John K. Flores: The coast counts during bird survey

When you think of the definition of the word “odyssey,” it can have two definitions. One is a long wandering or voyage usually marked by many changes of fortune. The other is an intellectual or spiritual wandering or quest.
This past month I ran into a group of students from Hiram College at Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge in Grand Chenier, who were essentially completing both definitions on their particular odyssey this spring. The students were there participating in field ornithology as part of a “Study Away” course.
For those not familiar with Hiram, it is a small liberal arts college located in northeast Ohio. More geographically, says Sarah Mabey, PhD, leader of the group, and a Professor and Department Chair of Environmental Studies at Hiram, if you draw a triangle between Cleveland, Youngstown, and Akron, the college would be located approximately in the middle of those cities.
The student’s three-week journey across the southeast took them along the upper Gulf Coast from Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and back, then through Alabama, Georgia, and Virginia on their way home.
Mabey said, “Our students got the opportunity to see songbirds, shorebirds, and waterfowl migration at scale. Because, this hemispheric phenomenon — it’s hard to study it from books and journal articles, to really understand what’s going on.
“And then the other thing that I think is really special about being able to travel and study birds,” Mabey continued, “is to visit such a diversity of habitat-systems and to see the landscape, in order to get a sense of how human society has changed and is also influenced by the landscape itself. And, to see the way people all over interact with birds, whether they are researchers, or just birdwatchers, or just residents who have feeders, to talking to people, and meeting up with experts.”
Mabey pointed out that conversations on the road with biologists like Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Research Program Manager Paul Link can be fantastic when it comes to experts.
During the Hiram student’s stopover at Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge, they were exposed to how biologists trap and band black-bellied and fulvous whistling ducks using baited walk-in traps that were set up by Link and his staff prior to their arrival. As a result, the students were able to get the kind of hands-on experience that can’t be taught in the classroom setting back in Ohio.
The students were also able to tour and take advantage of the refuge’s marsh and coastal wetlands that would provide them with opportunities to add to their total bird count. A count that at the time exceeded 160 species, with several states to go.
There are impressionable things that instructors and young college students take away from trips like these. Mabey says the students knew for a long time that this trip was going to be a little rough and they would be traveling hard and long.
Mabey said, “I think one of the most important things for me was to watch my students, these young people who have traveled, but probably haven’t traveled like this, spending most of the day, every day outdoors watching birds. To watch them overcome societal distance from the natural world, and to see that distance from the natural world shrinking and shrinking, that is a really special thing to observe.”
For those who chase the migration during the spring along the Gulf Coast, there are always favorites birders hope to see and also there’s a surprise or two.
Mabey said, “I love roseate spoonbills, but I also love the eastern kingbirds, and so to see them arriving during migration, it’s been really fun for me. But, for me personally, seeing Wilson’s phalarope was one of the highlights of the trip. For the students, it seems like every day is the best day.”
John Flores is the Morgan City Review’s outdoor writer. He can be contacted at gowiththeflo@cox.net.