Gators from the Atchafalaya

For starters, just remember that it rhymes with jambalaya. I'm referring to the remarkable swampland that wants to relieve New Orleans of the burden of the Mississippi River, leaving it high and dry. That is apparently what would happen if the Army Corps of Engineers were to let Nature take her course.

A visit to the waters of the Atchafalaya was on the agenda when I visited the Sson and family this past summer -- hence the assorted gators decorating this post. All were found at the visitors center midway across the bayous that seemed to go on forever. Turns out there is a mighty river just waiting to happen right in the middle.

I've just finished a John McPhee report on the Atchafalaya (in his book The Control of Nature). As he explains, a system of massive locks near Baton Rouge is all that is keeping Old Man River on its present course instead of pouring through the bayous. A curious paradox: New Orleans could be spared the worst of any more Katrinas -- but only at the cost of losing any reason for its existence. Final note: John McPhee is always an interesting read. Besides, one learns a lot reading his work.

Got water? Got birds!

Wow! Until an hour ago, when I looked more carefully at my folder of water bird pictures, I was not aware that I had managed to catch a pelican in flight. As you can see, the timing could have been better; his beak was definitely not holding more than his belly can. Yes, we're back in Louisiana for this post, and while some of the same birds might be found at our local lakes in the right season, there are several I've never seen before! BTW, praise be for the 12x zoom on the Canon; otherwise, you wouldn't be seeing most of these pictures.

The laughing gull, it turns out, is an easy bird to photograph. He's quite aware that food is to be had where there are humans. Pieces of bread. Popcorn. Potato chips. All the good stuff that your mother warned you about.

We saw a lifetime worth of gulls while waiting for a ferry to carry Sson's vehicle across a waterway. With cars accumulating, food was being tossed left and right to a large crowd of wheeling and dealing birds.

Snowy egrets (above) and cattle egrets (below) were plentiful in and around the bayous.

At one site, Sson and I frightened a large flock of cattle egrets .

Not sure, but this looks like a great egret landing.

The zoom was stretched beyond its limit to capture this stilt and his reflection. Not a single one of the stilts came any closer than what my LH used to call bird distance -- a careful spacing that keeps all birds the same small size for the observing birder. A very frustrating critter to try to photograph.

Now this is a lovely bird that does not appear in any of my books of Western birds -- a little blue heron. Yes, we have great blue herons at every pond or watering hole that is an acre or so in expanse, but the pretty bird above was a new experience.

As was the white ibis crowd we found in a dead tree on one bayou excursion. Again --I've seen many black colored ibis locally during fly-through season, but never one of these spectacular critters.


One very lucky day, Sson and I spotted a flock of roseate spoonbills in a crawdad pond. The birds were stirring up the water to feed by moving their amazing beaks back and forth. Just take a look below; no question where the name originated.

This guy must be a juvenile heron of some sort. But ... no idea of which sort. Yes, that is him below, too.

Linkage: Warren at TouchWind has found an amazing bit of totally misguided desert landscaping down in Tucson ... Rich is offering an interesting group of surreal Prescott prints for sale at a new site.

Swamp Things

No need to call on M. Champagne when you've got an ecologist Sson who's in pig heaven when he's out phographing nature in the raw. I tagged along and let him point out the critters well before my ancient eyebones had adapted to each new scene as the car moved slowly on the levee beside the bayou. Whenever he found a good spot, we'd stop.

Turtles. Big ones. Bigger than the turtles I found in my bathtub, yet.

Very important, those logs. For the turtles and for the G*A*T*O*R. whose vertical strips don't quite match the horizontal stripes of his perch.

I was lucky enough to photograph two more of the reptilians, both floating in the water like logs, patiently waiting for food to come a little closer. Gave me a chance to picture how beautiful bayou water can be. Especially in late spring, before the mosquitoes have matured enough to swarm one. Not a bite did I get.

Here's another inhabitant of bayou country, living on the dry land that is found near the levees between huge pools of water. The bunny was sufficiently camouflaged that it took me forever to find him in my viewfinder. I'm sure that one of those alligators would have had no big problem seeing him, however. As for the birds, I actually have enough pictures for a separate post. Real Soon Now.