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This weekend I completed my part of the Legacy Cerulean Warbler Project for the Kalamazoo Nature Center by visiting Lake Grenada and Lake Enid in Northwest Mississippi.  The lakes are named for their nearby towns and Grenada seems to be the much more substantial of the too so I made it my base.  I drove over Friday afternoon since Grenada is a four hour drive from Little Rock.

Saturday morning I left the hotel and was on site by 6:30. Since the high was going to be near 100, I wanted to start as early as possible.  Lake Grenada turned out to be a good place with a reasonable amount of deciduous trees.  As before, I drove around and visited all of the major points around the lake. I was surprised when I heard a Prairie Warbler but on checking the field guide, I found they were more common in the east than the west. With Prairie in their name, I thought Arkansas was on the eastern side of their territory rather than western. By the end of the day, I had seen 49 species but no Cerulean Warbler.

Lake Enid was about 25 miles north of Grenada so Sunday morning I checked out even earlier and was able to start there at 6:30 as well.  I had a similar story there, visiting all the major spots around the lake though Enid has a little more variety than Grenada. The eastern end was more like our Lake Conway while the western end was more like our Lake Degray.  The Enid area has more kudzu than any of the other areas that I surveyed and I wonder what impact that has on diversity, not good I’m sure. As before, I came up with 49 species though with a few substitutions.  I did see an Osprey which was arguably the best bird of the day.

Not being an out at the bars kind of guy, my evenings were spent at the hotel watching DVDs. I had brought two that I had gotten from the library – Dead Snow and Moon. Both were entertaining, the first living up to its promise of being one of the 25 best zombie movies of all time and the latter being a good if low key story of a maintenance man (to be honest) doing a three year stint on the Moon.

In the second of three trips to Mississippi for the Legacy Cerulean Warbler Project, I visited this apparently new wildlife area about 25 miles southeast of Tunica.  Sam wanted to go on one of these and I figured this one, which was a single site unlike my other two weekends, was the best choice.  We drove over Friday evening and started early Saturday morning.

We got started at 7 AM in the southwestern corner of the area.  I was lucky in that I came across two Cerulean Warbler within 5 minutes of leaving the car at my first stop.  First a female flew across the unimproved road I was walking, not 25 feet in front of me, and landed in a bush. Then a male followed her. Before I could react, they both flew away but not before I got good enough looks to eliminate everything else.  I continued on and came back to the spot twice more but did not see them again.  Besides this place, we drove along every sufficiently defined road in the area seeing 45 other species but no more Cerulean Warbler or other exotics.  I did find a small Great Blue Heron heronry with at least six nests.

After crisscrossing the area, stopping often to play the Cerulean Warbler song and listening for a response we called it a day and headed home.

I was offered the opportunity to participate in the “Legacy Cerulean Warbler Project” with the Kalamazoo Nature Center and the Army Corps of Engineers.  The project involves doing site surveys of several COE managed areas looking specifically for Cerulean Warblers.  Given the time of year, they would presumably be nesting if found.

I agreed to do five surveys of five sites in northwestern Mississippi – Arkabutla Lake, Sardis Lake, Askew WMA, Enid Lake, and Grenada Lake.  The four lakes all fall along I-55 so getting to them is pretty straight forward if a long drive from Little Rock.  The wildlife management area is closer to the Mississippi River that I-55 but still not hard to get to.

Time was of the essence, I had five sites and three open weekends before the deadline. My original plan had been to leave Friday evening 6/4 and stay two nights to do the first two lakes on the list but decided to leave early Saturday at 4 instead and stay over only one night.

I arrived at Arkabutla Lake at 7 AM.  This lake has a large COE area at the dam site on the west side with a small amount of COE area elsewhere.  My surveys are to be limited to COE areas.  I started at the southern end of the dam area and worked my way north on foot.  Long story short, I did find one Cerulean Warbler on the “Swinging Bridge Trail” at about 11 AM. Why its called that is anyone’s guess as the bridge is actually a boardwalk across a swamp and does not swing.  Later, at about 3 PM I heard what might have been another while driving but by the time I could park I could not find the bird.

I left just in time, an afternoon cloudburst drenched the area shortly afterward.

I went to Batesville, next to Sardis Lake, and got a hotel. After a shower, I went over to the lake for a quick check.

The next morning, I was able to get started at 6:30 and birded the lake’s dam area which had plenty of proper habitat. That took about three hours.  Sardis is way different than Arkabutla in that its long and skinny and has COE areas dotted all around it. So, I started around it.  I hoped to check as many as possible and I did but I soon realized that 5 miles in, 5 miles back, 3 miles over, and repeat over and over would add up quickly and I’d run out of time before covering just the west side of the lake.  So, I decided to pick just those areas that the COE thought enough of to place their brown signs for on the main highway.  I was able to check about 10 sites around the lake, driving and incredible 140 miles in, out, and over in the process.  Alas, no Cerulean Warbler were found at Sardis.

At the end of this long day, I headed home.

Next weekend, I intend to visit Askew WMA and the weekend after that wrap up with the remaining two lakes.