Ronnie Blackwell

Matt Tillett found his Blueberry Summer Catbird in Maryland’s Patuxent NWR. –Creative Commons Attribution, No Derivatives, 2.0 Generic.

This year our side yard to the west of Ronalin is even more of a jungle than usual, despite my sporadic efforts to blaze a path through the wilderness all the way to the back yard. During the summer this tangle serves as the nursery for our resident songbirds. Cardinals, towhees, mockingbirds, thrashers, catbirds, wrens, and house finches, Blue Jays and more have used the thick vines, shrubs and hollies to raise young over the years. Yesterday I walked out of the door about six in the afternoon and felt just a touch of cool breeze in the air. I grabbed a pruning saw and some shears and headed for the western yard.

Although that breeze had whispered Spring to me, I found Blueberry Summer waiting. Our twenty-year-old Rabbit-eye Blueberries were heavy with fruit, hanging like dusky thrush eggs. I know it’s sacrilege in the eyes of many purists to call these highly tinkered-with creations native plants, but they are some of my favorites. They want no coddling, and thrive on the harsh conditions of my western yard wilderness. And the birds seem to agree with me.

I grabbed a forgotten pot from the underbrush and lined the bottom with green briar to keep the berries falling through the drain hole. The bushes didn’t get pruned last year, and many of the berries waved twelve feet high above me. No problem, the Catbird took everything above eight feet. We both ate our bate and I carried home a good show for Lin.

Life is full and the world is generous in Blueberry Summer.

Posted by Ron under Blogs & Home | 1 Comment »

Hooded Warblers Provided the Soundtrack for the day’s walk.
Photo by Birdfreak—Creative Commons (BY–ND/2.0)

Okay, I’ll admit that I was reluctant from the git-go. It started with a report of a Golden Eagle at Little Black Water Park. There was a scramble among local birders to go look at the eagle. My attitude was that the bird was most likely an immature Bald Eagle. There have been Bald Eagles nesting at Little Black for at least five years now. Not that I doubt that a Golden Eagle might be roaming around in Mississippi—they do. Golden Eagles can and do show up anywhere they want to.
But if the bird was a Golden Eagle, it could be in Canada by the time we could get a trip organized to see it.

Then came the word that the Eagle had probably been a large Red-tailed Hawk. I thought that was the end of the matter.

Then Chuck announced that we would have a May field trip to Little Black Creek to look for the Golden Eagle. As I may have mentioned, I was reluctant. Mid-May in South Mississippi. It sounded hot, buggy, and humid. And, frankly, I’ve never found many birds at Little Black. I have found great crowds of people camping, fishing, and enjoying a very nice Water Park, and crowds and birds just don’t mix well. The week before the trip was planned Grayson Rayborn and I were almost eaten alive by deer flies down at Ansley, in Hancock County. And my reluctance turned into full-blown dread.

But I went. After all a bad birding trip is better than most other activities. I went and I was proven dead wrong. The day was cool and sunny, one of the most beautiful May days I can remember. We were a small group—Me, Chuck Gramling, Liz Wolfe, Larry Morgan, and Jean Jeffs traveled from Hattiesburg. At the trailhead to the nature trail we met, or rather we were found by two local experts, Rochelle and Sheila. Their guidance through the nature trail system proved invaluable.

And this was he birdiest nature trail that I have eve walked,. We took our time and had a very comfortable couple of hours, full of singing birds and Spring wild-flowers. We saw both Scarlet and Summer Tanagers within the first few hundred yards of the trail. Hooded Warblers, Pine Warblers, Common Yellowthroats, and three species of vireos were everywhere. We saw late-blooming Swamp Azaleas, nesting Prothonotary Warblers and Wood Ducks along a very nice beaver pond.
We ended up with nearly fifty bird species. This dreaded field trip turned out to be one of the highlights of a very nice Spring of birding for me.

Little Black is one of the Pat Harrison Waterway District Water Park. There are nine of these public parks scattered across the Pascagoula River Basin. While not the raw wilderness that the Pascagoula is famous for, these well-run parks are treasures for the thousands of South Mississippians who can get away to camp for a weekend, fish for an afternoon, or just walk around in the woods for the morning. You can learn more about the Pat Harrison Waterway District HERE.

