Crazy as a Coot

You've heard the phrases. "Crazy as a coot," or "You old coot." Until I started birding, I thought a "coot" was simply a derogatory word for someone who was slightly batty. Then I learned that there actually is something named a coot, and it's a bird!

The American Coot is a black/gray chunky bird with a pointy white beak, built like a chicken, but related to rails. Unlike ducks, with whom they often swim, they don't have webbed feet, but only lobed toes. The broad lobes fold back each time the bird lifts its foot, so it doesn’t impede walking on dry land, though it supports the bird’s weight on mucky ground.



When the heavy bodied bird tries to fly, however, it has to work pretty hard. It runs as fast as it can, flapping furiously, just in front of your boat. Then in a short distance, they decide they are safe enough, drop back down to the lake's surface again, and return to calmly browsing the water plants.

I enjoy watching the Coots at sunset, when they paddle across the lake leaving long wakes behind. What a peaceful way to end the day!

How Many Pelicans Can Sit On A Log?

 

Most people assume that all Pelicans live near the ocean, and, in fact, Brown Pelicans do. But the American Pelican is white, breeds on lakes throughout the northern Great Plains and mountain West, and is one of the largest birds in North America. It winters along the coasts, but breeds only inland. By October, they flock up to descend the Mississippi flyway towards the Gulf Coast to spend the winter. Reel Foot Lake is an attractive stop over point to rest and feed. All those old cypress stumps make perfect perches. And the occasional underwater log can provide perching spots for many Pelicans at a time.

Pelicans are enormous birds, with a wingspan nearing 9.5 feet, and weighing up to 20 pounds. While enjoying their wing display, I wondered why so many white birds have black wing tips. Think about it...American Pelicans, Snow Geese, Wood Storks, White Ibis, many different gulls and terns. Google to the rescue again. Apparently the melanin in black feathers makes them stronger than white feathers without melanin. It's important to have strong flight feathers when you travel as far as these birds do in migration every year.

They are graceful fliers, but getting that large body up into the air takes a lot of effort, much of it quite comical! Those big feet come in handy for a running start!

 

 

 

Their feeding behavior is different than expected too. They don't dive down into the water after fish, but swim on the surface, herding their prey into a small area to be scooped up by those long bills. Several pelicans may fish cooperatively, moving into a circle to concentrate fish, and then dipping their heads under simultaneously to catch fish. It looks like a Pelican ballet!

Reel Foot Lake - a Drowned Forest

 

Reel Foot Lake, along the Mississippi River in Western Tennessee,  is an unusual body of water. It's classified as a "natural" lake, since it wasn't created by a man-made damming of some river. Instead, it formed when the great earthquake of 1811-1812 dropped the bottom of old river bed, and the river flowed upstream to fill the lower area.

 

 

Look at the curved shapes in the lake (at the red A). They indicate old oxbow bends in the river. To the left is the big oxbow bend currently taken by the river at the point where Kentucky, Tennessee and Missouri join. In fact, one part of Kentucky can only be reached by going into Missouri these days. It used to be joined to the rest of the state, but the river moved since the maps were drawn.

In 1811, these river beds were swampy areas filled with bald cypress forests. The bald cypress is a very unusual tree. It's a conifer, which usually means an evergreen tree, but these trees drop their needles each fall to become "bald" in fact!

They grow huge "buttressed" supports to keep them steady in the boggy areas they favor. Cypress knees grow up in the water around the base of the tree. Much speculation says they help the tree obtain air when the roots are under water. Another theory is that they help support the weight of the tree in soggy soil. Notice that you don't see the knees when cypress are planted in your neighbor's yard. The lake is normally only about 5 feet deep, but drought hit Western Tennessee this summer, just like every place else, and currently the lake is only about 3 feet deep. The water levels are clearly visible on the lake shore knees.

When you look across the lake, you see small cypress trees growing in the middle of the water, beside mystery objects. I asked David Haggard, our guide, "Are they rocks? Are they birds?" No they are the stumps of cypress trees that lived here 200 years ago when the lake was formed after the earthquake, and so are the surviving stunted trees. (Thump!) You see, bald cypress trees don't rot when covered by water. (Bump!) The dead logs only rot when exposed to the air, so as long as the lake stays at its normal 5 foot depth, the 200+ year old stumps are covered in water, and safe from further decay. (Rrrrrrr! Tilt! Splash!) Some of the trees themselves are still alive after 200 years, but their growth has been stunted.

