parula paradise

Birding this morning was awesome - outside the City of Jean Lafitte (complete with a tourism center which is all automatic puppets of the Pirate Lafitte's alleged deeds) at a boardwalk on a bayou between an elementary school and a dump station (for those of you who've never hauled your own trash - that's where you take it when you don't have those big trucks coming for it every week). Everybody else out there was local, doing their exercise three times around the boardwalk - it's a GREAT place out there on the bayou, with all the cypress knees and general swampiness.

I very proudly saw and identified a cardinal (yeah, those are tough), and confirmed a Phoebe sighting (I'm used to the Black Phoebes, one of my favorite birds, but these Eastern Phoebes were similar in shape and song). (Not that I am good with birdsongs AT ALL. But I wish I were.)

But almost everything else was new to me - some I've never heard of before. Parula? Never seen one of those on the tundra. And every time I'd look it up in the guidebook - yup, sure enough, no habitat where I've lived before.

Among my favorite sightings were two alligators in the bayou and three large turtles on an opposite bank who were sunning themselves in a military-style row.

Other birds seen (that I remember): anhinga, bluebirds, tufted titmouse, female red-winged blackbirds, red-shouldered hawk, white ibis, chickadee, swamp sparrows, starlings (boo-hiss!), mockingbirds (in the parking lot), turkey and black vultures, golden-crowned and ruby-crowned kinglets (they're so cute and nervous - they flutter almost like hummingbirds), blue-headed vireo, yellow-rumped and yellow-throated and prothonotary warblers.

The group I was with was really knowledgeable, and they were willing to help out a novice like me. Thanks Crescent Bird Club!

Unfortunately I feel like hell so won't make the parade today (little sleep last night, headache, backache, vomiting this morning, nasty cough and general malaise). I'll try to rest up today so that I can still go to Alabama tomorrow - and if I don't get better, well, Kim's a nurse so it's probably about the best place I could be! :)