Where I’ve Been and What I’ve Seen (IV): Lacassine Bitterns

The Lafayette Convention was memorable in many ways, but the experience that has burned itself into my mind was the bittern show at Lacassine National Wildlife Refuge.

Strictly speaking, we were poaching a bit on other trips’ turf when we arrived there for lunch on the first day; but our conscience was quickly salved by the sight of an American Bittern posed motionless in the ditch. And then another flew out of the marsh, and then another…. And by the time we had finished our quick lunch (to the musical accompaniment of Black-bellied and Fulvous Whistling-Ducks and [slightly less musical!] Purple Gallinules), we had had no fewer than nine flyovers by this normally secretive and always scarce heron.

The experience was repeated on each visit, often with two or three American Bitterns in the sky at once. But Saturday’s trip took the cake: not only did we have (ho-hum) nearly a dozen flyovers of that species, but beautiful close-up views of two Least Bitterns, in flight and perched in the rushes, giving me my best bittern day ever by far, and one of the richest ciconiiform lists I’d ever accumulated: besides the two brown beauties, we also recorded Great Blue Heron; Great and Snowy Egrets; Little Blue and Tricolored Herons; Cattle Egret; Green Heron; Yellow-crowned Night-Heron; White, Glossy, and White-faced Ibis; and Roseate Spoonbill. If the vultures hadn’t played so hard to get (read: impossible to get), we’d have tallied 15 species, about as long a list as you can get inland in the US.

No bittern photos, unfortunately, but another “Buff-backed Heron” to delight the eye.