Birding Enthusiasts Gather to Celebrate Louisiana’s Yellow Rails
LSU Museum of Natural Science Co-sponsors 2015 Yellow Rails and Rice Festival, October 28-November 1.
Each fall bird enthusiasts, rice farmers, and photographers come together to celebrate something special: the sighting of Yellow Rails in Louisiana’s working wetlands. This year, bird aficionados from more than 27 states and Canada will gather in Jennings from October 28 – November 1 to watch these peaceful, yet elusive, birds flush from rice fields during the 2015 Yellow Rails and Rice Festival, or YRARF.
A Yellow Rail is a small marsh bird native to North America that is infrequently seen due to its secretive nature. During the fall, the bird travels from its northern breeding grounds to the southern U.S., including the rice-growing region of southwest Louisiana and southeast Texas, with many settling into rice fields. Yellow Rail sightings coincide with the year’s second rice harvest, a phenomenon that is fairly unique to this region, which takes place during mid-late fall after the Yellow Rails have arrived in Louisiana.
Festival participants will have an opportunity to see these prize birds as they are flushed from the rice fields by a combine harvesting rice. Access to the rice fields is called the Festival Field Pass, which includes a ride on the combine and a chance to search the fields on foot to look for rails and other birds.
George Lowery, celebrated ornithologist and founder of LSU’s Museum of Natural Science, began seeing Yellow Rails as early as the 1960s in the Baton Rouge area during the fall hay harvest. The species undoubtedly still occurs in that area, but observations ceased when new hay-cutting technology allowed completion of the hay harvest before, the Yellow Rails.
It wasn’t until museum collections managers Donna Dittmann and Steve Cardiff, who have been at LSU for over 30 years, witnessed Yellow Rails being flushed by a rice combine in 1988 that they realized that this was a reliable way of seeing this very sought-after species.
“Back in the 60s and 70s, the only other way to up your chances of seeing a Yellow Rail was to go into marshes on a “marsh-buggy” and hope one would pop up,” said Cardiff. After watching rice combines in the fields, Dittmann and Cardiff realized that this was a much easier strategy. That’s when they started contacting area rice farmers, and many years later the idea of accommodating large numbers of birders at an organized festival came to fruition.
The success of YRARF is heavily reliant on rice farmers and the weather. The collaboration between Dittmann and Cardiff and the farmers, especially Kevin and Shirley Berken, is what really makes this festival shine.
“We’re slowing the progress of their harvest by doing this,” said Dittmann.
Despite the growing popularity of the festival, Dittmann and Cardiff have a max limit of 125 participants. Keeping the numbers low ensures an efficient and smooth festival. However, Dittmann and Cardiff have introduced a number of additional workshops to accommodate the growing number of festivalgoers. One of these newer workshops is bird banding, which allows bird enthusiasts to get up close and personal with the birds. A few Yellow Rails have even been outfitted with radio transmitters to attempt to track their movements in the rice field areas, and in the future it is hoped that satellite telemetry can be tailored for a bird as small as the Yellow Rail. Then it will be possible to track their route back to the breeding grounds after they leave Louisiana and hopefully track the birds back to their wintering area.
With more people from across the nation coming to this year’s YRARF, Dittmann said that advertising has been very minimal.
“Our most popular form of advertising is word-of-mouth,” said Dittmann, “That along with people who return year after year.”
Over the course of seven years, 40 states have been represented at the YRARF.
“Bringing people into Louisiana is a benefit to the Louisiana economy, and happy participants go home and spread the word about Louisiana-grown rice and crawfish, the many recreational opportunities to be found here,” said Cardiff. The festival also allows visiting birders to interact with faculty, staff and graduate students from the LSU Museum of Natural Science, other LSU departments and other Louisiana and national institutions. The festival also provides researchers and other natural history professionals with an opportunity to exchange ideas.
The YRARF is sponsored by a number of organizations, including the USA Rice Federation, the LA Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, and Audubon Louisiana to name a few. The LSU AgCenter and the LSU Museum of Natural Science help out as well.
Dittmann and Cardiff have reflected on the previous festivals in preparation for the one this year. “My favorite part is when the first yellow rail pops out of the fields. Just seeing everyone’s faces is great,” said Cardiff.
For Dittmann, all of the effort that goes into making the YRARF a success is the most rewarding aspect. “My favorite part is when people thank me at the end,” she said.
There are still a few spots available for the bird banding workshop. Other festival activities include a Lacassine Bayou pontoon boat tour and field trips to Kisatchie National Forest and the Cameron Parish coast. For a complete list of festival events visit, the YRARF main website.
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