BirdNote®
Morning on the Bayou
Written by Bob Sundstrom
This is BirdNote.
[Bayou ambient, throughout]
It’s morning on the bayou.
Cypress trees draped with Spanish moss rise from still, dark water. A Red-bellied Woodpecker calls and then drums on an ancient snag. [Rolling call & drum of Red-bellied Woodpecker] A Northern Parula sings its rapid, rising trill. [Northern Parula song] A Barred Owl hoots mightily as an alligator slithers by.
[Barred Owl hoot sequence]
Bayous are found in much of the Southeast from Arkansas to Alabama, across flat land that drains into the Mississippi. [Northern Parula song]. A typical bayou, such as those for which Louisiana is famous, is a tributary stream or a former river channel that loops and meanders, but has a very sluggish flow. And the word bayou? It may sound French, but it comes from a Choctaw word for “small stream.”
A bayou’s luxuriant wetness supports lush growth of trees and shrubs, which in turn offer secluded nesting for a broad range of birds. The striking Yellow-crowned Night-Heron nests on bayous, as does the slim and sinuous Anhinga (an-HING-guh). And these Yellow-throated Warblers join many songbirds in testifying to the bountiful habitat of the bayou [Song of Yellow-throated Warbler].
For BirdNote, I’m Mary McCann. [Call of Red-bellied Woodpecker]
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Sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Bayou ambient 128918 recorded by G.Vyn and B. Clock; churring call and drumming 102195 of Red-bellied Woodpecker recorded by D.W. Stemple; song of Northern Parula recorded by W.L. Hershberger; Barred Owl 128933 recorded by G. Vyn; and song of Yellow-throated Warbler 105488 by G.A. Keller.
Producer: John Kessler
Executive Producer: Chris Peterson
© 2012 Tune In to Nature.org May 2018/2019/2022 Narrator: Mary McCann
ID# bayou-01-2012-05-07 bayou-01b
Today’s show brought to you by The Bobolink Foundation.
