Mokka mit Schlag » Birding

Lafreniere Park, Jefferson Parish, 2006-12-27

Lafreniere Park, Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, 2006-12-27

Christmas morning I decided to do a little unofficial bird counting before most of my family woke up for the usual festivities. I didn’t go anywhere special, just made a loop through my Old Metairie neighborhood. My family swears there’s nothing to see out there, just House Sparrows, Blue Jays, and Mockingbirds; but they really aren’t paying attention. There’s a lot more when you look.

I have a regular three mile circle route that takes me up Homestead Ave. to Metairie Playground, around the playground, up the railroad tracks to the 17th Street Canal, down the Canal to where it meets the Canal Street canal; down Canal Street to the I-10 service road, and down the service road back to Homestead Ave. It takes about two hours to follow, and takes me through as varied a habitat as you can expect in suburbia.

One thing that always surprises me when I do this is how few other people are doing it too. Nobody in this town walks anywhere. Getting from the far end of the Lakeside Shopping Center parking lot to Dillard’s is considered a major hike. Yesterday I passed two joggers and no one else on the entire three-mile, two hour excursion. Yes, it was early on Christmas morning, but that’s about par for the course even on a beautiful Spring afternoon.

My goal was to find at least one species I had not previously seen in the neighborhood. That proved a little too unambitious since in the first half block between my parents’ house and Homer Street I found two: Ring-billed Gull and Yellow-rumped Warbler. I also ticked off some of the usuals: Blue Jay, Northern Cardinal, and Northern Mockingbird.
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Abita Amber packs a little more of a kick than I remembered, so yesterday after a beer and cheese fries lunch at Cooter Browns I decided to take a stroll around Audubon Park rather driving straight home. Lucky I did because I finally found five White-winged Doves flitting around in one of the Live Oaks near the Audubon Institute.

I’d been looking for these repeatedly in the Uptown streets without any success, despite fairly precise directions as to where they were likely to be found. This is probably the last life bird I’ll pick up this trip and likely this year, unless something really weird shows up in Prospect Park this weekend.
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Yesterday I took a very brief jaunt to Audubon Park where I was informed Black-bellied Whisting Ducks could be easily found. I didn’t find the 1000+ flock I was promised (Maybe they’d flown off to feed somewhere else, or I didn’t hit the right pond?) but I did find these seven:

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Saturday I joined David Muth, my brother Tommy Harold, and about a dozen others for the New Orleans Christmas Bird Count. Over the course of the day, the various teams tallied up 139 species, including four personal life birds and a state first record.

We met at 6:00 A.M. at the McDonald’s off the Reed Blvd. I-10 exit (New Orleans East for non-locals) to divide up areas and arrange teams. McDonald’s wasn’t open because their computers were down, but they let us in to organize matters anyway. We were a little short handed because one team leader was stuck in Colorado due to the Denver airport mess. Tommy and I joined up with count leader David Muth to cover Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge and areas west to about Lakefront Airport.

We started the morning at Seabrook Bridge just before 7:00. David knew this as the most reliable place to find Caspian Tern and Black Skimmer, though we had to get there early before they took off hunting breakfast. We found 5 Caspian Terns (my first life bird of the day), 20 Black Skimmers, and 1 Royal Tern. We also tallied 50 Ring-billed Gulls, 5 Herring Gulls, 2 Brown Pelicans, 1 Spotted Sandpiper, 1 Great Blue Heron, 85 American Coots, 102 Laughing Gulls, and several Double-crested Cormorants. (Aside from the singletons, numbers are best estimates. Birds kept flying in and out making it hard to get a perfect count.)

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