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Reelfoot Lake a Smorgasbord of Birds -- 54 Species Sighted During Day at Area's Favorite Birding Spot

Posted on: Tuesday, 27 December 2005, 12:00 CST

By VAN HARRIS

Ask any Mid-South birder about his favorite birding spots and sooner or later the talk will get around to Reelfoot Lake.

This one location in northwest Tennessee has recorded more than 240 bird species, the most of any in the state.

I don't need much of an excuse to go there, but a sunny and cool Thanksgiving Day provided one, particularly when combined with the opportunity for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner of catfish, batter- fried onion rings and hush puppies. (You keep your traditions and I'll keep mine.)

I began my day's birding before the first catfish fillet was done; a mockingbird and a downy woodpecker seen through the restaurant window in the state park across the highway.

While walking to my truck, I heard the distinctive nasal whine of a goldfinch. As I crossed to the park, I found a sizable flock of robins and about 20 elegantly attired cedar waxwings that had dropped into the cypress knees to drink. There were also five rusty blackbirds, the first I had seen this season. This species' numbers are declining alarmingly and nobody seems to know why.

Just down the road was the state park headquarters, behind which is a boardwalk through the cypresses. A little gull, an Atlantic coast species very rarely seen inland, had been reported from there earlier in the week and I hoped to add it to my life list.

I failed to locate it, finding only ring-billed gulls and the daintier Bonaparte's gulls that frequent the lake in winter. There were also scads of coots, aquatic birds that look like ducks with brilliant white bills but are actually a kind of rail (wading birds). Pied-billed grebes bobbed in the choppy water, along with a horned grebe, an uncommon winter visitor to the Mid-South.

At the end of the boardwalk, I was greeted by two golden-crowned kinglets who came close enough for me to see their yellow and gold crown stripes. Before the day was done, I found two dozen of these friendly sprites.

Back on the highway, a magnificent adult bald eagle soared out of the cypresses, reminding me of one of the many things for which I am thankful.

My next stop was the Keystone picnic area. Here I found two bluebirds, as well as a tiny bufflehead duck, the only one I saw all day.

I left the lakeshore and traveled north on Highway 78, toward the lake's Upper Blue Basin. Detouring through the Black Bayou Wildlife Management Area, I was rewarded by a peregrine falcon that came perilously close to colliding with my windshield. The recent removal of this species from the Endangered Species Act proves that the act is working .

To really experience Reelfoot Lake, it is necessary to visit Upper Blue Basin. There are no catfish restaurants, kiddie playgrounds or cheesy "resorts"; only funky fishing camps and the brooding cypresses that give the place its mysterious, antediluvian atmosphere.

I walked out on the pier at the Airpark hotel just in time to see an eagle swinging about purposefully at treetop level, its talons extended. Lower and lower it slid, then suddenly plunged to the water, snatching a large fish from just below the surface.

A nature trail runs from the hotel entrance along the lakeshore to the end of the airstrip runway and back to the parking lot. I had never followed it all the way around, so I set off to see what it might provide. A hermit thrush soon popped out of the privet, followed by a yellow-bellied sapsucker. A handsome male cardinal, the only one I saw all day, sat in the top of a small maple tree. Yellow-rumped warblers fed on what appeared to be a bumper crop of poison ivy berries. I found a flock of eight fox sparrows, the first I had seen this season and the most I had ever seen together, anywhere.

And everywhere, I heard the soft, lisping calls of cedar waxwings. I lost count, but estimated that I saw at least 150 of these dandies during the course of the day.

I returned to the pier at Airpark Hotel to sit at a picnic table and compile my notes. As I wrote, four crows flew high overhead and three wood ducks flushed from the cattails, wrapping up my species total for the day at 54.

Driving home, I thought about the things for which I was thankful: A midday meal of so much food that I did not want another at evening. For Theodore Roosevelt, who began the movement to save wild places for wild creatures and for us to enjoy them. For being able to cross five county lines without being stopped by armed men speaking a language I do not understand. And for Reelfoot Lake; for birding, fishing, duck-hunting, or just for watching the way the setting sun's light falls on the cypresses.

Flocks of geese cruise the fly zone

Here's an e-mail I received earlier this month from a reader named Angi:

Q: Hey Van, I got so jazzed last night watching flock after flock of geese flying overhead. It was after midnight, between midnight and 1 a.m., actually. All I could see against the night sky were big honking v's of white. Do you have any idea what kind of geese these are? Are they Canada or snow geese? Seems like we're in some fly zone down here.

A: Very likely, they are. They nest on the tundra of the high Arctic.

Van Harris is past president of the Memphis chapter, Tennessee Ornithological Society; a member of the Mississippi Ornithological Society and the Mississippi chapter of the Audubon Society. His column runs twice each month. E-mail questions to PYRPYRFECT@aol.com.

Source: Commercial Appeal, The

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