The Birds of Lake Martin

The Rookery At Lake Martin 2012

2012-01-30T13:56:00.002-06:00

A Great Egret male snaps a twig from a nearby tree and flies back to the nest.

She is waiting for him, and he passes the twig to her, and they settle it into the nest. They do the "wild thing" and he flies off to gather another twig.

www.lakemartinswamptours.com

Right on schedule about mid January, the egrets and herons began to stage their nests.

All the trees are bare in January and February, so birdwatching and photography is easy and unobstructed by foliage. The main color of the swamp in winter is grey.

Soon the grass and clover will start to green things up as seen behind this Great Egret who is sporting some breeding blumage.

Although some people are surprised that the herons start nesting in mid-January, the first nesters of the season lay their eggs in the first week of December.

And that would also be the largest of the birds that nests here at Lake Martin,

the Bald Eagle.

Soon after the Bald Eagles begin nesting, they are followed by ospry,

owls and hawks,

and then the Great Egrets,

and Great Blue Herons about mid-January.
Those two of the heron family are the largest and a larger body mass may account for the early nesting. For about two months from mid-January through mid-March the large herons expand in population in the rookery to the tune of several thousand.

By late February or early March the Rosette Spoonbills are in courtship,

and soon after that, by March 15th, a riot of birds competing for nesting space breaks out as thousands of birds arrive every day. Tri-colored, Louisiana Herons, and...

Little Blue Herons,

along with Cattle Egrets, start pouring in by the thousands every day.

Black Crowned Night Herons arrive to nest in April, along with their cousins who sport the Yellow Crowns.

Here is an immature night heron...

By early May, the Black Bellied Whistling Ducks should be warming up some eggs

And last but not least, to start nesting at Lake Martin is the White Ibis,

and sometimes Snowy Egrets who also begin to nest as late as June.

all photos above are copyrighted and courtesy of Claude Nall

I am Marcus de la Houssaye,owner and operator of de la Houssaye's Swamp Tours

photos by Al GuidryIf you would like to contact me for more information about the rookery,

photos by Wolfgang Hasenstien
or to make a reservation for a Breaux Bridge swamp tour ,

the days have been warm and sunny here along the Gulf coast and

I can be contacted by cell phone at 337 298 2630

"I love dis country!"

My Cats Hanging Out with the Eagles

2011-12-06T14:03:00.000-06:00

For years, I tried to tell people who opposed my presence in the rookery, that I had a relationship with the wild nesting birds, that was not disruptive of nesting activities.

This was back before the Nature Conservancy started draining the lake and really disrupted things.

First Quarter Report 2011

2011-04-01T08:38:00.004-05:00

From all indications this year appears to be the best I have seen since Y2K.

The tupelo are refoliating and blooming too, and the Bald Cypress are starting to really turn green as well.

A couple of weeks ago, the swamp was still mostly grey with moss being the predominant color factor.

And the White Ibis were really coming into the rookery to roost at sunset.

If you would like to view them,

you can go to Lake Martin Landing just before sunset any day,

and there are 20-30 thousand flying over the landing from the north to roost.

What is really interesting is how evident the floating mat of plants is as a foundation of the nesting birds food supply,

(as seen below, where Ibis are feeding on aquatic snails, shrimp and crawfish)

yet the Nature Conservancy continues to support the policy of spraying herbicide to decrease the plant mass as seen in the 3 photos below taken in the rookery at the Cypress Island Preserve on Sept. 28, 2010. The state with the Nature Conservancy's approval came out and sprayed around and in the rookey last year two times in September.

In spite of the fact that three sides of Lake Martin has been sprayed so much

that the ecology is in my opinion completely destroyed, there doesn't appear to be an end to this insanity. I thought the Nature Conservancy policy was protection of plants and wildlife and preservation of ecology.

That's right three sides of Lake Martin no longer has the floating mat of plants it once had and almost all the button bush was destroyed as a non targeted casualty of the war on plants that has gone on for 15 years.

You can see the evidence of this overkill in the photo below where floating mats of plants and button bush once were as thick as they are in the rookery today.

If I got this right it would appear that certain individuals are being decieved or perhaps bought and used to promote the chemical company agenda of selling chemical products to the state government at tax payer expense to create profit for the chemical company. If the plants were ever a threat, that threat ended over ten years ago when we wiped out the hundreds of acres of pennywort, frogbit, trifolium, and button bush on the north side of the lake.

The noth side of the lake is now in my opinion an aquatic desert compared to what it was 12 years ago when glossy ibis regularly visited their feeding grounds there.

Hopefully the emerald green that is emerging now will be here for our appreciation of the natural beauty of the swamp, as well as the nutrient value it brings to the ecology of all species, especially the birds, throughout spring and into the summer.

My Louisiana swamp tours have been a great source of inspiration and pleasure for many people for over 25 years and

in spite of 15 years of plant control, 5 major hurricanes in five years and an oil spill last year,

it would appar that the birds are back in record numbers and I will be here to watch over and defend the ecology and all species therein, as I conduct my tours. What has made my swamp tours special amoungst the 50 or so such companies in Louisiana is Lake Martin. de la Houssaye's Swamp Tours is still the premiere tourist attraction in the tri-parish area primarily due to the abundance and variety of plants, birds and alligators present in Lake Martin.

If you would like to come out and see the birds and alligators from Rookery Road(no charge), you can go to my site for directions, by clicking the link at the bottom of my new Lake Martin Swamp Tours site.

You can make a reservation for a swamp tour with me by calling my cell phone @ 337 298 2630.

