Nesting Season 2011

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 Water Is Up And The Birds Are Back!

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

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.