Ronnie Blackwell

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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Here is the evidence that I do sometimes go birding—a Mississippi Gulf Coast Audubon Field Trip to Spence’s Woods and Logtown. Grayson Rayborn is not in the picture because he’s taking it!

There are great birding events this month along the Northern Gulf Coast. Here are some links.

Dauphin Island is one the premier birding spots in North America. Join the parade of birding clubs, tours, Big Year counters, and people who just like to look at birds. See you at Shell Mound!

The Wilson Ornithological Society and the Association of Field Ornithologist are having a Joint National Meeting in Mobile right at the peak of spring migration, what a coincidence!

The Pascagoula River Nature Festival will have events scattered throughout the month of April.

In Louisiana the Grand Isle Migratory Bird Festival will take place from April 18—20.

April 11—13 Mandeville’s Northlake Nature Center is hosting the Great Louisiana Birdfest.

Right across the river from the guys in the Logtown picutre lies Honey Island. Pines Woods Audubon Field Trip, March 22, 2008 Some innocent passer-by took this picture.

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The Eurasian Wryneck, jynx torquilla Photo by MrClementi

The Biloxi Sun Herald is running a series of three of my columns on jinx birds. You know—those sneaky birds who seem to taunt you, call from the bushes, flash across a gap in the undergrowth, but never give you a decent look at them. If you have missed the jinx columns in the paper, just click on my Sun Herald tab above. I hope you have as much fun reading as I had writing them.

When I started writing about these birds I got curious about the word jinx. I went to a couple of lexicographer sites and found out that I wasn’t the only one who was curious. There seems to be several word-wars going on among word experts about this small word, jinx.

But I was really surprised when I found out that most of the fuss is about how the word is spelled. Someone explained to us nonpartisans who had stumbled onto the battlefield that the problem is where did the ‘I’ come from? Everybody knows that a Jynx is a bird.

Oh, do they?

I left those guys squabbling and found my self in more familiar territory at the European bird sites. Jynx is the latin name for the Eurasian Wryneck, a truly strange bird that is sort of a woodpecker who doesn’t peck wood. The wryneck has a long tongue like a woodpecker and slurps up insects with it like a woodpecker, and it even nests in woodpecker holes, but it is incapable of pecking wood into holes on its own.

But it does have some interesting qualities, such as the ability to turn it’s head 180 degrees and hiss like a snake. These characteristics brought the jynx notoriety long before Billy Friedkin taught Linda Blair the same tricks and won an Oscar for the deed.

Throughout its range from Europe into Africa, the wrynecks has been prized by local spell-casters since before Hector was a pup—literally! In Greece and Rome wryneck feathers were considered such necessary ingredients for any magic potion that the potions themselves became known as jynxes. And now you know….

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Jean Guy’s fantastic photo of an American Robin: Some rights Reserved: Creative Commons

Today was a gem of Southern winter. Occasional clouds tumbled headlong across the sky, but the surface was cool and calm. Temperatures in the low sixties brought out even the most reluctant resident avian males, and by ten o’clock every tall perch held an insistent singer proclaiming his worthiness.
Lin and I both spent the day inside. It wasn’t the tragedy it seems on the face of it. We both got work done, I caught a bit of basketball on TV, and we savored the luxury of not having to leave Ronnalin and venture into the world of commerce. And right now, I’m listening to Van Morrison sing There’ll Be Days Like this. Not bad, not at all—of course, a cold drizzle outside wouldn’t have hurt my resolve to work.
As it was, I kept running outside to suck in just a little of this beautiful day. On my first foray I was dazzled by the sky. I thought to myself that high arc was the color a male Cerulean wants to be.
On my dash into the yard at ten o’clock —new and improved daylight savings time—I first noticed the robins. There was a faltering stream of American Robins heading north in small groups. By noon the stream had become a river of flocks, some of which probably held as many as fifty birds.
The Basketball game and hard drive housekeeping held my attention for a while, so I didn’t get back outside until the dogs demanded it around four. By then the Robins were in full flood and the mockingbirds, thrashers, and cardinals had all been cowed into silence as hundreds of birds passed overhead. In the back corner of the yard, a lone towhee shrieked his alarm call.
My dashes outside became more frequent after that. There were other birds moving, too. Chunks of starlings, Red-winged Blackbirds, and Cedar Waxwings were embedded in the slipstream of the larger flock. But the large majority of birds winging over were robins. We used to have such flocks fly by when my neighborhood was crowned with tall hardwoods, but it has been years and years since those days.
It was a mighty fine thing to see, again.
Lin came out with at six, just as the flow of birds suddenly stopped. Now there were hundreds of robins sitting in the remaining old water oaks and pecans in the neighborhood. As the birds jockeyed for the best roosting sites the afternoon sun burnished them bright as scarlet tanagers.
As the sun fell, so did the temperature. As I headed in I took one more look at the darkening sky and realized that I was wrong earlier. This was not a cerulean day, today was robin-egg blue.
Take care and keep an eye on the sky.