If you are out at the lake touring, hiking, kayaking, fishing, birdwatching or doing photography, and begin to feel the hunger pains, I want to refer you to a really neat little restaurant on the main drag from Interstate 10 leading into Breaux Bridge at 124 Rees Street.

It is called Le Cafe.

Now I can imagin you may have been eating too much fried food lately, but if that is what you are looking for, these folks do it right.

Just my opinion, but this is the place for shrimp poboy in Breaux Bridge!

You can call them at 332 2500 and order in advance and pick it up at the drive through. Nice...

As you can see, there is a lot more to the menu than just shrimp.

This is not a fast food restaurant, so call in advance if you are in a rush or be prepared to sit and wait for them to cook your order, and that is what makes it so good.

Along with the fact that it is cooked to order, they bread their own and that is how it is supposed to be done.

They are located at the corner of Rees and Thibodeaux streets in Breaux Bridge.

It Has Been A Long Time Coming...

2011-03-11T13:15:00.006-06:00

A White Ibis by Claude Nall

If my memory serves me here, I estimate about 10 years since I have seen so many White Ibis roosting at Lake Martin.

As I wrapped up the swamp tour yesterday,

I decided to shoot some sunset photos

and wave after wave of Ibis

began to fly over heading for the rookery to roost.

I have been distressed to say the least regarding the decline of the nesting bird population at the Lake Martin rookery.

The Nature Conservancy last drained the lake in September of 2008,

which led to low water levels during the nesting season of 2009,

and there was still considerable application of herbicide to control the aquatic plants in 2009 as well.

Then in 2009, after I started writing articles about the corelation of lower water levels and the decline of the nesting bird population,

the Nature Conservancy stopped draining the lake for the first time in September 2009

and last year the birds came back as I had hoped and predicted they would.

This year, I am anxiously awaiting to see where this positive turn of events goes.

In the meantime, as winter comes to an end, and the Bald Cypress refoliates,

It appears we birdwatchers, photographers, and nature lovers have much to look forward to this spring!

Why Just The Birds?

2011-03-03T08:36:00.013-06:00

Everytime we overstep our bounds as human beings, we affect the natural environment, and all other species around us in profound new ways we often do not anticipate or even realize until it is too late.

I started this blog a year ago in order to separate the Lake Martin political issues regarding water, plant, wildlife, ecology, and the so called ecotours, from my Louisiana Swamp Tour Blog.

Photo of me and Christina by Philip Gould

My swamp tour blog was originally set up to help people find quality tours
My friend Butch, guiding a swamp tour

and at the same time expose the destructive activities of corporate, small business, and government entities that were disruptive of ecology at Lake Martin.

I soon realized that the positive results of my writing posts about ecopolitics in Lake Martin were so overwhelming,

I needed to put those posts in it's own blog.

So here we are. The Birds Of Lake Martin Blog.

I can now write in great detail about manipulation of water levels, herbicide application,

and bird nesting activities without creating an information overload

for people who are just wanting to find a quality swamp tour.

A lot of people live, work and play at Lake Martin.

Because of so much overlapping activities of resident wildlife and human recreation,

we humans(with the power and money to make gross alterations to ecology), need to be careful of the things we do in the name of protecting and managing the area,

and consider that we may cause more harm than good if we are not all working together, and value the presence and coexistance of all people, and plant and wildlife species in the Lake Martin ecological complex.

A Cricket frog, which lives in the floating mat of plants, and is often a hatchling alligators first food.

But, unity of service amoungst the entities dedicated to using, managing and protecting the area is grossly lacking or completely nonexistant for the most part.

Nutria, a very much misunderstood and undervalued non-indigenous species

Because of this we have lawnmowers in the rookery, cutting down Bald Cypress trees planted by the girl scouts, and drainage of the water resources during periods of drought, not to mention, excessive application of dangerous herbicides to kill and destroy the natural beauty and function of the swamp plants.

And all of those above mentioned activities are proposed to benefit the area ecology as a whole, when in fact, the big money management policies and activities are almost always designed to target one species or group of species to the demise of the rest of the eco-matrix.

Until we can all work together,

and protect all species in the ecosystem,

the delicate and thus very vulnerable well being of the birds at Lake Martinhangs in the balance.

All photos are copyrighted and courtesy of Claude Nall unless noted otherwise.

Black-bellied Whistling Ducks

2011-02-27T10:57:00.002-06:00

The first time I ever saw a black-bellied whistling duck was in the bayou at Lake Martin about 1998.

There was a pair feeding in the shallows along the bayou.

The population has expanded dramatically in the last 5 years,

and now we have about 50 or more nesting pairs at Lake Martin.

What is really interesting about these in this photo is that the picture was taken in the middle of February.

These birds usually don't show up at Lake Martin until next month when they are about to nest.

If you would like to visit Lake Martin or any of the numerous nesting areas in the surrounding areas, I am available for consultation and guided trips.

I am Marcus de la Houssaye 337 298 2630

www.delahoussayes.com

Nesting Season 2011

2011-02-23T03:25:00.014-06:00

My Louisiana swamp tours first objective is to bring tourists up close to wildlife and at the same time, have given me a unique opportunity to study and observe the transitions in bird activities in and around the rookery.

The Great Blue Herons were right on schedule this year and started nesting in mid January.

The two photos above were taken on tour this past week.

Usually, the Great Egrets are right there with them.

But, even though mating plumes are visible through most of the winter,

it is the middle of January before
Great Egrets are usually feeling the natural urge to gather twigs,

build nests, and the mating plumes really start to come out.

But, this year, the Great Egrets are a month behind schedule.

