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A highlight of our tour was seeing Yellow Rails at the banding station during the Yellow Rails and Rice Festival. We also had some great views of these elusive critters in the field. Photo by participant Kenneth Trease.

Hold dat gumbo, we’s done! It was another great Cajun tour here in southern Lou’anna, and we saw some great birds and et some great food! Maybe too much of the latter, actually… but the former was just in the right amount. We dipped our toes in Cajun culture, or at least the core of it—the food—and we also saw the importance of the southwestern part of Louisiana to wintering North American birds. Waterfowl, waders, some shorebirds, sparrows, kinglets, gnatcatchers, blackbirds, and other groups gather in large concentrations in the rice country and coast of Louisiana, making it one of the most important areas of the continent for non-breeding birds. The sheer spectacle is enough to warrant a tour, but there are some specialties that make it that much more interesting, with Yellow Rail topping the list. This secretive species is so difficult elsewhere, that the opportunity to see it during the second rice harvest of the year is nearly irresistible! Where else can you see the bird so well with a minimum of effort?

Our visit overlapped with the Yellow Rails and Rice festival, and we really benefited from that with some great in-the-field views of Yellow, King, Virginia rails and Soras, followed by in-hand views of the same. Not often that happens! In addition, we had some great luck with some of the other top targets of the tour: some of the mousy sparrows such as Bachman’s, LeConte’s, and Nelson’s, which all performed admirably, and some slightly less regular Louisiana birds such as White-tailed Hawks (that looked like they were nearly in Texas through our scopes) and Couch’s Kingbird (that was firmly over Louisiana soil). Other memorable sightings included the cloud of Black Skimmers at East Jetty, the flying scoop of strawberry ice cream, locally known as a “Cajun Flamingo” (but more often called Roseate Spoonbill), the fine daytime view of a bleary-eyed Barred Owl, the swarm of Scissor-tailed Flycatchers on some roadside wires, the masses of mixed geese that had just come from the Arctic and were doing their arrival laps over the rice fields, the graceful White-tailed Kites on the beach side in Cameron Parish, the very late Yellow-billed Cuckoo that caught us by surprise, and locally common, but perhaps rare elsewhere, species such as Sedge Wren, Swamp Sparrow, and Orange-crowned Warbler, all of which we enjoyed viewing. That previous sentence could be considered a run-on sentence, but this is a checklist introduction and not a thesis, so I’m stickin’ with it!

Cory and I really enjoyed your company for this short, but bird-and-food packed tour. We hope you enjoyed it as well, and that you’ll consider coming along with us again, perhaps a bit further afield, in the near future. There are a lot of birds out there to see, and we’d love the opportunity to show some of them to you! Keep your binocs close and good birding!

Dan Lane

KEYS FOR THIS LIST
One of the following keys may be shown in brackets for individual species as appropriate: * = heard only, I = introduced, E = endemic, N = nesting, a = austral migrant, b = boreal migrant

A fly-over Roseate Spoonbill, captured by guide Cory Gregory.

It's always great to see owls, and this Barred Owl allowed us to see it well. Photo by participant Paul Koker

A Clapper Rail sneaking across the road allowed us a good view. Photo by guide Cory Gregory.

We saw just this one Swainson's Hawk; the species is an earlier migrant, and most have already headed to Argentina by the time of our tour. Photo by guide Cory Gregory.

In addition to the sought-after Yellow Rails, we had some fine views of the large King Rail, both in the field, and in hand. Photo by participant Kenneth Trease.

Folks in Cory's van saw this Bronzed Cowbird on the drive to East Jetty. Photo by guide Cory Gregory.

A benefit of seeing birds at the banding station was getting to see the details of their plumage. This is the out-stretched wing of a Yellow Rail. Photo by participant Paul Koker.

This Couch's Kingbird was an exciting find on the first Field Guide's Yellow Rail tour this year, and it stayed long enough for us to see it on our tour! Photo by guide Cory Gregory.

Red-cockaded Woodpecker is one of the "most wanted" birds of the southern pine savannas. Photo by participant Paul Koker.

This pretty LeConte's Sparrow gave us a good look; here, it appears a bit shy, hiding behind a grass stem. Photo by guide Cory Gregory.

Getting to see Yellow Rails in hand is such a special thing, we can't have too many images! Here is another view, by guide Cory Gregory.

The banding station allowed us to get up close to see the birds. Photo by guide Cory Gregory.

Guide Cory Gregory photographed this Sora at the banding station.

We got a good look at this Swamp Rabbit in the marsh at the Sabine Nature Trail. Photo by participant Paul Koker.

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS

mouse sp.

American Alligator (Alligator mississippiensis)

Marsh Brown Snake (Storeria dekayi limnetes): the little snake we encountered at Sabine Nature Trail.

Eastern Garter Snake (Thamnophis sirtalis)

Red-eared Slider (Trachemys scripta)

Map Turtle/Chicken Turtle (Graptemys/Deirochelys sp.): the other turtles we saw with yellow-scrawled necks but no red ears.

Totals for the tour: 157 bird taxa and 5 mammal taxa