American Robin’s Nest by Martin Ujlaki. Some rights Reserved: Creative Commons

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My article about the Japanese pintail that was killed in North Mississippi was picked up by the Southeastern Currents, a publication of the National Fish & Wildlife Service, and published in their March 2008 edition. You can read it by clicking here.

If the link does not work for some reason, you can copy the link below and paste into your browser URL bar: http://www.fws.gov/southeast/SoutheasternCurrents/behind.html

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Tuesday, the eleventh, Lin and went to reprise our Gulf Coast Audubon Society PowerPoint presentation, Back Yards Are For The Birds, and the Great Backyard Bird Count for Main Street Methodist’s Prime Time Club. We had a blast on the Coast, but we did run short of time, and I forgot to plug this site and give my email address. I spent Tuesday morning deleting slides and adding a few slides that would refer to Hattiesburg. I finished my work. Lin swooped in and picked me up so that we could go early to set up. The church’s media expert, Jamie Gower quickly got us hooked into their system. I checked the presentation. Everything was perfect, and we had more than an hour before the show started to visit. I admit that I was just a bit worried right then about this “perfect” thing, but pushed it out of my mind and had a delicious pork tenderloin lunch which I finished without dribbling gravy all over my shirt—see, there’s that perfect thing again.
We had over seventy people show up and by the time we all got served, ate, and visited a proper while, we were running the slightest bit late. Not to worry, I knew that I had reduced the presentation. I figured I would run through the pretty pictures quickly and then have plenty of time for questions.
The Prime Timers did some housekeeping, we got introduced, and it was Showtime!
The presentation went well, although I realized that I should have spent less time fiddling with the presentation that morning and more time reading over my slides. Luckily Lin took up the slack, and we began to hit our duel presentation rhythm.
Then…

BOOM!

Thunder shook the meeting room and rain poured down. We charged onward, picking up the pace, but after another couple of volley’s I realized that I was talking to as many backs as faces people were gathering raincoats and umbrellas. I called a halt to the presentation at the first good spot. All in all it was a very good experience. Lin and I had fun visiting with people, and we ate some great food. But, for the second time around, I didn’t get to plugging my columns or my website.
So the next time you come to one of our presentations don’t be surprised to see a title banner that reads

RonnieBlackwell.com • Hattiesburg American • Sun Herald • RonnieBlackwell.com•

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A watch of Gulf Coast Birders in their natural habitat.

Saturday I made my fifth trip to the coast since late December. This time I went to the World Wetlands Day celebration at Grand Bay NERR (by the way, NERR is short for National Estuarine Research Reserve) with help from Grand Bay National Wildlife Refuge and the Mississippi Gulf Coast Audubon. You do know that February second is World Wetlands Day, don’t you? And you know that World Wetlands Day celebrates the signing of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands back in 1971 in Ramsar, Iran. And I’m sure you know that today more that 150 countries are signatory to the treaty, including even the USA as of 1986. I thought so—yeah, me too.

So, Mark Woodrey who played host for this gathering expected about fifteen people. More than fifty showed up for a chance to look at dormant pitcher-plants and wade through wet pine savanna after Henslow’s Sparrows. It was a beautiful Candlemas day on which any groundhog, marmot, badger, or bear could have seen his shadow even with eyes half-shut, but don’t worry, no matter what the varmints say, winter now half-way over, and we’ll soon be complaining about the heat.

This overflow crowd has been the norm for my recent trips south. It’s great to see the large numbers of people on the Coast coming out to field trips and nature presentations. I’m predicting that the Coast will have record numbers in the Great Backyard Bird Count this year.

I have come to appreciate these nature-attuned people. They all carry an undercurrent of sadness for they still live under the shadow of Hurricane Katrina. Even in Hattiesburg we have a little of this shadow—an abandoned house, a tattered blue tarp, our broken and sparse hardwoods are all reminders of our own scars.