The above photo of a new nest, was taken from Rookery Road on 2/22/2011

Meanwhile, back at the lake,

another bird who doesn't begin nesting until June,

All photos above(except the first two) are courtesy of Claude Nall.

with a beak specially designed to feed on invertebrae that live in the floating mat of plants,

is busy in a different way.

The White Ibis are gathering upon the floating mats of plants on the southwest corner of Lake Martin,

and feeding upon the snails, crawfish, and shrimp.

courtesy of Claude Nall

The swamp in winter is mostly grey with moss, then new things begin to move,

The photo above and below are courtesy of Claude Nall

and presents the anticipation of spring.

At the same time we have a very hard winter, I have noticed something I never saw before at this time of year.

Black-bellied whistling ducks!

Always something new at Lake Martin.

If you would like to join me for an educational and entertaining swamp tour, photo safari or just plain birdwatching, I can be reached at 337 298 2630 to make rservations. Or for more info, go to my website at de la Houssaye's Swamp Tours.

The Last Quarter Of 2010

2011-02-09T13:14:00.012-06:00

For the first time in almost 10 years, The Nature Conservancy did not pull the drain plug and lower the water in the rookery in September of 2009.

As a result, we started 2010 with higher water than I have seen in over ten years and almost as many birds nesting as we had 7 or 8 years ago..

Last year was a good year for the birds at Lake Martin.

And that being said;

I expected to publish this report in the middle of January when I first sighted a Great Egret building a nest, but that did not happen this year.

Perhaps the cause of delayed nesting this year is due to the severe freezes we had last year, and that combined with another intensely cold winter this year.

All of the above photos are copyrighted and courtesy of Claude Nall

And all things considered, 2010 has been a great year for the birds at Lake Martin.

The rainiest winter in 40 years and extremely cold,

made for high water and natural plant control in the winter of 2010.

Natural plant control? Who ever heard of that? Am I the only one who believes nature can control itself without our arrogant chemical activities?

Then in the spring of 2010, 2 natural surges seemed to coincide,

along with higher water levels, we are seeing more wading birds nesting in the rookery.

Now, on that note, because of higher water levels, a dramatic increase in the population of nesting birds, and very little plant control, I have been very quiet politically and taken a position of observation.

Wood Duck photo courtesy of Claude Nall

I want to wait and see where this goes. At this point, we have made progress toward protecting plants, the ecology, and water resources, and this is good. I certainly don't want to come off as a ranting and raving, constant discontent. I am very much delighted with the changes in plant and water management policies at Lake Martin. Compared to where we were for over a decade, 2010 was a great year for the birds.

Hawk photo courtesy of Claude Nall

Hopefully, we will in the near future have birds nesting in the cypress and tupelo trees along Rookery Road like they did until March 2006.

In the photo below taken in September 2010, you can see the intense heat of summer and below normal rainfall resulted in water levels were about 18 inches below where the water was in the winter time. This is a "natural" draw-down of the lake and swamp water levels.

In my opinion, the water in Lake Martin should be allowed to rise and hold as much as possible in the winter, at the beginning of the nesting season if we are to manage it the way it was being managed when the nesting bird population peaked.

A simple formula of trees growing in standing water year round is required for the birds to nest. The irony is that higher water levels benefit not only the birds, but everyone else who uses Lake Martin, including fishermen, hunters, birdwatchers, photographers, and swamp tour participants.

The only negative element in 2010 for me to report came at the end of summer,

in the last week of September when plant control came along the road and sprayed plants from the road.

Then a few days later, plant control came by boat and sprayed the rookery where I do my swamp tours.

With the blessings of the Nature Conservancy, the state is applying herbicide in the rookery and killing button bush and Cypress trees which are used by nesting birds. Worse than that is to completely destroy the floating mats of plants on three sides of the lake that supplies the food which feeds the nesting birds in the rookery on the south side.

The east, west, and north sides of Lake Martin were 15 years ago, some of the most wildlife intensive swamp I had ever visited because they were covered with thick floating mats of plants. The floating mats are gone, and so is the wildlife. In my opinion, it is now an aquatic desert, by comparison to what it was a decade and a half ago.

Now bear in mind these photos above were shot in the last weeks of September 2010(including the one below), when everything is lush, dense and green, except where plant control destroyed the natural beauty.

So...here we are half way through the first quarter of 2011 and...

The Great Blue Herons are right on schedule and we have to assume any day now,

photo courtesy of Claude Nall

the egrets will start feeling the natural urge to nest too.

In the meantime, as you can see in the photos above and below, the Great Blues are busy with reproduction activities.

I will assume the unusually cold weather has delayed the egrets.

Louisiana Swamp Tours: How Did This Happen?

2011-01-28T06:47:00.000-06:00

Louisiana Swamp Tours: How Did This Happen?

Third Quarter Report, 2010

2010-09-14T06:57:00.008-05:00

In spite of the ecological disaster unfolding in the south eastern corner of the Louisiana,

Lake Martin remains the most unpolluted lake in the state.

And perhaps because of the oil spill, and thus people trying to avoid the dangers and depressive conditions in and around New Orleans,

we have had more people coming to do swamp tours here, and thus enjoying the birds of Lake Martin.

I do not want to take undo credit, but isn't it interesting, that I write these scathing articles in the spring and summer of 2009,

pointing to the correlation of lower water levels at Lake Martin and a decreased population of wading birds nesting in the rookery.

Then September 2009, for the first time in about 8 years, The Nature Conservancy does not pull the plug and drain the lake on schedule like it has since 2001,

and LO AND BEHOLD, spring 2010, we have more birds nesting than we had since Y2K.