What are the sound effects, you ask. That's what it sounds like to take a boat into the lake when it's this low. Even though David skillfully steers around most of the stumps, some are still hidden below the water's surface, and we find them only by running into or over them. In fact, he has a special "four-wheel drive" boat, which seems to be a combination flat-bottomed John boat, with a Jeep-like 2 blade motor, enabling it to climb up and over any stumps and logs in the way. He drives slowly when he knows the water is low, and faster when going through the old river channels which have fewer stumps. I'd love to see those idio__, excuse me, those boatmen, from Kentucky Lake try to come here with their big outboards, or some junior idio_ with jet skis! They would ruin their boat and dump themselves into the water in about 3 minutes!

The really shallow parts of the lake are home to American lotus and water lilies, growing at a depth of only 3-4 inches! The keel on his motor keeps the blades from becoming entangled in the plants, or getting stuck in the mud, although a few times he had to tilt the blades at an extra shallow angle to keep from becoming stuck.

In the summer, the lotus grow one stalk with a huge leaf, and another stalk for the flower/seed pod.

By now, all we have are brown dry leaves, and brown flower pods that look like shower heads. The acorn-like seeds make a wonderful rattle when one of the pods breaks off, landing in the bottom of the boat. The mini-forest of dried leaves and pods provide excellent hiding places for the water fowl coming here for the winter. You don't see the coots and ducks until they actually take off en masse with a loud whirl of wings. Duck season will start in a few weeks, but I'm betting on the ducks. They can only be shot if they leave the water. David says there is a six duck limit per hunter, and the limit is allocated among the different species depending on how rare they are. Hunters have to learn to recognize them on the wing flying at full speed, something I certainly can't do.

Dawn is a wonderful time to enjoy the lake, with pink clouds and incredible reflections in the water. What a terrific way to start the day. We thanked David for taking time off work for our tour, and he said he preferred being on the lake to staying in the office all day! You can always do paperwork when it rains!

Bald Eagles at Reel Foot Lake

Everyone recognizes our national symbol, the Bald Eagle, right? Most people know that they were on the endangered species list for many years. Before European settlers arrived in North American, an estimated  half-million Bald Eagles may have lived along every large river and concentration of lakes within North America, nesting in forty-five of the lower forty-eight states. Their numbers began to drop as they had to compete with people for territory and food through the 1800's. The pesticide DDT killed huge numbers of Eagles and other birds by making their eggs too thin to survive incubation.

Bald eagles were officially declared an endangered species in 1967 in all areas of the United States south of the 40th parallel, under a law that preceded the Endangered Species Act of 1973. On July 4, 1976, the US Fish and Wildlife Service officially listed the bald eagle as a national endangered species. By June 2007, they were officially removed from that list, having been re-introduced into their old territories by hacking, or releasing young birds, in appropriate areas. When the young birds reach the age of reproduction, they return to the area where they fledged to raise their own young.  The number of nesting pairs in the lower 48 United States increased 10-fold, from less than 450 in the early 1960s, to more than 4,500 adult bald eagle nesting pairs in the 1990s. In the Southeast, for example, there were about 980 breeding pairs in 1993, up from about 400 in 1981. The largest concentrations were in the states of Florida and Louisiana. Today, there are an estimated 9,789 nesting pairs of bald eagles. In Kentucky, we have an estimated population of 100 breeding pairs, including two nesting sites in Jefferson County.

No matter how many times you see a Bald Eagle in a raptor program, there is no thrill to match seeing them in the wild, doing what they were meant to do. At Reel Foot Lake in Tennessee yesterday, we must have seen at least 20 eagles, and it isn't even migration season yet. The numbers increase dramatically when they come down the Mississippi River to the warmer waters of Western Tennessee and Kentucky. At one point, we saw six of them in the air at once, flying around each other, touching talons, and generally looking pretty darn happy. It made us happy too! We were able to approach the adult bird at the top of the post within about 25 yards, and he just sat and posed in the sun for a long time before flying off. Someone who really knows his stuff can age a juvenile or sub-adult eagle by the patterns of white in its feathers, which change every year until maturity at 5 years of age. This bird with the dirty head is probably a 4 year old, and will grow completely white head and tail feathers next year.

