Southeastern USA - April 2024 - Logistics and Itinerary

 

Logistics

• A five day trip with Bradders in the third week of April, leaving on Thursday afternoon, returning overnight on the following Tuesday evening. Straight back to work? You betcha. 
• Flights: British Airways from Heathrow to New Orleans via Dallas, booked with a car to turn it into a holiday and thus defer payment until a few weeks before departure, as well as scoop up extra points. The return was from Nashville via New York. Bradders travelled with me on the return, but added on a couple days in Texas before I arrived, driving across to Louisiana and meeting me off my flight.
• Car: We had a car wholly unsuited to birding but highly suited to America, a Dodge Challenger with a 5.7L engine. Embarrassing on one level, ridiculous on all levels, but great fun. I don't even like cars but oh the sound this thing made....
• Accomodation: As we were on rather a mission and had a long way to travel we booked all of our hotels in advance, the key criteria being that each was very close to the following morning's birding destination. It didn't really matter what time we got there, merely that we did and were ready for the next day. Budget motel chains all the way.
• My aims for the trip were threefold. 1) to visit seven States I'd never been to before, eBirding all the way, 2) to enjoy some spring songbird migration and hopefully coincide with a 'fall', 3) to add a handful of ABA ticks.
• Literature/Resources: We used eBird for up-front planning, identifying all of the best sites. We also used it a bit for on-the fly birding using the "explore" functionality in the App. For literature I used the Sibley East Coast field guide. I also used Merlin, perhaps too much towards the end when desperation set in. The Audubon App was used when I wasn't carrying my book, and was also useful for calls and songs.
• Food - well there is a lot of it in America, and we ate very well. Apart from lunches which were just garbage.

Itinerary

• Day 0 - Evening arrival into New Orleans, met Bradders at the airport and picked up our silly car. Drove about an hour south-west so as to be in position for Grand Isle the following morning.
• Day 1 - Birding Grand Isle until early afternoon, we coincided with their annual birding festival. Then back to New Orleans and across the State line into Mississippi, birding all the way as we built up that list. We arrived at our accomodation just south of Mobile AL by about 10pm.
• Day 2 - All morning at Dauphin Island, a migrant hotspot on the coast below Mobile, then up to Splinter Hill Bog for Bachmann's Sparrow mid-afternoon. Torrential rain cut our birding short here, and we drove through a front that seemed to cut the temperature in half. I wonder what this would have done on the coast? Overnight in Columbus MS.
• Day 3 - Birded a wonderful unpaved road for Warblers early morning, before spending up until midday at Noxubee. Mid afternoon at Ensley Bottoms just into Tenessee below Memphis, and a final stop at Wapanocca in Arkansas before a short drive south-west to Searcy.
• Day 4 - Early start at Bald Knob NWR, all morning spent here seeing tons of birds. Then a lengthy drive north-east across into Missouri to bird Otter Slough and finally Mingo Swamp. Overnight at Paducah, just over the border into Illinois.
• Day 5 - A day of many States, starting in Illinois to try and get a bit of a list there, before moving a short distance south over the Ohio River into Kentucky. By 9am we were back on the road, headed south-east towards Nashville where we birded a site on the Cumberland river before heading to the airport for our flight to New York. Then overnight to London.