Well, despite our lack of rain, spring has finally arrived. In the Basin, there are plenty of migrants and newly arrived local breeders. Yellow-crowned Night and Little Blue Herons are back en masse, as well as Yellow-throated, White-eyed & Red-eyed Vireos. Last week in addition to the Swallow-tailed Kites, there were tons of Prothonotary & Hooded Warblers, with also a few Yellow-throated Warblers and Louisiana Waterthrushes. This week I picked up my first Great Crested Flycatchers & Eastern Kingbirds for the year. There have been reports this week of large numbers of Buff-breasted Sandpipers SW of Maurice with smaller numbers of Upland Sandpipers. I think I'll make a run out there this afternoon to check out the shorebird situation.
As far as frogs go, Northern cricket frogs continue singing, and I heard my first bullfrog of the season yesterday while taking tree trunk measurements at the zoo.
On the bug front, June beetles (not june bugs...) have started emerging, and there are thousands flying each night at my home in Broussard. On the ponds out front of the NOAA building here next to the Wetlands Center, I caught a waterboatman (Corixa sp.), two backswimmers (Notonecta sp.) & a water scavenger beetle (Hydrophilus sp.). I brought them home, and placed in my "native Louisiana" ponds. It's a simple 3' diameter pond with Ludwigia palustris, Alternanthera philoxeroides and a couple of other native plants. I also collected a water strider (Gerris sp.) and a long-jawed orb-weaver (Tetragnatha) to place in the pond. Nice native microhabitat I've got going there.
Well, that's about it for now...more spring notes coming soon!
James
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