Hey all, Ronnie Maum and I realized that it wasn't looking too good around
8 am when we only had a few warbler spp to show for ourselves. It appears
that we missed the best window for the earlier neotropical arrivals by at
least 4 days. Not only that, the weather conditions seemed just a bit TOO
perfect, calm and sunny, anyway. Covering western Bossier from n reaches of
lock and dam 5 all the way to Viking Drive netted us a mere 112 species.
There were many notable misses but Little Blue and Tricolored Heron were
among the worst. Red River was big ole muddy, roiling mess! Best bird was
Blackburnian Warbler. Finding 5 Solitary Sandpipers in one small shaded
mud-hole, then 4 Semipalmated Plover .5 miles north of there at another
tiny wet spot in an open field on Viking Drive late in the day was a bit
weird- as we'd seen lots of the same habitat earlier in southern Bossier
Parish, yet not a single individual of either of those species. After
having a handful of Yellow-breasted Chat just recently here, missing them
today seemed unfathomable to me early on- as the first arrivals here are
usually territorial birds, as opposed to migrants. However, much of the
back of the refuge is still rejuvenating from last summer's flood, so now
possibly unusable for them? It will be interesting to see how many return/
remain in the next few weeks. We're hoping for one more attempt during the
"usually" bigger second push, sometime between the last few days of April/
first few days of May. Not gonna hold my breath on it, though...........
Hope you folks on the coast did better! (:
Terry