Furthermore, it is now, the middle of September, and thus the end of the growing season for plants,

and so far not once has the state Wildlife and Fisheries come out and sprayed herbicide to control plants and decrease and destroy the ecology and natural beauty of the area.

Not only is an abundance of clean water important to the birds who nest at Lake Martin,

but also equally important is the floating mats of plants to host the food supply that feeds the wading birds who nest here.

So far it has been a good year at Lake Martin.

All photos are copyrighted and courtesy of Claude Nall

Why Do The Birds Nest At Lake Martin?

2010-05-13T02:14:00.010-05:00

An abundance of trees growing in standing water year round

an abundance of food for wading birds,

and lots of alligators is why the birds nest at Lake Martin.

And that's why de la Houssaye's Swamp Tours is at Lake Martin,

because we got birds

and lots of alligators!

What a life, lay around all day sun bathing, wearing alligator skin boots!

Someone called today and wanted to know if we had lots of alligators, and I said no we had acres of alligators. She had no sense of humor apparently and hung up.

So I contemplated what constitutes lots of alligators.

Is 40 or 50 alligator sightings on one tour, lots of alligators?

Nice boots!

Then we have lots of alligators!

Well at least that is what we saw last Thursday, because we started at 7AM and by about 8:30 we had seen lots and by about 9:30 we had seen acres of alligators.

The next day, I started my first tour at 10:30 AM and we saw about 8. I actually witnessed several submerging before "we" could see them. I hate that when it is only me seeing the things I am attempting to share with my guests.

All of these photos were taken on my Louisiana swamp tour, and I assure you there were at times in a couple of places, about 8 or 10 at a time in view, when we stopped on the north side of the lake and looked around.

So if birds and alligators are what you want to see on a swamp tour, we got em, but my advise in planning your day as the weather warms up this spring is to come early. And 6 AM is not too early for me as I really like the light, fog, and abundance of wildlife that is there early on, but mostly gone by 10 AM, when most people show up for a summertime vacation swamp tour.

I know 6 AM is like going to work or school. But hey, you are on vacation, go take a long nap in the heat of the day. The best tours of the day when the temps are reaching near 90's is sunrise, and sunset. You will always see more wildlife at that time of the day in the heat of spring and summer.

So back to the tour...

And... right in the midst of acres of alligators, we discovered that the mulberry tree which is growing on the base of a Bald Cypress tree, about 1/4 mile from dry land was fruiting and ripe. It was the sweetest mulberries I have ever eaten! I assume the pH of swamp water is perfect for flavorful mulberry production.

We got our fingers all purple with sticky mulberry juice and indulged ourselves thoroughly, as my guests from the U.K. had never eaten mulberry before.

Amazing how a tree, I thought had to be land based, could sprout, grow, thrive and produce the most delicious fruit on the base of a cypress tree and feed hydroponically.

We had a delightful time and moved into a thick grove of cypress to video a mother Yellow Crowned Night Heron standing guard over her young on the nest.

The Yellow Crowned Night Herons return to Lake Martin every year to nest in the thick groves of young cypress which grow in standing water all year long.

These birds nest in these trees because the water holds alligators and the gators protect the birds from the predators who can swim and climb trees such as the raccoon.

We were about 12 feet away from the nest and I was living up to my reputation of disturbing the nesting birds in the rookery and exploiting them for profit. At least that is what the staff at the new Nature Conservancy Visitor Center is telling my guests when they go there to use the restrooms. One of my guests visited the welcome center before doing my swamp tour, to use the restrooms there, and a staff member advised her that "the swamp tours" were killing the rookery.

Truth be told, I am really glad to see that the birds have returned in record numbers to the main rookery on the south side of the lake, since The Nature Conservancy stopped draining the lake and keeping the water below normal in what was the largest rookery of wading birds in North America in the 1990's.

Maybe The Nature Conservancy should hire a local who knows what they are talking about instead of some college educated, liar from New York to manage and oversee the Cypress Island Preserve at Lake Martin.

So, maybe the birds, if not The Nature Conservancy, appreciate my blogging last year about the correlation of lower water levels and a decreasing population of the nesting wading birds in the rookery here for the last ten years.

And then, last year after writing articles in my blog, for the first time in nearly a decade, they stopped draining the lake in September 2009, and low and behold... the wading birds returned to nest in record numbers.

Duuuhhh...It is common knowledge that the birds nest in trees that grow in standing water year round!

You see I have been a target of The Nature Conservancy for a decade and a half, for doing swamp tours into the rookery. I was in there before they acquired it! And in spite of my efforts to be a part of the neighborhood watch team to protect the nesting birds, the more I offered advise about my observations in there, I have to admit, I have always been treated as a inferior pest and intruder into the rookery.

The mission statement of The Nature Conservancy: The mission of the Nature Conservancy is to preserve the plants, animals and natural communities that represent the diversity of life on earth by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive.

You can visit their website by clicking the link above where they explain their success: We partner with indigenous communities, businesses, governments, multilateral institutions, other non-profits…and people such as yourself.

Why they would never work with me? Ohhh... I am a bad boy. OK.

Another thing I have to wonder about that mission statement in view of the management of the natural resources near the rookery is why do they mow down the flowers on Rookery Road at peak blooming?

And this isn't just about the flowers, we have a tractor mowing the roadside less than 50 feet away from where hundreds of wading birds are nesting and we had even more nesting there, a few years ago.

Say what? Ohhh... it looks better after it is mowed. Believe it or not, that's what she said!

