We are ready to move into the marshes near Lafitte, Louisiana and sadly into Barataria Bay an area losing land as fast as any place in Louisiana.  Right now we are on the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain. Lake Pontchartrain is Louisiana’s largest lake covering 625 square miles. The Lake Pontchartrain Basin has the complete list of coastal habitats CC describes in his Gulf Coast Book.  The fringe, marsh, bays, islands and Gulf.  The rivers in St. Tammany Parish are lined with bald cypress swamp, the marsh fills the area north of Chandeleur Sound, which is like a bay, and the Chandeleur islands are the barriers before the Gulf.  Piney woods north of Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River to the west are also in this Basin. The Pontchartrain Basin covers over 4,700 square miles of land. All the land in this basin drains into rivers, canals, and bayous which empty into Lake Pontchartrain and it’s connecting sister lakes, Maurepas and Borgne. The water in Lake Pontchartrain is brackish because it is connected to the Gulf of Mexico. A strait called the Rigolets and Chef Mentuer Pass allow water to flow between Lake Pontchartrain and the Gulf. This connection to salt waters makes the lake an Estuarine System.

This was sad because it is our state bird.  The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and fisheries decided to do something about that problem.  They borrowed some birds from Florida and put them on a small but safe island near Grand Isle and watched them very closely.  Over the next 41 years they prospered.  And now we have them all over the Louisiana coast flying in formation looking for fish.

The reason they all died was because they were eating fish that had been eating smaller fish that had been eating aquatic plants that were poisoned with DDT, a very toxic pesticide that had gotten in the waters of Louisiana after it ran off farm fields and went into streams, then rivers, then into the coast.  The DDT did not kill the pelicans out right. DDT caused their eggshells to be thinned, so when the parents sat on the eggs to incubate them they broke.  With no new baby birds they soon all died.

We have banned DDT so now the Brown Pelican, the Osprey, and the Bald Eagle are laying good eggs and raising healthy baby birds.

I watched a Brown Pelican dive-bomb into the water to catch a fish to eat. This cool water bird has a lower beak that is a built in fish trap. The beak has hard edges with a pouch of loose skin that can stretch to hold over two gallons of water! The Brown Pelican can dive from 30 feet in the air, fill its beak with water, drain the water out, and swallow the fish whole. What a great fisherman this creature is! I hope I will be half as successful with the new fishing pole I asked Santa-dog to bring me!

Prowling around the Pontchartrain,

Your M.U.T.T. in the marsh signing off……..