But on the Mississippi Coast I have driven the streets of towns that have been destroyed—erased, gone. I have found myself lost time and again in neighborhoods that I’ve known well for more than thirty years. On each trip I drift down highway 90 looking for landmarks that are just not there. These coastal natives have persevered for two and a half years, now, slowly learning to navigate new and dangerous waters of life after the Storm. It has taken a toll. You can see it when they get quiet and still. But it has also brought them a kindness and compassion you don’t find often. These people have pushed aside their Katrina blues to embrace Lin and me as if we areg-lost cousins.

My birding trips on the coast have been joyful times, full of laughter. These people are ready to laugh, ready to enjoy nature, and they’re ready to fight for it, once again, one more time, into the breech. Thanks guys.

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Since the first opinion piece appeared in the Mississippi Press, the Richton Salt Dome proposal has started to attract attention from many quarters. I think the concept of diverting fifty MILLION gallons of water per day sort of makes you sit up and take notice. I’m sure that Atlanta could find something to do that water. The Sun Herald has had daily articles. The Hattiesburg American and Clarion Ledger have both picked up the pace of coverage. Red Orbit.com has been reprinting the Sun Herald stories. I hope that this coverage continues.

This new attention to the story has already brought out some interesting facts: If you’re feeling puzzled because you don’t remember the announcement of the environmental impact study, it may be because it was announced on the Thursday after Katrina hit. And, what about the public hearings for the the study? Did you just miss that announcement in the paper, like I did? Or maybe it was because that since our meeting places were damaged by Katrina the Pascagoula and Hattiesburg meetings were held in Jackson! But don’t feel bad—they didn’t bother telling the Jackson County board of supervisors, either. I don’t know if the Forrest County supervisors have heard anything to this day. Doesn’t this sound like the old days of dragline and dam it politics by the Corps of Engineers.

Friend, fellow Birding Committee member, and part time resident on the lower Pascagoula, Grayson Rayborn has some interesting takes on the issue which he shared in a recent email:

The recent Hattiesburg American article left some questions unanswered. As I remember it quote someone as saying the diversion of water only amounted to about 1/24 th of the Pascagoula average flow. I went to a web site and calculate using current flow numbers a diversion at fifty million per day of more than seven per cent of the flow at Merrill (the start of the Pascagoula where the Leaf and Chickasawhay join). Although 7% doesn’t seem like much it would seem to be enough to make fairly significant changes in the River. What happens if the drought worsens? The wetlands could be put at risk and the fifty million gallons a day could then be crucial. That’s a lot of water. WLOX news recently suggested that fifty thousand cars a day (as I remember their number) traveled US 90 in Biloxi. Each vehicle on that busy highway would need to tow a trailer carrying nineteen 55 gallon drums behind it to equal the flow that is proposed for diversion. And why was the idea of diverting the water from the Pascagoula instead of the Leaf considered such an advance? The Leaf, with the Chicasawhay, becomes the Pascagoula so the diversion would affect the lower watershed much the same whether it was taken from the Leaf or the Pascagoula. The only difference is that it would upset residents living near the salt dome less if it is taken from farther away.

This is not the first time that the Richton Salt Dome has been shopped around. In the early 80’s the dome was seriously considered as a nuclear waste repository. Back then a grass-roots group formed to oppose the project, the Perry County Citizens Against Nuclear Disposal, or PC-CAND. At the time oil or gas storage seemed to be a great alternative to nuclear waste. Now here we are, facing the reality of just how dirty this process can be. It seems that a salt dome untapped is just like a river un-dammed: Some people just can’t let either one be. One more cheerful note, back there in the last millennium, one of the selling points of the Richton Salt Dome’s development was the existence of another similar dome close by, the Cypress Creek Dome.