I don't know about you, but I like to see flowers growing on the roadside in the spring.

I personally witnessed the present manager of The Cypress Island Preserve instructing the tractor driver to cut the weeds as close to the water as possible. Here is the tractor mowing the "grass and weeds" on the roadside near the new walkway constructed into the rookery. Ohh.. I wasn't supposed to say they were building a walkway into the rookery.

At least, that is what she asked me to do last year, was keep quiet about the construction of a walkway into the rookery where swamp tour boat access is restricted.

Hmmmm.... DOES SHE KNOW WHO SHE IS TALKING TO?

(My own mother can't control me..., good luck city girl.)

When I persisted, and asked again, why were they were building a walkway into the rookery? The Nature Conservancy staff manager advised me that the birds didn't nest where the walkway was being constructed.

Noooo... not since the lake was being drained every September, through the new drain gate installed on the Nature Conservancy property near the walkway causing that area to be dry land most of the time!

Oh wow! The tractor actually missed a few buttercups by the draingate.

At any rate this is what was growing on the roadside before the tractor came through at the peak of the springtime bloom this year.

Buttercups!

And native Louisiana Purple Iris

And native Louisiana Red Iris

And native Louisisna Blue Iris

And dew berry
And Spiderwort

It appears a few cypress trees planted by the Girl Scouts were mowed down too.

Oh well, we will keep planting them and hope some survive.

OK, I am finished picking on The Nature Conservancy, for now.

The Water Is Up And The Birds Are Back!

2010-04-16T02:29:00.008-05:00

For nearly a decade, the water at Lake Martin was being intentionally drained and the water level lowered about 2-3 foot every year in September through a new spillway draingate on the southside near the Nature Conservancy Visitor Center.

Not only was there a drawdown of the water every autumn, the water was being kept below the normal high level it was in the late 1990's before the Nature Conservancy installed the draingate on their property and thus the power to control the water level effecting wildlife and everyone who attempted to use the recreational resources in the Lake Martin ecosystem.

This was being done with the belief and explaination that it benefited the birds in the rookery and the fish in the lake by improving water quality.

After writing articles in my swamp tour blog about the corelation between mismanagement of water resources(draining the lake) and the declining bird population, for the first time in September 2009 the lake was not drained as it had been for the last 7 or 8 years.

Historically, when the water was at it's highest levels in about the year 2000,
the nesting, wading bird population peaked.I know it is not the best photo, but taken from Rookery Road by a tourist friend of mine in 2000

Most estimates of the number of birds in the rookery were in my opinion, very unrealistically low.

I should know, I have been in the rookery doing swamp tours for over 20 years.A photo of me on tour in the rookery in 1998 by Brian Miller

Until about 10 years ago, it looked like snow covered trees during April and May.

Although there was poaching of birds and alligators, in the rookery, and duck hunting season overlapped the initial start up of the rookery every year, the birds multiplied, and the rookery expanded.

Until last year, I always believed the decline of the population of the nesting birds was due to a swamp tour guide(who I started in the business in May of 1999), who did night tours into the rookery area year round, with a big Q-beam light. He was not stopped from conducting these disturbing activities until March 2006 when the great "mysterious" disappearance of the nesting birds along Rookery Road occurred.

Last year I realized that the birds never started to leave
until the lake was being drained.

The true cause of the decline of the nesting bird population is still unknown and an issue of great speculation by many intelligent, concerned, and well-educated people.

As far as I am concerned the swamp tour guide is not off the hook.

The Bottom Line:
My hope and expectation is, as the rookery expands in population it will expand geographically as well. And once again the birds will occupy nests along Rookery Road allowing photographers, birdwatchers and nature lovers an up-close opportunity to experience what I have observed as a swamp tour guide for over 25 years.

For me, this how it all began...

More than 25 years ago

Before I ever built the houseboat and became a fulltime Louisiana Swamp Tour Guide, I was guiding personal friends of mine into the Atchafalaya basin swamp to put them into close proximity of nesting birds.

A Black Crowned Night Heron standing over her chicks on the nest.

What really amazed my friends was the fact that I could bring them 10-15 feet away from these birds and not disturb the birds normal behavior. Because I lived on a houseboat and worked as a commercial fisherman, I visited the birds everyday, and we developed a relationship of mutual trust and respect.

My houseboat at Grand Avoille Cove in the Atchafalaya Basin

Because of my guide skills and service to photography friends,
they suggested I become a full-time guide.

I told them they were crazy,
because no one would ever pay me to drive them into a swamp!

Little did I know they were looking into my future at the time.

I never planned, dreamed or imagined becoming a swamp tour guide, because back then, swamp tours were not even in existence in Louisiana.

A photo by Marc Garanger, a National Geographic photographer from France,
he took this photo of me in my old wooden skiff, over twenty years ago.

As I grew up hunting and fishing the marsh and swamps with my father, I was being groomed to be a swamp tour guide and never knew it at the time.

I took this with my cheapie pocket camera from the road overlooking the rookery north of Lake Martin, while guiding Larry this week.
A Rosette Spoonbill

An egret and heron roost at another rookery south of Lake Martin

My first butterfly of the season!

And the dragonflies are coming out too!

Because it was my photographer friends who inspired me to be a tour guide, I still love to do private photo safaris to remote locations for special people on occasion.

My friend Larry with a real wildlife camera,
focusing in on a rosette spoonbill engaged in nesting activities.

I took Larry and his wife to some private areas outside of Lake Martin this week to do a photo safari of nesting birds and to eat at The Boiling Point in New Iberia.

