John Flores: Eagle Expo is prime time for birders

By JOHN FLORES
Bald eagles may be the main attraction for this weekend’s 17th Annual Eagle Expo, as visitors from around the country converge on Morgan City to see our nations symbol, but there are a whole lot of other birds folks will get a chance to encounter as well.
What’s special about Louisiana is birds are always coming and going. There is a strong spring migration as well as an equally strong fall migration. There are birds just passing through, birds that nest and breed here, and birds that choose to spend their winter here.
By the time the Eagle Expo rolls around each year in St. Mary Parish, our local woods and marshes are teeming with numerous species of birds that prefer our milder winter climate. What’s more, if not for this annual migration, we wouldn’t get a chance to see many of these birds.
Take the tiny golden-crowned and ruby-crowned kinglets for instance. These little guys are roughly 4 to 4½ inches in size and, during the summer breeding season, are spread clear across North America from Alaska to Nova Scotia in every Canadian province and territory.
Kinglets start arriving in Louisiana around mid-October just after the bald eagles and are generally pretty much gone by mid-April. Along the northern gulf coast with its mild winter temperatures there are plenty of insects to fatten up on, unlike their snow-covered northern home.
Kinglets are not birds that like to sit still. They are tiny balls of energy and flit about in shrubs and trees looking over every nook and cranny for morsels of food. Male ruby-crowned kinglets have a red crest that is mostly hidden and only when agitated or when they are displaying for a female does it show.
The ruby-crowned kinglets close cousin, the golden-crowned kinglet, when excited often looks like its flitting around with its hair on fire.
One of the best places to see kinglets in St. Mary Parish is at Brownell Memorial Park & Carillon Tower. This little 9.5-acre parcel of land is a mix of palmetto, elephant ear, cattail, and fern swamp nestled below scrub maple, cypress, tupelo, and oak trees covered with Spanish moss. Ideal habitat for winter birds.
Other species that you’ll see during a walk in the Brownell Memorial Park’s bird sanctuary are pine warblers, Carolina chickadees, blue-gray gnatcatchers, tufted titmouse, Carolina wrens, and hermit thrush.
The opportunity to spend time birding in St. Mary Parish has never been better, as Bayou Teche National Wildlife Refuge has some 10,999 acres of public land available. One of the more recent projects completed by the USF&WS is a kayak and canoe launch off Alice C Road. The launch offers access to a bar pit and walking trail where birders can observe anhinga, great egrets, snowy egrets, black-bellied whistling ducks, red-tailed hawks, American kestrels, and barred owls.
About a dozen lesser scaup, a diving species of duck, have made the bar pit their home this winter and seem to be feeding on freshwater clams. They’ve been content to stay but are very shy and tend to swim to the far side of the pond when birders approach.
Also off Alice C Road is the Bayou Teche NWR Garden City Unit’s boardwalk. Along the boardwalk birders can see a variety of woodpeckers. I’ve seen pileated, downy, hairy, and red-bellied woodpeckers this winter in this beautiful and easily accessible location.
In Centerville, down La. 317 towards Burns Point, birders can stop underneath the Intracoastal Waterway bridge and bird around the boat launch on the north side and along the access road on the south side.
This past weekend I spotted white-eyed vireos, palm warblers, yellow-rumped warblers, and Carolina chickadees under the bridge.
Each year there always seems to be those rare visitors that come to St. Mary Parish. This past year local birder Paul Schaub reported a groove-billed ani near the Bayou Teche NWR access road to the Palmetto hiking trail.
In prior years several Vermilion Flycatchers made Cypremort Point State Park their winter home. This year’s winter prize appears to be a Couch’s kingbird off River Road in Berwick.
For the past few weeks, approximately two-tenths of a mile from Johnny’s Seafood, along the bar pit side of the road, this south Texas/Mexico visitor has been hanging out. He’s not shy or timid and has been on full display for birders that have come from as far as Thibodaux, New Iberia, Mandeville, Baton Rouge, Lafayette, and Lake Charles.
The Couch’s kingbird has been reported as a rare sighting on Louisiana eBird and received a lot of attention by the birding community.
It’s likely the kingbird will be here during the Expo weekend, offering visitors an opportunity to see something special.
The Eagle Expo will provide visitors everything and more than they imagined when it comes to bald eagles.
The tours are first rate and present quality viewing of these amazing creatures. But, between eagle tours, visitors should try and take in some of the winter birding that St. Mary Parish has to offer. It could just be the icing on the cake to their Eagle Expo weekend.