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We who live along the Mississippi Coast or up here in greater Hattiesburg are all too familiar with the constant threat that our coastal plain environment faces from unplanned or poorly-planned development in around our cities. However, I find myself shocked more and more at environmental threats from development far off the beaten path. This weekend I got another of those shocks: There is a fully-developed plan to put an Automobile Dirt Racing Track on the hill above the Sweet Bay Bogs in Stone County. This site is owned by the Nature Conservancy and represents a very rare habitat, known as the Magnolia Bog. This habitat is facing development dangers all across the South.
Julia O’Neal laid out the situation in a post to my Appearances page on May 4. I’ve moved her post to here on the Home page. Thanks, Julia!

Photo by Tayrn_* Some Rights Reserved CC
Sweetbay Magnolia (Magnolia virginiana), the Beauty in the Bog.

Dear Mr. Blackwell,
A Nature Conservancy Preserve in Stone County, Sweetbay Bogs, is in danger. Below is a capsule synopsis of what has been going on concerning the hill above the bogs, which directly affects the water in the bogs, both runoff and the ground water that seeps into the bogs from springs.
The Mississippi DEQ is holding a hearing about the storm water runoff on Thursday, May 15, at 7:00 p.m. at the Stone High Auditorium. This hearing will determine the fate of Sweetbay Bogs.
We thought you might be interested, since Sweetbay is kind of a “Cabo San Lucas” for migrating birds! We would very much appreciate your coming to the hearing, if you can make it, to help us plead the case for saving Sweetbay.
Many thanks for your consideration — see the synopsis below.
Julia O’Neal
601-928-5828
—————————
In March, plans were announced for a dirt race track to be built on Smithtown Road in western Stone County, Mississippi.(http://smithtownspeedway.com/). The location of the 40-acre parcel is on the hill across the road and above a Nature Conservancy preserve (http://www.nature.org/wherewework/northamerica/states/mississippi/preserves/art17306.html). The preserve is part of an important geological hydrology that includes other springs in the Red Creek floodplain, but the seepage on the bog hillside and the “quaking” bogs themselves are a unique vestige of the former longleaf pine ecosystem in the area.
Neighbors who are concerned about noise and traffic from the proposed track met with the current Nature Conservancy staffer responsible for the preserve. Also in attendance were other environmentalists who were worried about the effect on the preserve of run-off from the construction as well as oil from the race cars and public parking when the track became active. They began a public campaign (signs in the rural neighborhood saying “Stop the Track,” a complaint to the MS Dept of Environmental Quality, letters to the papers, a petition to the Board of Supervisors–a five-person panel that governs the county). Stone County does not have zoning or a noise ordinance, and any law that the Board of Supervisors might institute once the track owner had filed for his permit would not be retroactive.
A representative from the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science also became involved. The museum has done extensive work on the rare plants at Sweetbay, and helped the preserve to become a “registered” natural area in the state. Unfortunately, the state of Mississippi has no power to defend rare plants, and none of the plants at the preserve are “listed” with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. (See attachments.)
On March 27, the track owner/builder filed for a storm water permit with the Mississippi Dept. of Environmental Quality. Meanwhile, two citizens had invited the Board of Supervisors on a “tour” of Sweetbay, led by a naturalist from Audubon Mississippi. The representative from the Museum of Natural Science and several Nature Conservancy staffers were also in attendance when the tour took place on April 7. Ironically, the builder of the track had received permission to begin construction on April 7. Uninvited, he “crashed” the tour and dominated it with argument and invective. After insulting the representative from the Museum and essentially accusing him of “lying,” the track owner brought out a bulldozer on a trailer and blocked the road installing it on the track property while “tour” visitors were leaving. This activity was reported in both local papers and served to further polarize the community.
The museum representative wrote a letter to the DEQ on April 8, expressing concern about the effect of the construction and activity of the race track on the ground water, which is the source of the springs that make the bogs. The DEQ had also received a request for a public hearing from a state senator. On April 8, the DEQ rescinded the permit which had been in effect April 7. Ultimately, the DEQ announced that a public hearing on the construction permit would be held at 7:00 p.m. on May 15, at the Stone High School Auditorium in Wiggins.
(Copies of the Special Plant Tracking List from the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science and the Registry Agreement with the state are available from me, or the Museum, if you would like to see them.)

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