We had fried catfish, fried crawfish, and fried shrimp, and as an after thought, I ordered a half order of boiled crawfish too!

Maybe Larry can send me some of his photos for me to share with you here in an upcoming post.

In the meantime here are a couple of pictures sent to me by some other Lake Martin safari photographers recently.

A photographer named Al Guidry was on the road and took a photo of me as I was leaving the landing to start a Lake Martin Swamp Tour a few weeks ago and sent it to me as seen below.The aluminum crawfish skiff I built to replace the old wooden one as a commercial fisherman over twenty years ago is still my ultimate swamp tour boat today, because it allows me to get into the shallow, densely vegetated areas most boats cannot access, and that is where the most wildlife is likely to be found.

If you would like to contact Al to order prints,
or to hire him for photography services;
PORTFOLIO 2000 ACTION PORTRAITS
by AL GUIDRY of LAFAYETTE, LA
337 406-0927
email:portfolio2000foto@cox.net

The photos of the birds of Lake Martin,
are provided by Al Guidry for your viewing pleasure.

Another photographer, named Claude Nall, took a panoramic photo from his kayak on the north side of the lake, of these two huge Lake Martin alligators below.
This is the kind of photo opportunities you can have if you join me for a swamp tour or photo safari at Lake Martin or some of the other private locations I guide my friends to in My Wild Louisiana!

See you at the lake...Bobalou, my swamp tour guide dog for over 10 years.
Bob is a Louisiana Catahoula.

Rainiest Winter In Over Forty Years

2010-03-08T12:44:00.011-06:00

With two weeks left for this season, we are already experiencing the rainiest winter in decades and thank God for more water being trapped in Lake Martin this past autumn, instead of being drained. In order to restore the much needed opportunity for the birds to return to the largest rookery of wading birds in North America in the 1990's, the way they were when the water was at its highest point is very simple. Stop draining it!

Although there was a healthy, growing population of nesting birds in the rookery last year, we still have a long way to go to get to the point where we were in 2001 when the rookery population was peaking.

The wading bird nesting population peaked in coincidence with the highest water levels and declined in conjunction with plant control and lowered water levels.

Of course, I have to mention that human intrusion in the form of swamp tours and poaching is as far as I know, no longer a factor in the mystery of the true causes of the decline of the population of nesting birds.

Along with restoration of water levels, we need to seriously consider the lack of floating aquatic plants that serve as a feeding ground for the nesting wading birds and support the entire food chain in Lake Martin.

Floating mat of aquatic plants in about 5 feet of standing water

The irony here is that the plant control and lower water levels were proposed to improve water quality, and benefit the birds, fisherman, and hunters.

Apparently no one but me was asking the fisherman or duck hunters about management changes affecting their success at fishing and hunting or was observing the birds dismay with these management policies.

I have given up attempting to communicate with corporate or government administrators who sit behind a desk in Baton Rouge, fifty miles from the lake and make bold management decisions and effect changes based upon prideful assumptions that they are fixing the problems at the lake in regard to water and plant management.

My position is that the Lake Martin area should be managed as a swamp with a lake in the middle rather than a lake surrounded by swamp. And on that note a swamp and its interior lakes are supposed to be filled with a variety of seasonal floating plants.

Along with record precipitation, another extreme climate change we are experiencing this winter is the below normal temperatures which has frozen the lake(as seen beow) several times and temporarily killed off the majority of floating plants. This opens up a new window of observation and consideration of the normal natural cycle of checks and balances in nature that we sometimes fail to have the patience and understanding to accept: that nature will control itself if we simply do nothing!

Aquatic plants in two inches of ice

Mallow blossum frosted in ice crystals at waters edge

Bermuda swamp grass frosted on shore

When I first started doing my Louisiana swamp tours twenty-five years ago, I was aware that most people had vague imaginations about swamps or gross inaccuracies as to what a swamp was or how it functioned ecologically in the big picture of the quality of life for its inhabitants, and the surrounding environs, due to Hollywood generated images being most peoples source of perspective for swamps.

I was unaware that the so-called experts were not much better informed about swamps than was the public at large. My view of the experts in the field of wetlands ecology of course has changed after observing the disturbing mismanagement of the water and plants in Lake Martin.

We have for centuries been led to believe that swamps were funky, dirty, dangerous, undesirable and useless real estate unless drained or filled in to improve it.

The reality is that swamps are great purifiers of water and air and are extremely important for a wide variety of species who increasingly struggle to find a place to live and reproduce in peace and thus survive the damage we are doing and have done to this planet and it's wild inhabitants in the last two hundred years.

I am not against progress, but the destruction and genocide of the indigenous people and wildlife species on this continent in the last two hundred years for short term financial gain is unethical and immoral not to mention completely unacceptable in my eyes.

Good News for the Birds of Lake Martin

2010-03-04T11:57:00.007-06:00

Many good things are happening at Lake Martin lately which is a turn around from the tragic events of the past few years.

1. The Nature Conservancy is constructing long needed and much awaited public restrooms at their new visitor center on the south side of the lake near the rookery.

2. The water levels appear to be back to normal due to a management policy change which stopped the autumn drainage, and as of this winter, being the rainiest in decades.

3. The nesting bird population appears to be on the rise,
in direct relation to water levels.

4. Abundant rain has of course improved water quality.

I did a couple of my Louisiana swamp tours in the middle of September last year and then immediately drove down to the drain gate on the south side used for the last 8 years to drain the swamp. I went there to inspect the drain gate and was pleasantly surprised to see several additions to the 6" control structure panels, allowing more water to be trapped and thus raise the water levels.