Their beaks are dark as well as their feathers as youngsters, and as they mature, you can see the beaks and legs changing color too.

They love the open snags at the top of an old bald cypress tree for an "eagle's eye" view of the lake. Reel Foot State Park offers eagle viewing weekends in January. Reel Foot Lake is home to one of the largest wintering populations of eagles in the country. During the peak season (Jan.-Feb.) there can be as many as 200 eagles wintering on Reel Foot. The three Kentucky State Parks near Land Between the Lakes offer eagle weekend tours as well.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife personnel will often climb up into eagle nests (a dangerous move) to band the young eaglets before they fledge. Kentucky's Dept of Fish and Wildlife has attached satellite transmitters to several bald eagles to track their movements. The eagles wear a 70g solar-powered GPS-PTT satellite transmitter, attached externally, like a backpack with a Teflon harness. Solar panels recharge the transmitter's battery and we hope to receive three-five years of tracking data from each of these birds. The transmitter will not affect the eagle’s ability to fly, forage, or breed. Each transmitter, or tracking device, will allow KDFWR to follow the bald eagle’s movements and will provide information on the dispersal, home range, migration, roosting and foraging patterns, as well as, the survival of each eagle. In examining the photos I took, I saw that one of our birds had a radio transmitter on his back. (click to enlarge the photo for a closer view). Dave Haggard, long time eagle expert and our guide yesterday, said he would see if he could track this down.

 

Chief Paduke is the adult eagle (no, this photo isn't the Chief, but a bird I saw yesterday) currently being tracked in Kentucky, but the maps indicate that he's staying pretty much around the Paducah area. "Chief Paduke" was captured using a rocket-net at Ballard Wildlife Management Area (WMA) in western Kentucky on April 30, 2012. Chief is an adult male (at least 5 years old) and is known to nest on Ballard WMA. But Chief was already banded when captured! He had been rehabilitated in 2010 after he was illegally shot, which injured his wing. The Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources (KDFWR) captured Chief after a landowner reported seeing an injured eagle and took him to Raptor Rehabilitation of Kentucky. After recovering from surgery, Chief was released in his nesting territory in late summer 2010.  WOW! I was volunteering at Raptor Rehab that summer, but didn't realize one of our birds was being tracked! Too cool!

Reelfoot Birds

We got to see some birds not normally found in the Louisville area. Well, someone said these were White Fronted Geese exploring the lake at Big Oak State Park in Missouri. Now that I'm home and checking the field guide, I don't know what they are. Any ideas out there?

The Reelfoot naturalist let us go into the large flight cage for his two Bald Eagles, who were pretty cool about having visitors. Plenty of wild Eagles flew over our parking lot, but they were too high for good pictures.

From our weekend stay, I'd have to say that Great Egrets were the most common bird we saw. They seem very territorial. Each morning we saw an Egret on the same branches around the lakeshore by our resort. If you walked too close though, they flew off, then returned in just a few minutes.

On our hike around the edge of the lake, we saw a handful of American Pelicans preening. It looks like they are standing on water, but there are lots of submerged branches to take advantage of. It only looks like a bird miracle.

The exciting part came when hundreds of Pelicans lifted on a thermal Sunday morning, wheeling and turning until they were high enough to start flying towards their destination farther south. From one angle, there were invisible, then they turned with a flash of white wings, and the next turn made them look black. It was simply fabulous!

A Bald Eagle called while we visited, and apparently I've turned off both the recording and sound making abilities of my camera, so there is no sound. I pieced together some individual shots to get the characteristic movements. Hmm, I'll have to get into the camera setup again so I get sound with my movies.

The Real Reelfoot Lake

Sunday was the best day of our KSNH weekend, because the sun finally came out. Since Reelfoot is on the Mississippi flyway, lots of migrating birds stop here. We visited a wetlands with duck blinds for handicapped hunters. Up to five people can use the drive-up blind, but one has to be in a wheelchair. They were in pretty bad shape after last winter's ice storm, and some hunter will have to clean them up before the season starts. Too bad we'll never see them as just duck watching blinds during the season.

