John Flores: Limpkins are loud, a bit odd and hungry for apple snails

Britt Cavalier and Hunter Parra are a couple of Houma business owners who share a duck hunting lease in the marsh south of Gibson. The lifelong friends had one particular complaint from last season, and it wasn’t a lack of ducks.
Their problem was with a peculiar species of wading birds called limpkins. A bird that was first reported in Louisiana just over three years ago during the 2017 Christmas Bird Count when avid birder Josh Sylvest spotted four of them on Lake Boeuf in Lafourche Parish.
Parra’s beef with limpkins is how irritatingly loud they are.
Parra said, “They’re all over the marsh we hunt, and they hang out often times no more than six feet from the duck blind. They start calling to each other and go to hollering and it drives you nuts. And that’s with us shooting too. It doesn’t seem to bother them. But we see them all the time in the marsh, along canal banks and levees, especially wherever there’s a bunch of cypress trees. They’re everywhere.”
During the winter, Cavalier and I exchanged messages where he said, “Mr. John, if you ever want to see limpkins let me know and we’ll set something up for you to go take pictures if you want.”
This past week I took him up on his offer and we set out with the goal of capturing an image of a limpkin with an apple snail in its bill. A hard south wind had the water pushed up over the marsh and the limpkins were scattered in all directions. However, we still spotted 19 and probably heard many times more than that calling to each other, just as Parra said they did.
In spite of them being spread out, it was “mission accomplished.” I was able to capture the picture I wanted when one of the limpkins picked up a large apple snail and made off with it somewhere in the marsh reeds and spikerush.
My interest in Limpkins was spurred by a March 15 Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Press Release titled, “Limpkins, Noted for Eating Apple Snails, Seen in Louisiana.”
The thing about apple snails is they are an invasive species first discovered in a Gretna drainage canal in 2006 and have since expanded their range into Lafourche, Terrebonne and St. Mary parishes.
The widely publicized snails are originally from South America and sold as aquarium pets. In all likelihood, they were probably innocently discarded in neighborhood canals.
The prolific snails eat aquatic vegetation in direct competition with native species of fish and other organisms like shrimp and crawfish. They are also a potential threat to the agriculture industry.
As a result, apple snails have been the topic of many informational articles from reporting discovered outbreaks to how to go about knocking clusters of their pink eggs into the water to prevent them from hatching more snails. Essentially, at this point there is no putting this ecological Pandora back in the box.
In a National Wildlife Federation Blog article written by David Muth titled, “Birders, Snails, and the Limpkin,” he mentions there is only one apple snail native to the lower 48 states known as the Florida apple snail (pomacea paludosa). What’s more, since limpkins have a somewhat strict dietary requirement that is almost exclusively limited to apple snails, plus three other native freshwater snails and five species of freshwater mussels, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, its range never really extended beyond Florida and tropical regions.
So, how did limpkins wind up moving approximately 400 miles westward to marshes in southeastern Louisiana, particularly since it is a non-migratory bird?
In an article written by Erik Johnson, Louisiana Audubon’s director of bird conservation, shortly after limpkins were first reported in the state, titled, “What the what? Louisiana’s First and Second Limpkin Reports!” he speculates avian expansions often progress with short jumps.
Somehow in 2017 the birds made one of those jumps. What’s more, since limpkins favor shallow freshwater swamp forests, ponds, lakes, sloughs, canals, and marshes, the leap they made to Louisiana wasn’t much of a change from its known Florida habitat. Moreover, with a ready to eat apple snail food source, it appears these wading birds have everything they need.
Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Non-game Ornithologist Robert Dobbs said in the recent press release, “It really looks like Limpkins are getting a foothold here. Seemingly, as soon as they showed up, they started breeding. We’re only talking three or four pairs that we know of at this point, but that’s remarkable for a bird that was first discovered in the state only four years ago.”
Dobbs pointed out there’s no reason for them to leave since there is a ton of food around and the habitat is good.
Yet, Dobbs believes there are not enough limpkins to impact the apple snail population. However, he says if the trend continues and limpkins really do become established, it’s possible that they could provide some level of bio control.
From an anecdotal standpoint, both Cavalier and Parra say there’s hundreds of limpkins in the marsh they hunt and fish south of Gibson. And, not to argue with an LDWF non-game ornithologist, I actually saw firsthand there are a lot of limpkins in that one little piece of marsh my two young friends frequent.
It appears they’re not getting a “foothold,” but actually have one. There also may be only three or four “known” breeding pairs, but from the numbers we saw and heard, on a bad day I’d have to say there’s a lot more nesting pairs unaccounted for.
Dobbs does note limpkin numbers appear to be skyrocketing.
It’s pretty obvious that no matter how large the limpkin population is right now, they seem to be doing at least some damage to the aggressive South American apple snails. So, if that means putting up with a little noise while they reduce the impact of an invasive species, I’m good with that and welcome their irritating call and any of their avian brethren to Louisiana.