All tagged Waterfowl
As kids, we called the strange-looking, all-black ducks that we saw on local lakes “Mud Ducks”. But they were actually American coots. About the size of a small duck, the American coot (Fulica americana) is black or a very dark charcoal gray, with a white bill and a bright red eye.
Have you ever seen a pied-billed grebe? Maybe a better question is: Have you ever heard of a pied-billed grebe? These relatively small aquatic birds are common throughout North America, but unless you spend some time around lakes, ponds and wetland marshes you might never see one.
In Louisiana, waterfowl hunters have seen a continued decline in recent years. The cause? Well, that’s a topic for another conversation where opinions vary from state-to-state, and from top-to-bottom of the Mississippi Flyway.
“Tell me again, why do we live here?” a non-hunting friend sarcastically asked me after listening to a weather forecast predicting incoming quantities of snow for northwest Wisconsin that were better measured in feet than in inches.
