Photographing Birds in Louisiana

“Don’t worry if the feathers are blown.”  The voice over my shoulder belonged to our friend Marie.  In front of us, in the brilliant sun, were scores of great egrets, their feathers a blinding white.  We were looking out over a rookery where egrets gather to practice their rites of spring.  Marie, a professional photographer, was referring to overexposure so great that all detail would be lost.  Though I’d heard the term only once before, I knew I was in for it:  those egrets were white, and the sun was high in a cloudless sky.

I’d already had several encounters with white feathers and bright light, trying to photograph cattle egret searching for insects on the levee.  Every time we passed, the light was wrong.  Then, one late afternoon, perfection.  Except for one thing:  as we pulled atop the levee, two joggers appeared, and the egrets scattered.  I’d wondered where (and whether) anyone jogged down here.  Now I knew.

The egret rookery is located on Avery Island, part of the McIlhenny compound, where Tabasco Sauce has been made for generations.  In addition to the unlikely juxtaposition of egrets and hot sauce, Avery Island isn’t an island, but a salt dome.  The salt mined here is used to make Tabasco Sauce.

On arrival, we drove along a roadway through the meticulously tended grounds, stopping to walk among live oaks and camellias in full bloom.  We came to a pond in which two alligators swam and a third lounged on a bank.  Nearby, a lone great egret stalked fish, perhaps taking a break from the frenetic nest building occurring down the road.

We could hear the rookery, which consists of several platforms set in a marshy pond, long before we saw it.  For such graceful birds, egrets make the least graceful of sounds:  coarse caws, croaks, and gravelly burps seem to make up their vocal repertoire, in marked contrast to their sinuous elegance when fishing or in flight.

From the observation deck, we watched as they soared away and back again, gathering and delivering twigs to their mates.  Conversation between the pairs was constant and raucous.  Between bouts of nest-building, they courted, their spring plumage, silky feathers called aigrettes, lifting in the wind.

In the late 1800s, aigrettes used in the hat trade brought egrets to the edge of extinction.  As described by environmental historian Jennifer Price in "Hats Off to Audubon":

America's hat craze was in full swing.  In the 1880s trendy bonnets were piled high with feathers, birds, fruit, flowers, furs, even mice and small reptiles.  Birds were by far the most popular accessory:  Women sported egret plumes, owl heads, sparrow wings, and whole hummingbirds; a single hat could feature all that, plus four or five warblers.  The booming feather trade was decimating the gull, tern, heron, and egret rookeries up and down the Atlantic Coast.  In south Florida, plume hunters would nearly destroy the great and snowy egret populations in their quest for the birds' long, soft dorsal spring mating feathers.

The Audubon Society was founded in response.  Ned McIlhenny, the son of Tabasco’s founder, played his part, too.  He rescued eight egrets from the plume hunters and gave them safe haven.  Since then, egrets have nested at Avery Island every year.

As we stood on the observation deck, our friends pointed overhead.  A lone pink-feathered bird circled high above us:  a roseate spoonbill.  We saw only one at Avery Island, but we learned there was another rookery at Lake Martin, near Breaux Bridge, where roseate spoonbills could be found in abundance.  Our friends offered to take us there, but the hour was late, and it seemed one thing more than was sensible to try and do.

As our time in the Atchafalaya Basin waned, I kept thinking about those spoonbills.  That rookery was so near, how could we resist?

On our last day, we made our way to Lake Martin.  A mimeographed pamphlet we’d found was our only guide.  We drove down a wide dirt road, counting out miles in tenths, until we spotted incontrovertible evidence that we’d arrived:  from the back window of a parked car, two arms held out a birding scope.

We followed the direction of the scope and saw clumps of pink dotting the trees.  Spoonbills.  Probably too far to get many photographs, but certainly not too far to stop and look.

Unlike Avery Island, Lake Martin’s rookery is rough and wild.  We stepped out of the car and stood at the road’s edge.  Almost at our feet, a moorhen paddled in a marshy ditch.

 A pie-billed grebe bobbed up from an underwater fishing expedition.  Overhead, a great egret sailed across the road in search of twigs.

Spoonbills flew from tree to tree, flaunting their pink feathers and preposterous beaks.

Little blue herons, now old hat to us, preened in the branches.  Further off, we could just make out a green heron in a thicket of twigs.

As we watched, an occasional birder pulled over to look, but by and large cars and pick-ups whizzed past, kicking up dust.  It was hard to fathom how anyone could fail to stop.  This was a wonderland at the road’s edge, and we found it difficult to leave.

But leave we had to, so leave we did.  We stowed our cameras and closed the car door.  As if to bid us a good journey, a spoonbill sailed by, right over our heads.

This is the third of four posts about New Orleans and South Louisiana. To read the first post, about New Orleans, click here.  To read the second post, about the Atchafalaya Basin, click here.  To read the last post, about (more) good eats and good music, click here.