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My Thanksgiving column in the Hattiesburg American was about South Mississippi’s natural treasure, the Pascagoula River system. As everyone who knows me is of hearing, the Pascagoula is the largest, unimpeded (or nearly so) river system in North America. It is a place of wonder and history and of legend. We have this remarkable piece of wild river only because of the foresight and tenacity of a small group of people who in the early seventies were dedicated enough, smart enough, and stubborn enough to transform the shared dream of an old swamp rat and a privileged young hippy into reality. This story was masterfully told in Don Shueler’s Preserving the Pascagoula. If you haven’t read this book, do so. If you haven’t read it in a few years, do so again. Preserving the Pascagoula and Shueler’s masterful Handmade Wilderness are the very best of Mississippi conservation writing.Among the lessons this book delivers is a realistic view of the constant threat that our remaining scraps of nature face and will continue to face. In the mid-seventies Herman Murrah, Graham Wisner, Dave Morine, Avery Wood, and Bill Quisenberry literally saved the Pascagoula from being clear cut and divided into hundreds of small parcels.Ten years later the river system was under attack again, this time from dioxin leaching from the Leaf River pulp mill in Beaumont. This time the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality and residents along the River joined the battle that led to a change in the company’s bleaching process. The river’s aquatic life slowly recovered.The nineties found many of us local conservationists opposing the building of a large dam here in Hattiesburg. During this fight between economic development and conservation we found that we had allies across the state and beyond. The lasting result of the struggle was a coalition of public and private groups that still studies, promotes, and watches over the river.Now, in a new century the river is in danger again. The Richton Salt Dome has been approved as a new oil reserve repository. This will entail hollowing out a huge cavern in the salt dome deep beneath the surface by forcing water into it. A lot of water—fifty million gallons of water per day for five years! And where will they get this water? Correct—from the Pascagoula River. And there is more bad news. After the water is injected into dome it will be piped across Perry, George, and Jackson Counties and across the Mississippi Sound, out past Horn Island to be dumped into the Pascagoula ship channel. This water will be up to 600 times the natural salinity of the Gulf and will kill every marine organism in its path. And this is what will happen if everything goes right—if there are no droughts, no pipeline breaks, no ship collisions.Get ready, people. It’s time to save the Pascagoula. Again.

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It’s been more than a week since we got back from our fall birding trip to Dauphin Island. The island is my very favorite birding place in the world. It has the laid-back rhythm of an earlier time. It is steeped in history and legend. In spite of steady incursion of coastal development, it still is a place of great natural beauty, and it’s a place where we can meet old friends from near and far. But this fall it was just not a place to find birds. Strange weather patterns, faltering fronts, and maybe a good dose of hoodoo kept the spectacular flights of migrating passerines from keeping their appointment with the Pine Woods Audubon birders.Lin and I arrived early Friday and quickly realized that there were very few birds around. We walked through the famous Shell Mound Park seeing only resident Mockingbirds and Carolina Wrens. Suddenly there was a flash of color and we saw in quick succession a female American Redstart, a Black-and-white warbler, and a Yellow-throated Vireo. This is it, I thought, the start of a good day on the Island.I thought wrong. The day turned hot and practically birdless. We shook things up by heading down to the west end of the Island where inlets cut by Katrina still attract shorebirds. We had better luck there, including two large plovers that I felt sure were of two different species—American Golden Plover, a rarity at this time and habitat, and Black-bellied Plover, the default big plover for the island. The wind changed late that afternoon, but the birds did not come.That night at supper I announced confidently, “Birds tomorrow—waves of them.”Saturday was a lovely island day with sunshine, mild temperatures, and no birds. In fact we found the very same birds in the same places that we had found them on Friday. Things were so slow that we took naps in the afternoon. But I was still working on the two plovers. Lin and I kept going back, looking for clues to their identities, and each time we went back to that inlet we saw a few more species of shore birds. We also found the odd Osprey, or Reddish Egret, and even a nice male Peregrine, but this was without a doubt the worst birding on the Island I have ever seen during migration.That night at our compilation I predicted that our group total would be only 55 species. I was shocked when we tallied 95 species, not a bad fall number at all. We didn’t see what we expected to see, buntings and vireos and warblers dripping from the trees. The very fact that these birds were absent pushed us to find the hidden, hard birds that may go unnoticed and uncounted when waves of migrants are present.Sunday the group added five more species for a very respectable total of 100. Lin and I rode the early ferry over to Fort Morgan to see Bob and Martha Sargent and their merry band of banders. They were just starting their fall banding session, and things were as slow on that side of the bay as they were on the Island. This kind of start could depress the most chipper brownie scout, but the Hummer-Bird Study guys were their usual good-natured selves. No matter how good or bad today is Bob expects a better tomorrow.Lin and I traveled on to Gulf Shores then up Alabama 59 to Interstate 10 on our way to visit our friends Barry and Georgia. This is not the shortest, nor even the most scenic route to Mobile, but it takes you through the granddaddy of all Alabama fruit stands, the Burris Farm Market in Loxley. As I sat eating a grand Burris strawberry shortcake smothered with soft-serve, I thought back to our hard weekend of birding. We had a great time visiting with other birders and we certainly had plenty of time to visit. Every bird was hard, but each bird was appreciated. And they all led to that fantastic shortcake. At the time, I couldn’t think of a better way to spend an October weekend.I still can’t.Airport Marsh, Dauphin Island (L. Harper, Photographer)

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