2 PM the next day. The birds arriving at the coast then have three possible courses of action: (a) overfly Nunez Woods and go directly to the richer and more extensive forests of the interior [assuming the birds are in good condition with fat stores that can support additional travel], (b) drop in and feed for a few hours and then head north after dark, or (c) choose to spend several days recharging their fat stores in Nunez.

Bay-breasted Warbler male

To find out what was happening, I did warbler surveys in the mornings and afternoons for several days. The most wonderful thing about Nunez is the concentration of colorful birds.

The wood warblers are essentially invisible, but others are present in numbers and their presence is obvious because they move about all day long, crossing the grassy clearing that extends the length of the woods (it is an old airstrip) from one set of trees to another: Summer Tanagers, Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, Scarlet Tanagers, Swainson’s Thrushes, and flycatchers and vireos. Others, like Blue Grosbeaks and Indigo Buntings, and Orchard Orioles, settle into the grass to forage or feed at the woodland edge. As I biked up and down the airstrip, flocks of blue and brown birds (20-30 at a time) would flush up from the grass—these were Indigos and Blue Grosbeaks, just having arrived from across the Gulf.

Blackburnian Warbler male

Thrushes were present in big numbers. Scores of Swainson’s Thrushes moved about skittishly in the forest interior and also at the edge. They were always on the move. The numbers were impressive. Wood Thrushes, Swainson’s Thrushes, and Veeries were also present in numbers. The most common migrant, however, was the omnipresent Gray Catbird, which was here in plague numbers.

In my six days of surveys, I encountered 23 species of wood warblers, counting 368 individuals over my stay. What I found was that the afternoon produced the largest numbers of warblers, and often my count on the following morning would be substantially lower. Thus many of the birds were arriving in the afternoon, staying to forage a while, and then moving on that night, leaving the woods a bit empty at dawn. It is weird finding fewer birds at dawn than at 3 PM—that hard to get used to....

For me, it was not possible to see the warblers actually arrive from their Gulf crossing (though I tried). Somehow how they just sneak into the trees unseen. I sat in the grass under the first line of big oaks, looking south into the blue sky, expecting to see arriving birds. But no. Instead, I would find that the empty trees I sat under would suddenly be hosting foraging parties of Bay-breasted and Blackburnian Warblers—that had clearly just arrived in groups from their big flight. Why I could not seem them arrive is a mystery (I often saw warblers fly into the trees, but not dropping high out of the sky). The fact that all of a sudden parties of 3-4 Bay-breasts materialized, told me they had been migrating together across the Gulf. It seems the warblers like to migrate together, when making this big passage.

Cerulean Warbler male

As a birder, it was excellent to see Golden-winged and Blue-winged and Cerulean Warblers each afternoon. These are rare species back in the Mid-Atlantic. Also there was a male Swainson’s Warbler singing on two days, that seemed to be setting up a territory in the woods.

Most of the passage songbird migrants are silent in Nunez Woods, but if you listen carefully, you can hear some of the birds giving “quiet songs.” Not loud and boisterous, but just loud enough for me to hear them with my fine-tuned hearing aids. Some of the Swainson’s Thrushes also sang quietly...  Of course, the local resident Northern Cardinals and Carolina Wrens were belting out their songs at top volume.

Least Bittern male

Rockefeller Marshlands

Just to the south of Nunez and lonely Highway 82 lay the vast coastal marshlands of Rockefeller Refuge. During winter, this is a place filled with waterfowl. In late April, it is home to many long-legged waterbirds and marsh birds, as well as migrant shorebirds. My favorites of the week were Upland Sandpiper and Least Bittern. The sky was always productive—with flying ibis, herons, egrets, flocks of shorebirds, noisy Boat-tailed Grackles, and the occasional Swainson’s Hawk.

Red-winged Blackbird male in display

Palmetto Island State Park

After 6 days based at Rockefeller, I moved on to Palmetto Island State Park, in Vermilion Parish, just north of Abbeville. The State Park is beautiful and well laid-out--with nicely paved roads (great for biking), campgrounds, boat-landings, and even tidy cabins. I spent a beautiful morning there, to get a sense of the place’s birdlife. I heard few passage migrants, but many local breeders: Swainson’s Warbler, Prothonotary and Hooded Warbler, and the like. The highlight was a soaring Swallow-tailed Kite, feeding on a dragonfly in mid-air. This would be a great destination in late April for several days of camping or cabin camping. There are woodland trails as well as canoe trails, and the park is right on the Vermilion River. After my park visit I stopped at Shuck’s in Abbeville for crawfish étoufée, alligator bites, and sassy shrimp. This was my best meal since Billy’s.

Prothonotary Warbler male

Atchafalaya National Wildlife Refuge

My last morning in Louisiana I spent in the Atchafalaya Basin, just northeast of Lafayette. Gary Graves, James Van Remsen, and Jacob Saucier all had recommended driving and birding Whiskey Bay Road, on the eastern bank of the Atchafalaya (the river that will some day capture the Mississippi, in spite of all the efforts of the Army Corps of Engineers). This is the largest wooded swampland in all the US. 

Swallow-tailed Kite

I arrived at Big Alabama Bayou Bridge, just east of Whiskey Bay Road, at dawn. This is a gorgeous spot, set up for birders. The bridge across the bayou is now pedestrian-only, and with benches out in the middle of the bridge to sit and scan for soaring kites and other birds. I first biked the ATV trail just east of Little Alabama Bayou, which took me into fine mature bottomland forest between the Little Alabama and Big Alabama Bayous. Later, I ate breakfast out on the bridge across Big Alabama, watching and listening for birds. A pair of Mississippi Kites soared overhead and a friendly Prothonotary Warbler came out onto the bridge to visit. A Painted Bunting sang in the woods beside the bayou.

Summer Tanager male

Again, as with Palmetto, I heard few migrants, but heard plenty of resident songbirds: Hooded, Kentucky, Swainson’s, Prothonotary Warblers; American Redstart, Northern Parula, and Common Yellowthroat; and Painted Bunting, Summer Tanager, and Yellow-throated, White-eyed, and Red-eyed Vireo. The Atchafalaya bottomland is a huge water-riven lowland forest tract that would take weeks to explore fully. I was happy to have one beautiful early morning there. I hope to return before long...

Big Alabama Bayou, Atchafalaya NWR

 Other Wildlife

Yes, I did see other wildlife. Alligators were abundant in the canals of Rockefeller, and a Coyote was resident in Nunez Woods. I spent several minutes one mid-day watching this big male in the full sun at the forest edge, his yellow eyes gleaming... One evening, after listening in the woods for night birds (only Great Horned and Screech Owls), I almost ran over a Striped Skunk when biking back to the dormitory in the dark. The skunk sprayed my bike and rubber boots but missed me—I was very lucky.

young American Alligators

For more on my earlier visits to this Region, I suggest North on the Wing: Travels with the Songbird Migration of Spring, published by Smithsonian Books in February 2018.

White Ibis in foreground; Great Egrets in background

Fulvous Whistling-Ducks