Day 7 - And Then The Deluge Came (or Birding Between The Raindrops)

It didn't rain overnight, but thunder could be heard when we got up this morning. An online check of the weather showed big storms on the way and by the time we made our morning trips to the restrooms it started to come down. I got caught on my way back to Speedy and got a bit soaked, even with an umbrella. It just came in sheets for a several hours. There were some tent campers a couple of sites down who just gave up and packed it in and left, clearing out of their site in the middle of the downpour. It lasted until mid-morning...at least part one of the rain. By the time it ended, half of our paved site was under about two inches of water...the part we were parked in, naturally.

Once the rain stopped, and we were confident that it would not continue soon, we took Speedy into town to find the Nature Conservancy sites. Our first (and as it turned out, only) stop, was at the Lafitte Woods - Grilletta Tract. Wearing our needed Muck Boots, we got off to a slow start, but were not disappointed. While there wasn't a fabled "fallout" there was a good selection of warblers and buntings and grosbeaks in the woods. We popped out to an adjacent wetland and found egrets and herons, and heard a close by, but hidden Clapper Rail. Then we started hearing thunder again. The rest of the woods would have to wait.

It was getting near lunch time so we hoofed it back to Speedy and back to camp. We parked at the dry end this time.  After lunch we headed out to do a local loop, but the rain returned and it was quickly back to Speedy. It lasted a couple of more hours, not a deluge this time, but a steady rain. It was time for a bit of reading and a nap.

By the time we finished our afternoon coffee and tea, the rain had stopped. It was back into our boots for a bit of birding around the park's lagoon trail. The sign at the beginning of the trail said that the trail might be wet after a high tide. I don't know if it was high tide, but after all the rain, the first section had 2-4 inches of water over it...but we had dry feet.

All that water was good for some of the birds. We weren't 20 yards down the trail when we spotted a Great Egret in the middle of the trail and just a bit further on was a quartet of White Ibis and a Willet just standing around. This was a pretty good start. This was followed by a sighting, a bit further down, of a Clapper Rail. I guess we could call it a "Rail Trail".  He quickly scurried into the grass of the marsh when he saw us. The trail made its way through the marshes along the lagoon to a bridge over the lagoon entrance, which had a couple of Willets lounging on the rails. We spotted others along with Laughing Gulls and a Brown Pelican on the rocks just beyond the bridge. (This was just one of about 80 Pelicans we saw, but the rest were flying over). There was a spit further out that was loaded with shorebirds, but they were too far away to make out.

The trail on the other side of the lagoon was much different, it was dry and went through a low woods between the lagoon and road outside the park. This wooded area seemed to be a natural corridor for birds. There were lots of Indigo Buntings, Orchard Orioles and Blue Grosbeaks, even a small flock of Green Herons popped out of the trees. We seemed to be herding them down the trail. By the time we reached the end of the trail, the buntings had clustered on the ground just before the trail opened onto the road. We counter 25 Indigo Buntings there.

By the time we got back to Speedy, we had tallied 31 species. We had 27 species on the morning walk.

Tomorrow, we hope to do a quick trip through the other section of the Lafitte Woods that we missed this morning, the it is off on a five hour drive to Sea Rim SP in Texas.