April 3-20, 2001
Marjorie A. Bourret
If you want to see LAUGHING GULLS the place to go is the Mississippi
River, especially the lower reaches. In New Orleans I found MOCKING
BIRDS were in abundance and I might have seen a Rusty Blackbird.
I
didn’t have my binoculars with me so couldn’t be certain of the
identification, but they are in the area. On a River Barge Explorer
trip from New Orleans to Memphis, I saw dozens of the Laughing Gulls.
All along the river there were DOUBLE CRESTED CORMORANTS in abundance
-
hundreds and hundreds of them. There were BLACK VULTURES
here and
there. A few WHITE PELICANS were on sand bars.
In Natchez there were PURPLE MARTINS and approaching Vicksburg a CLIFF
SWALLOW flew by the barge. COMMON GRACKLES seemed to take the
place of
our Brewer’s Blackbirds near Memphis. I didn’t see it, but a
far more
expert birder than I said a PILEATED WOODPECKER flew past the barge
near
Memphis. At the Memphis dock there was a NORTHERN ROUGH-WINGED
SWALLOW.
From Memphis, I drove across Tennessee and North Carolina as far as
Raleigh-Durham airport. In the process I found REDWING BLACKBIRDS
near
Memphis, EASTERN MEADOWLARKS in most open spaces, male CARDINALS in
a
number of spots (but I didn’t see a female). At Shiloh National
Military Park in Tennessee there was a female HOODED WARBLER as well
as
a RED-BELLIED WOODPECKER in the same tree. (And another small
black
warbler sized bird that eluded my identification.) At Athens
Regional
Park an EASTERN KINGBIRD entertained me.
At the home of bird watching friends in Knoxville, Tennessee, CEDAR
WAXWINGS and TUFTED TITMICE visited their feeders. Finches there
included both HOUSE and PURPLE, and a few that were apparently
cross-breeds.
Marj Bourret