acadian fly!

    
     goody! just heard the unmistakable "PEETsa!" call of an acadian flycatcher.....he's hollering a good bit east of where he set up last year and the year before............and he's late.

     those of you who followed my 'acadiana nature notes' column that was published in the lafayette paper 1986-2008 will probably remember how i kept ya'll abreast of the ecological succession process here at our place in northeastern lafayette parish, la.....................for us, it all started back in 1982, as a cow pasture with a very lightly-wooded coulee (forested gully) running through it............today, it's a 28 year old bottomland hardwood forest with a mostly-closed canopy ranging 50-75' in height, full of hackberry, green ash, sweetgum, red swamp maple, water oak, live oak, pecan, persimmon, rough-leaf dogwood, plus others (red mulberry, white mulberry, cedar elm, american hornbeam, shagbark hickory, nutmeg hickory, durand oak, montezuma cypress, and more) that we installed ourselves.......it's a bona fide bottomland hardwood forest alright...........

     it was cool to watch which wild plants colonized the property first, how long they lasted, who came second, how long they dominated, and now, who came third (the climax species for this particular habitat type), and far along they have progressed.............................

     as cool if not cooler was observing which animals came in first, second, etc.....................because i know birds, it was especially exciting when uncommon stuff like ground dove (an early succession resident), fox sparrow (a secondary-succession winter resident), prothonotary warbler (a nesting species), kentucky warbler (ditto), and now, acadian flycatcher (a late-successional nesting species) trickled in.

     we got our first nesting kentucky warbler three springs ago, i believe..............this year, it was a month late, not arriving and setting up shop until this past mondary (24 may)...........i was getting bummed out......

     and two springs ago, we received our first nesting acadian flycatcher............whoa.............that definitely translates to "maturing canopy forest" conditions......................................but this past spring.......uh-oh.....we waited and we waited on it..................one or two birds showed up on the usual date (around the first week of may), but they moved on.....migrants i guess.....................then we waited and we waited some more......dam........i was starting to wonder what happened............then, today around noon: "PEETsa!"

     the acadian flycatcher belongs to a New World flycatcher genus (Empidonax) containing members that appear distressingly similar.............well, "distressingly" if you happen to be a person who wants to know what species he/she's looking at...............if you don't happen to care which is which, then you're cool.....just call it "an empid" and be done with it.............................anyway, in the field our 11 u.s. empidonax flycatcher species are identified mainly by voice............they all have different calls.........................the acadian fly is native to just about all of the eastern u.s. south of our northernmost tier of states.............so far as i know, i has never nesting or even migrated through the canadian maritimes; which, given its common name, is curious.................................unless they named it after acadiana ("new acadia, here in south-central louisiana), as it does nest in mature bottomland hardwood forests all around here...............i'll have to look into that......................................anyway, welcome home, little green dude............hope u catch a TON of flies..........