What I expected to find was the 6" panels being removed and the plug being pulled to drain the lake and lower the water as usual for that time of year.

Instead, based on what I found, my prayers had been answered.

A de la Houssaye Swamp Tour

Hopefully the Wildlife and Fisheries and Nature Conservancy are realizing that the drainage of the water and thus lower water levels are possible causes of the departure of the nesting birds from the rookery in the Lake Martin Cypress Island Preserve.

What I expected to see that time of year was drainage, leading to lower water levels during the fall and winter and not what I found, and that is good. The photo below shows the drain gate installed in 2001. I don't like this photo because it looks like a solid metal top. Actually the top is constructed of an iron grate which allows water to drain into the top and also allows visual acessment of the operation of the drain.

A view from the top

Below is an image of me standing on top of the drain last summer, and gives a more accurate perspective of the drain size.

This past year, instead of pulling out panels and allowing the water levels to go down a couple of feet, someone had added a couple of the 6" panels to the top of the control structure and that caused the water levels in Lake Martin to rise.

For eight or nine years now, The Nature Conservancy and Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries have been conducting an experiment designed to improve the water quality in the swamp and at the lake by lowering the water levels in the fall every year. They then promised to pump the water back in and restore the water level before the birds begin to nest in the spring. But wait... I see Great Blue Herons staging nesting sites in the middle of January before the pumps were even turned on! They have by my observations, failed to give back to the lake the water that they took away the season before.

As you can see in the photo below, they did turn on the pump on the north side of the lake in February 2009 and helped raise the water level a little.

But they failed to return the water to an acceptable level equal to what it was before they lowered it. And not enough to flood the grove of trees where the Great Blue Herons nested before the water was being lowered. As seen in the photos below.

The area along Rookery Road where the Great Blue Herons nested before the swamp was being drained

It is common knowledge that these wading birds nest in trees that grow in water year round because the water holds alligators and alligators protect the birds from predators that can swim and climb trees. These same predators will not swim in water with alligators because they will not survive if they do.

Below is a photo I took of the water line on a tree last summer, proving that the water is not being pumped or even allowed to rise nautally to the levels it was before the Nature Conservancy stated monkeying around with water levels

The Nature Conservancy claimed that it was OK to drain the lake and lower the water in the autumn season because it did not conflict or interfere with the nesting season in the spring. I disagree on that position because it is my belief that if it is not safe for birds to roost there all year long, the birds will not nest there in the spring.

Furthermore, the nesting season does not start in the spring, but at the beginning of winter when the Great Blue Herons and Great Egrets arrive in the second and third weeks of January and begin selecting nesting locations in the tops of tall cypress trees as seen in the photos below.

A Great Blue Heron rookery on the tops of trees near Lake Martin in an area where it is flooded year round in spite of the annual drainage

Below is a photo of a large number and variety of nesting wading birds in an area where water is present year round.

Along with the drainage of the water to lower the water levels on this thousand acre wilderness area, I also have issues with the application of herbicides and the killing off of hundreds of acres of button bush and the floating mats of plants on three sides of Lake Martin as seen below in the photo which I took while on a swamp tour in April 2009.

Agent Orange herbicide damage to the floating mat of plants in Lake Martin

I am not only here at Lake Martin to share the visual natural beauty of our state with our visiting guests, I also have an obligation to protect the defenseless inhabitants of my wild Louisiana and at the same time educate the local public at large regarding the dangers of using 2-4-d, (a.k.a. Agent Orange) in our wilderness areas such as Lake Martin.

A Lake Martin Swamp Tour

The Birds of Lake Martin, La

2010-03-02T17:12:00.000-06:00

White Ibis feeding on the floating mat of plants in Lake Martin

As a swamp tour guide in the rookery at Lake Martin for over 20 years, my observations of the bird population and it's gradual modifications, gives me an opportunity to present an explanation of an unsolved mystery.

I have witnessed sometime very subtle or dramatic adjustments in nesting patterns in relation to climate fluctuations, as well as government, conservation groups, local residents, and my own as well as other swamp tour operator activities.

A sunset on a Lake Martin Swamp Tour

I have been in the rookery for over 20 years, day and night as a tour guide, with a focus on the birds, alligators and plant life as well as the overall ecology and natural beauty. I know what the birds will and will not tolerate during the nesting season. With that knowledge, I have operated as close as possible without causing a disturbance of nesting activities.

The mysterious disappearance of the birds at Lake Martin in March of 2006 is no great mystery to me. I have been watching a gradual decline in the population of wading birds for nearly eight years since the water was first being lowered or drained from the lake and nesting area beginning in 2001. (Click the link above to read the article I wrote in another blog in February of 2009)

Not only has the water been lowered every year in the autumn season, by pulling the drain plug, it has been kept below normal year round(by about 18", compared to where it was at its highest in 2001) and rainfall has allowed to escape all year long as seen below.

It appears to me that when the water was allowed to rise to it's highest levels(between 1996-2001), the bird population rose to it's highest levels. It is common knowledge that these birds nest in trees which grow in standing water year round.

The decline is coincidental with two or maybe three other significant factors making it difficult to pinpoint any one source as the cause of the decline of the bird population.

1. The presence of poachers taking birds at night.

2. The application of herbicides to control(or completely destroy and eliminate) the floating mats of native indegenous plants by The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries in the rookery and feeding areas around the lake, which supports the food chain leading up to the nesting birds in the rookery.

