Bayou-Diversity (27 September 2020) Writing of the carnage at Vicksburg during the Civil War, a teenage girl living near what is now West Monroe made an interesting natural history observation. She stated: “…we hear from the best and most direct sources that the Yankee dead lie in heaps about our entrenchments; it is horrible to relate, sickening to think, but so curious a fact that I must note it down, all the vultures have left this country, a carcass may lie for days untouched, those creatures have gone eastward in search of nobler game; how terrible is war!” Vultures get a bad rap. At bes ..read more

Bayou-Diversity (20 September 2020) During a period of four hours beginning at 10AM on Thursday, August 27, 2020, the D’Arbonne Swamp changed for many decades. The change was aeolian in the form of Hurricane Laura. She was obstinate, eschewing the normal shape-shifting impotence that occurs upon landfall, and for the first time in recorded history still maintained a Category 1 status when she passed within the D’Arbonne Swamp 200 miles inland. Thousands of trees, mostly the largest and oldest oaks, succumbed to the 70 mph gusts and were thrown to the forest floor. Their tentacled root-balls f ..read more

Bayou-Diversity (13 September 2020) Connections are a common theme on this blog. We’ve talked about broad connections such as those linking clean water to healthy fish, wildlife, and human populations. Widespread education about more specific connections like the one between monarch butterflies and wild milkweeds have resulted in concerted efforts to benefit these species. Edification of the detrimental impacts of balloon releases on wildlife is another example of spreading the word about connections, negative ones in this case. Continuing in this vein, today’s topic is about another natural ..read more

Bayou-Diversity (6 September 2020) For as long as humans have dwelled on our bayou-laced landscape, boats have drifted along the placid waters. Local Native Americans built watercraft for 400 generations before European immigrants arrived to mimic their designs. For efficient travel and trade in a wilderness world of wetlands there were no other options. The earliest boats were dugout canoes or pirogues. Hewn from logs of virgin cypress or water tupelo, some were large enough to carry a dozen passengers or a thousand pounds of freight. Construction was labor intensive and required skilled cra ..read more

Bayou-Diversity (16 August 2020) When it comes to the natural world, we don't know what we don't know. Trouble jumps up about the time we think we've got it all figured out. There are plenty of examples of well-intentioned human actions that have caused environmental chaos. One pertains to recent attitudes concerning wild fires. For a century fires on natural landscapes were thought to be unmitigated disasters. Tremendous efforts went into fire prevention and suppression across the country. Smoky Bear taught generations of children that fire is bad. This ill-informed position, by failing to r ..read more

Bayou-Diversity (21 June 2020) Deer, gray squirrel and gray fox, ‘possum, raccoon, armadillo all come to the drying pond now leaving their spoor in the encircling halo of mud. What a difference between equinoxes. Six feet deep in the spring, the pond reflects the harvest moon from a surface barely eighteen inches above the muck bottom. Daily evaporation sucks away at the pond’s diameter. Except for the squirrels, most of the mammals come at night or at the crepuscular times in between. Deer, some heavy in their splayfooted tracks, others with hooves of the year barely larger than a nickel, wa ..read more

Bayou-Diversity (14 June 2020) At the same time President Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark to explore the Missouri and Columbia Rivers he commissioned William Dunbar to conduct a similar expedition on the Ouachita River from its mouth to the legendary Hot Springs in present day Arkansas. Dunbar’s mandate was similar to Meriwether Lewis’ in that he was required to record and describe native plants and wildlife observed during the journey. One passage in his journal reads, “We have a Vine called the poison vine, from a property it possesses of affecting some persons passing near it, by cau ..read more

Bayou-Diversity (17 May 2020) Spring is a busy time for most birds in northeast Louisiana. Whether they are year round residents or just returning from wintering areas in Central and South America, most are involved in nest building of some sort. Nests of course are where birds lay eggs and are as varied as the many species that frequent our locale. They can be found from ground level to the tops of the highest trees. They can be as simple as a depression in the leaves or as complex as a finely woven bowl of spider silk and lichens. Most people think of the typical nest as the familiar cup-sh ..read more

For the second consecutive year Bayou-Diversity has won second place for "Best Podcast" in the combined newspaper, radio, and T.V. division of the Louisiana-Mississippi Associated Press Broadcasters and Media Editors awards ..read more

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