Julie and I have been reading about a short-eared owl that had been seen on Lake Road in Lacombe. We had to go out for errands today anyway, so we took a drive out that way to look for it. Unfortunately, it turned out we got there at probably the worst time of day to look for an owl, but it was still a nice day.
For those not local to the area, the “Lake” of Lake Road is Lake Pontchartrain (more accurately, an estuary), a 630 square mile body of water connected to the Gulf of Mexico, just north of New Orleans. We live on the north shore of the lake.
We didn’t manage to find the owl, but we did see lots of other things.
The first birds that caught our eye were these blue-winged teal.
These are a popular bird for duck hunters, but they were safe today: teal season begins in September.
Here’s a great blue heron posing for us. Yes, I saw the trash behind it, and it was across the canal. We always bring a trash bag with us and pick up litter left by inconsiderate people, but we couldn’t reach it this time.
We saw several kestrels, including this one that let us get fairly close. This was unusual for a kestrel, but he had just finished his dragonfly lunch.
This one is a male kestrel — you can tell by the slate-blue wings. Females will have reddish-brown wings.
Something we almost always see on Lake Road are boat-tailed grackles. We also get common grackles here, and once we move to Oklahoma, we’ll see great-tailed grackles.
You can’t go anywhere that has water in Louisiana and not see a great egret.
And if it’s swampy, alligators.
And if there is marsh grass, there are red-winged blackbirds.
We had heard that the owl was seen with northern harriers and hunts in a similar style, so we tried to get a close look at any we saw. They fly and act the same, but a northern harrier has that distinctive white patch on their rump.
I think that this one was a juvenile, or possibly a female. I’m not familiar enough yet with northern harriers to be comfortable making that distinction. I love the look of intense concentration in that second image.
This next one I think is a male because of the much lighter underside.
It was much further away, and I wasn’t able to get photos of the top. I think I did see a lighter color than the other ones, though.
The Northern Harrier, also known as the "Marsh Hawk" for one of its favorite habitats, is a slim raptor with long wings, legs, and tail. The sexes appear different: The male is bluish-gray above with white underparts, a distinctive coloration that earns it the nickname among birders of "Gray Ghost." Female and immature birds are brown with streaked undersides. All have a distinctive white rump, an excellent identifying field mark that can be seen even at a distance.
Northern Harriers are also found across Europe and Asia, where they’re known as Hen Harriers (a reference to their penchant for young grouse and fowl), and in England they’ve even been the subject of royal intrigue. In October 2007, birders at a nature reserve in Norfolk, England, watched as two Hen Harriers were shot out of the sky. The shots had come from the adjacent estate—which happened to belong to the Queen. Shooting Hen Harriers is illegal in the U.K., and investigators interviewed three people who had been hunting on the estate when the harriers were killed—including none other than Prince Harry himself, as well as a family friend and a gamekeeper from the estate. The bodies of the harriers were never found, however, and no charges were brought.
As we get ready for our move, I can't help but think about all the things we see everyday that aren’t going to be as common, or even missing altogether, in our Oklahoma life. I don’t regret moving at all (in fact I’m very much looking forward to it!), but the fact that my Louisiana time is limited makes me savor these experiences all the more. Speaking of moving…
Moving Update:
Looks like we should start fencing off the cows from our home site in mid to late April. Should be close to 1,000 feet of fence we’ll need to build, connecting it with some existing fence. Once that’s done, we hope that things will start to move quickly, and maybe we can get in the new house in the early fall.
I sincerely love these posts. I learn something new every time. The pictures are fabulous and the writing is like listening to great storytelling. 💜