NEW ORLEANS—"Look at those penguins!"
"Hey, check out those pelicans!"
Actually, they are egrets—hundreds of them atop nests, bending tree branches like so many oversized magnolia blossoms in a semi-occluded herony in New Orleans' Audubon Park.
While Hurricane Katrina uprooted Louisiana wildlife as well as urban life, the wading bird rookery of Oschner Island—adjacent to a golf course and moated by a swampy lagoon—thrives.
In fact 150 great egrets, 150 cattle egrets, 45 black-crowned night-herons and 25 snowy egrets were recorded on ebird in June, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National Audubon Society online bird checklist program. And that's not counting nestlings who can be three and four to the nest.
But long before you see the cascade of feathery motion, you hear a synchronized chorus of one-beat-every-second clucks that persists throughout breeding season, punctuated by the cattle egrets' chortle—sounding like "You're the one I want" from the movie "Grease"—and the great egrets' "I've brought food" groan.
According to locals, birds began nesting on Oschner Island over a decade ago when leash laws were enacted in the park which discouraged dogs from swimming out and disrupting nests.
And while Hurricane Katrina in 2005 decimated mockingbirds, crows, blue jays, starlings, house sparrows, and mourning doves through its force and the subsequent lack of food, Audubon Park and its environs, aka the "sliver on the river," were spared flooding because they are higher ground.
The great egret is not Louisiana's state bird but it's probably the most recognizable and often sighted. Yet, as they used to say about Bob Dylan, it never looks the same twice.
On land, with its neck curved, it resembles a pelican or stork. When it flies and straightens its neck it looks like a tern, seagull, or even albatross. And when it lands, hovering almost motionless with its long leg "landing gear" extended, you could confuse it with a crane.
Nor is the little blue heron necessarily little or blue. Depending on the light it can look black, peacock blue or iridescent purple. Still, it seldom looks green like the rarer tricolored heron which was also present--and scoping out mates--during the 2008 Oschner Island breeding season.
The brackish water that invaded the city when the levies broke, standing in some areas for weeks, didn't make the Audubon Park lagoon system saline or anoxic, says David P. Muth, Chief of Planning and Resource Stewardship at Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve in New Orleans.
In fact, this year the traditional pyramid of turtles insouciantly sunning themselves on a log—"Mind if I lean on your back for the next six hours?"—was joined by a four-foot alligator which Muth speculates was, "a released pet that got big, or it wandered in from the river."
Oschner also is popular with cormorants—the diving birds known for holding their wings outstretched to dry—anhingas, a majestic cousin of the cormorant, one pair of which nested this year and ibises which arrive in flocks, some tame enough to take a food offering from a human with their spoonbill-like beaks.
Elsewhere in the park monk parakeets, which have also thrived since Katrina, snap twigs into the exact lengths needed for nests and feast on dwarf oranges which they hold in their feet like pets.
Audubon Park is not the finishing line on tourists' walking courses like Pat O'Brien's with its famous Hurricane drinks.
Tourists who end up taking the 45 minute trolley ride up St. Charles Avenue from the French Quarter in the spring are usually visiting the zoo, immortalized by the Meters' nonsense song lyric, "I went on down to the Audubon Zoo and they all aksed for you" or attending graduation ceremonies at adjacent Loyola University.
Nor is bird watching the preferred activity of the New Orleanians who come to run, play with their kids, power walk with friends and exercise dogs.
In fact on a given day, only three people are photographing the birds or watching them with binoculars and one is a Louisiana wildlife official.
But under the profusion of white wings and chirping chaos, there is a show worth seeing.
Birds pair off, look for real estate and build their "dream home" together, bringing full branches replete with leaves for foundations.
"Males will bring females new twigs as presents to replenish the nest after its built," explains an area birder who is observing a white headed Mississippi kite circling in the sky, suggesting that home improvement is not limited to homo sapiens.
And then there's the eating dance.
Soon after birth, the glassy eyed baby egrets flapping their almost bald wings have figured out eating. Mom arrives and transfers the ready-to-eat food from her bill into theirs. This is great! What a life.
But soon the baby concludes it doesn't need to wait for Mom's overture but can clamp on to her bill whenever it wants to initiate feeding. It even clamps down on its nest mates' bills trying the proverbial trick at home.
And while the egret babies flail and stretch their necks, trying to "jump start" the parental feeding machine, an onlooker is sure to yell:
"Hey, look at those baby ducks in that tree!"
Feeds