Reelfoot Lake NWR is known for its lily ponds. They should be famous for duckweed as well, since it grows any place where fishermen don't take their boats on a regular basis, resembling a smooth grassy lawn under the trees.

Reelfoot Lake is surprisingly shallow. Many places are 5 feet deep, and the deepest pools are only about 18 feet deep. The wind can blow up good sized whitecaps in a storm though. Many of the cypress trees growing away from the shore are remnants of a cypress forest that grew here before the 1812 earthquake that flooded the area and created the lake. The naturalist said that stumps under the water are still in good condition, while those which are exposed sometimes have rotted. It's hard to determine the age of the oldest trees, since the heart wood rots out leaving a large hollow in the middle, while the rest of the tree lives for many more years.

Bald Cypress trees are deciduous conifers, losing their needles in the winter. "Knees" grow up as part of the root system, giving more stability to their foundation in the soft unstable bottom land. The knees also help oxygenate the trees when their roots are under water.

This looks like a group of knee monks heading for mass in the cathedral. Local people will cut the knees off and sell them at roadside stands. They advise you to boil the wood, then drill a hole up the middle to make a lamp. Sorry, not for me.

Whose Fault Is It?

We joined the Kentucky Society for Natural History on their fall conference at Reelfoot Lake this weekend. As we packed the car on Thursday morning, a quick glance at the weather map showed bright areas of green, yellow and red between Louisville and Colorado. It's going to be a rough weekend, we agreed. Indeed, as we explored the New Madrid fault region, we drove through miles and miles of rain. In addition to being wet, we spent the weekend without technology! Our T-Mobile phones had no signal at all, and the resort where we stayed, although very nice otherwise, had no Internet connections. This was truly a test of our dedication to nature studies! If you aren't familiar with history of the area, New Madrid, MO, was the epicenter of the worst earthquakes in the United States, in 1811 and 1812. The fault was created by a rift that failed about 500 million years ago, and the rift valley filled with sediment. The actual fault is about 25 miles underground, so you don't see evidence of faulting as you would in California, for instance.

Fortunately, the center of the country was relatively unpopulated at that time, when earthquakes exceeding 7 and 8 on the current Richter scale struck over a 3 month period. The fault crosses under the Mississippi River in several places, and uplifting caused the river itself to flow upstream for a while. Liquefied sand erupted in large geysers. The quakes were felt as far away as Canada. I-55 has a rest stop at the site of the epicenter, although they don't publicize it.

Will there be another quake here? Sure, but no one knows when. The damage will be catastrophic when it hits this time, given the size and nearness of cities like St. Louis, Memphis, Nashville and, yes, Louisville. A relatively small quake in April 2008 was centered in Illinois, felt in Louisville, and arose from the New Madrid fault system. Seismometers in the area show unfelt earthquakes occurring regularly. NOVA has a good online video about the New Madrid fault system.

The river itself is not exactly what I expected. The Army Corps of Engineers has turned the Ohio River into a series of lakes using dams and locks. Their goal is to maintain a navigation channel nine feet deep at all times. We call it the Ohio Lake here in Louisville.

The Mississippi River also has dams for navigation, but in between the dams the river twists and turns as it did in the days of Mark Twain. We watched a fully loaded coal barge turn almost sideways to make a turn around a large sand bar. A towboat pushing a full load of fifteen barges is like trying to steer three football fields, 365 days a year, in all kinds of weather. The map above shows some of the channels from the last 250 years. Oxbow lakes, such as Reelfoot, are left as the channel changes directions. The land is perfectly flat and fertile, so farmers plant great fields of corn, soybeans and cotton. Migrating Tree Swallows swoop after insects we can't even see, then perch on the power lines. I saw more Kestrels this weekend than ever before.

We drove downstream to the nearest bridge, then up the Missouri bootheel through the fault zone. Not wanting to drive that far again to get back to Reelfoot, we got to ride the Hickman Ferry across the river, back to the Kentucky side. The small boat you see on the side of this photo is on a hinge. When we pulled away from shore, this part swung out and around, so it could push across the river in a forward direction, just as it did on the way to pick us all up.

My next postings will all be about our weekend at Reelfoot, and the cypress swamps and wildlife we enjoyed.