3. A swamp tour guide doing night tours in the rookery between 2000 and 2006.

I began doing swamp tours at Lake Martin full time, in 1996, having wet my feet as a tour guide in the Atchafalaya Basin for over ten years prior to that. In the Atchafalaya Basin, I noticed two things that I did, which would disrupt or displace birds nesting activities.

1. Approaching a bird nesting site when the nest was under construction prior to laying eggs. Through trail and error, I learned that if I passed close to a new nest, when it was under construction in the spring, the bird would often abandon that site and start another nest elsewhere. Because these nests were not there the last time I passed a few days before, these disturbances were accidental and thus often unavoidable. If I noticed the new nest under construction as I approached from a distance, and gave the bird some space and time, thus allowing it to construct the nest, lay eggs, and get settled in, I could later pass very close to the nest and not cause a disturbance.

2. Accidentally entering a new area containing a roost or nesting area at night with a big light such as a Q-beam.

I decided to use Lake Martin as my primary tour site location in 1996, because it was clean, quiet, easily accessible to tourists from Interstate 10, and had a relatively stable water level year round. But the most prominent benefit of doing tours at Lake Martin was the amazing variety and abundance of wildlife. For about the first year, I wondered why was this swamp so wildlife intensive compared to everywhere else. After plant control arrived at Lake Martin and destroyed the floating mat of plants, I realized the benefits of floating mats of plants in swamp ecology and thus the abundance of wildlife in conjunction with plants.

It was then, and still is by far, the most reliable year round, wildlife intensive tour area I have ever visited. But, when I first started doing tours there full time in 1996, there was no plant control, or water management(annual drainage) and the only time the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries went there, was to enforce laws.

As soon as plant control arrived at Lake Martin, I understood why plant control was so destructive to the overall ecology and why there was so much wildlife prior to plant control destroying the food chain there.

At that time, I did not consider that the high water levels could be a primary cause of the population growth of the nesting wading birds in the Lake Martin rookery.

A drought caused a fish kill in 1996 and 1997. Instead of recognizing the drought as the cause of the fish kill, the Wildlife and Fisheries biologists blamed the fish kill on too many plants in the lake.

The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, Division of Plant Research and Control first came in May of 1997 with a crop duster airplane and applied a granular herbicide to the lake area. That first wave of plant control killed all of the submerged plants(hydrilla, coontail, and aquatic bladderwort)in the lake which resulted in a total fish kill and there were no indigenous fish in the lake for 4 years after that. Except for the Chinese Carp introduced and used for plant control.

Plant control then began to apply 2-4-D (also known as agent orange in an other place and time)to destroy the floating mats of plants on the north, east, and west sides of the lake. This is a critical component of the ecology that supports the food chain that leads to and feeds the wading birds and every vertebrate and invertebrate in between the plants and the alligators.

The next manipulation of the ecology came when biological studies by Federal Wetlands Center biologists proposed that lowering the water levels might improve water quality. This proposition was based upon an assumption or "guess" that poor water quality might be the cause of the population decrease.

These biologists who spent a few days a month on the lake studying the water quality problems and taking water samples during the drought period, made a proposal that we should begin to annually lower and manipulate water levels in an effort to "improve" water quality. Unfortunately their research was conducted primarily during the drought period and not continued during normal rainfall activities, when rain could recharge the oxygen supply and allow fish to live in a lake with an abundance of plants. Through all this, the Lake Martin Advisory Committee(a group of local water front residents) hoped to protect the ecology and planned to maintain or "keep things as is".

The problem with that plan is, that the lake, it's natural inhabitants and the ecology changes naturally from year to year due to climate variables. During drought years when the water levels are lowered naturally, it is very different than in flood years. And, in a hard winter season it freezes the surface of the lake and swamp killing most of the surface vegetation. This climate change which is infrequent, but normal, once again allows the natural dying off of certain plant species to generate an opportunity for the proliferation of new species to dominate the water/landscape in the growing season of the following year.

To this effect I have witnessed salvinia(a.k.a. greater duckweed) as the primary floating plant in the late 80's be replaced by lesser duck weed in the 90's and then back to salvinia in the 21st century. Also for a brief time in 2000 through 2002, water hyacinth dominated as the floating plant mat. As a result of plant control herbicides destroying the indigenous plants(such as aquartic waterwort, frogbit, and dollar bonnet) that formed a mat of plants preventing the movement of water hyacinth, the water hyacinth(a non-native) was able to drift and take over or dominate as the primary surface plants in the lake. In my opinion, in essence we had no plant control problems until governmental plant control arrived and started trying to fix something which was not broken.

Plant control activities which included herbicide application and lowering the water levels are in my opinion the primary reason the birds began to mysteriously disappear from Lake Martin.

Because living plants on the surface and below the water absorb nutrients, they are effective water filters, balancing the chemical exchanges of dead, decaying plants feeding living plants. If it weren't for living plants and bacteria devouring nutrients released into the water by dead decaying plants, the water would have a nutrient overload, or in lay mans terms be a cesspool. Because man has altered the hydrodynamics of swamps, bayous and rivers, in the name of human progress, swamps are often regarded as unclean due to an interruption of natural processes. For this reason, man then attempts to control or minimize plant mass by killing off a portion of the plants in the ecosystem. Unfortunately that attempt is usually government overkill in my opinion.

When left alone, to evolve naturally, swamps can and will within themselves control biological shifts in plant composition and climate changes that are natural mechanisms which are cyclical and balanced.

Although the water was not lowered by drainage in September 2009 for the first time in nearly a decade, we still must face the specter of government plant control applying excessive amounts of herbicide and trying to turn the swamp around Lake Martin into a lake with trees in this coming growing season in 2010.