week of 6/9/04
 
 
 


The Naturalist's Corner
By Don Hendershot

The chestnut-sided warbler — with his dapper, yellow pin-cushion cap — was exploring the grape vine about 20 feet from me while a blackburnian warbler (Audubon’s fire-throat) was foraging in the top of a 30-foot pin cherry. Although I was conducting a survey and was supposed to spend my four minutes recording all the birds I heard and/or saw, then move on, I couldn’t help but dawdle long enough to get good looks at the two colorful neotropicals nearby.

When I began birding in college, it was still called bird-watching. I guess the “little-old-lady-in-tennis-shoes” stigma became too much of a burden for the yuppie generation. Birder sounds more hip, like biker or hiker or boater etc.

I remember when a friend in college, Doug Liles, took it upon himself to get in a little solo bird-watching. There was a hunting lease near the school — University of Louisiana at Monroe — that was a great spot for spring migrants. It was a regular field trip for our ornithology lab. Doug also happened to be a member of the lease.

We had a good day on our weekly field trip and Doug decided to return on Saturday morning. As he was walking one of the woods-roads, he was stopped by one of the caretakers patrolling the property.

The caretaker immediately recognized Doug as a member. “Oh it’s you. You wouldn’t believe who was out here last week.”

“Who was that?” Doug asked.

“Bird-watchers,” the guy said with a disgusted chuckle. “Can you believe that? Bird-watchin’. That’s ignorant s**t.”

Fortunately for Doug, his compact binoculars were tucked away inside his shirt, thus avoiding any guilt by association.

Louisiana is a great place for spring birding. The ornithology class would take a spring field trip to the coast every year. The highlight was usually Peveto woods, a small chenier on the coast near Cameron. It was the first landfall for thousands of migrants that made it across the Gulf of Mexico. Besides all the common eastern, northeastern and southeastern migrants, there was always a handful of western vagrants thrown in the mix. A Townsend’s warbler was one of my best personal finds at Peveto. Thanks to the Baton Rouge Audubon Society, the Peveto woods have been preserved with the formation of the Peveto Woods Sanctuary.

Along with the landfall of neotropicals, there were always plenty of shorebirds, waders and lingering waterfowl along the beaches and in the marshes. It was always a great spring trip.

But for many Louisiana birders the routine was to stow away binoculars after about mid-May and wait for next spring. Now, there are neotropical nesters in Louisiana, about 14 or so warblers plus orioles and summer tanagers and other goodies. Still, it’s not quite the number of species or individuals we get here in the mountains.

Plus it’s hot in Louisiana by May. And there could be a mosquito or two lurking about the woods. By 9 or 10 a.m. on a June morning, it can get desperately quiet. There’s no 4,000-foot mountain to run to.

I used to fall into that spring routine, well, spring and fall. There are some good migrants that pass through in autumn as well. But it wasn’t until I got to Western North Carolina in 1986 that birding became a real year-round hobby.

As ignorant as it is, I still get this wave of appreciation when, like yesterday, on an early June afternoon, I hear the song and turn to see a scarlet tanager on the very top of the greenest new growth of a white pine, framed by the Carolina-blue sky.

(Don Hendershot can be reached at ddihen@juno.com)