December 15, 1997

Coots and an Air Boat

The water in the flats was only inches deep and we were flying over it at about 40 mph. Coots
(black ducks with a white beak) are very abundant in the open waters of the Delta Wildlife
Refuge. They are so tame and numerous that there is no way to go around them. When driving
through their flocks some of them were not fast enough to escape the air boat. Although we tried
to avoid them, there were so many that they were impeding our progress. Being a diving duck,
their legs are located so far back on their body that they cannot jump up out of the water and fly
away like the puddle ducks. To become airborne they essentially run across the water while
flapping their wings until they reach a speed sufficient to become airborne. Their little legs
move faster and faster as their feet make dimples on the water surface. Desperately trying to
escape the air boat which was bearing down on them, they first tried to take off and fly away.
But some could not outrun or outfly the boat. So what is a poor coot to do when it finds that it
cannot escape the boat by air? It dives into the water at the last split second before the boat hits
it. Other than triggering a very high adrenaline flow, the coots are none the worse for the
experience. I saw no smeared coots behind the boat after we passed. Coots have probably
developed this escape strategy over evolutionary time to escape eagles, falcons, and hawks with
a craving for fresh coot.

Coots Beware

It was a totally new experience for Pat and me. Even with ear plugs stuck deeply into our ear
canals, the noise of the 454 Chevy engine driving the propeller on the back of the boat was
deafening. My ears are still ringing from the ride. There is no way to communicate verbally
while we skim across the water and mud flats. We must resort to hand signals and reading lips.
It was also a cold day - the day following a ten inch snow in mid-Mississippi. Even wearing an
insulated suit, warm cap, gloves and several layers of shirts the wind chill caused our knees to
shake and our faces were a little numb. There are no places to escape the wind in an air boat.
But the sights we were seeing was well worth the discomfort. The noise of an approaching air
boat scares some of the wildlife almost one mile away (coots are tamer). Thus we could not
come very close to the ducks and geese before they took off - but once in the air they formed
large, black clouds against the clear, blue sky. Very large flocks of snow geese - up to about
20,000 - inhabit the refuge. Scaups, ring-necks, mallards, canvas backs, coot, pintails, widgeon,
blue-wing teal, white pelicans, brown pelicans, laughing gulls, herring gulls, assorted terns, great
blue herons, great egrets, snowy egrets, red tail hawks, and osprey dominate the bird fauna. It is
an incredible place! A national treasure! No wonder it was established as a National Wildlife
Refuge early in this century.

Pat & Mike Guidry

But all is not well in paradise! Nitrogen and phosphate fertilizers running off the corn, soybean
and cotton fields along the Mississippi River and its tributaries have polluted the river so badly
that a large area of the Gulf of Mexico southwest of the mouth of the Mississippi is virtually
dead. The process of hypoxia (oxygen depletion) is caused by the overproduction of plant
organisms whose growth is stimulated by the high nitrogen content of the water. These plants
use up the oxygen in the water. Consequently any organism that requires oxygen cannot survive.
Fish, crabs, shrimp and other organisms find it hard to survive under such conditions. Shrimp
boat and fishing boats owners cannot make a living in the polluted area. Otherwise, in less
polluted areas, this delta is one of the most productive fisheries in the world.

The Delta National Wildlife Refuge headquarters is located about 80 miles south-east of New
Orleans at the town of Venice, LA at the end of the Great River Road. The actual refuge is
another seven miles south, near the mouth of the Mississippi River and can be reached only by
boat. Since we are serving as volunteers here for a couple of weeks we can sometimes tag along
with Fisheries and Wildlife (FWS) personnel when they make work trips. Even further south is
the Pass a Loutre State Wildlife Area. Maintenance, enforcement, researchers and administrators
can find a bunk there in a large home and visitor’s center. It is well-maintained and very remote.
Personnel who commute every few days to this State Wildlife area dock their boats here at WFS
headquarters. Consequently we have met and chatted with many of them so we are beginning to
understand how this system works.

Mike Guidry & Volunteers

Serendipity is hooked up behind the Refuge headquarters about 30 yards from the edge of Grand
Pass - a wide waterway into which some of the Mississippi River water flows to the Gulf. A half
mile up the pass we can see ships traveling up and down the river. Grand Pass is one of the
busiest waterways that we have seen anywhere along the Mississippi River. Diesel supply boats
that supply the oil rigs out in the Gulf of Mexico dock here, load supplies, and ferry crews. A
couple of heliports from which helicopters supply the oil rigs, add to the noise. Often we can see
several supply boats passing by our front door simultaneously. Every once in a while we hear
the roaring of large diesel engines coming to fill their diesel tanks at the “filling station” behind
our motorhome. The noise does not disturb us very much except in the middle of the night.

Interestingly, the wildlife seems to have adapted to the diesel fumes and the cacophony. Several
brown pelicans frequent the pilings, waiting for the trash fish discarded from the shrimp catch.
Stepping out of the door one night, I almost stepped on a large nutrea which casually loped
across the yard and dove into the waters of the pass. Every evening, yellow-crowned night
herons quarrel over the favorite hunting site on the top of a piling which overlooks the murky
waters of the pass. Each morning boats stir up bait fish or something that attract the laughing
gulls, herring gulls and least terns into a feeding frenzy.

On the other side of the motorhome is a small port occupied mostly by shrimp boats. On this
same port is a dock with several slips used by the Fish and Wildlife Service. Thus on one side of
this peninsula, on which we temporarily reside, is an almost steady flow of diesel supply boats
and on the other there is a lesser flow of shrimp and FWS boats. Outside the west windows of
Serendipity is a view of a large yacht owned by the Fish and Wildlife Service. It was confiscated
from some drug smugglers who operated in the Gulf. When I mentioned that maybe we could
borrow it for a quick trip to the Bahamas, my suggestions was met with only a grin. Oh well!
We would probably have gotten a terrible sun burn on the Bahamian beaches anyway.

Fall cypress colors

Winfield