I’ve been fascinated by the many birds that visit my yard, but it’s hard to figure out what species they are. Flipping through a birding book isn’t too helpful. Is there another source for Arkansas birds ?
A family project is in the works that could prove helpful in identifying some of the birds you see. Cody Butler, an eighthgrader at England Junior High School, and his grandfather, Jerry Butler of Hot Springs, are working together to produce a picture album of birds seen at Toltec Mounds Archeological State Park in southern Lonoke County. Both Butlers have taken photographs of birds in and around the park during the last two years.
The photos, a record of the natural history for the area, will be placed on a CD that will be donated to the park for its instructional program.
The grandfather / grandson team will also develop a checklist of bird species seen at the park. They will merge their observations with reports of birds seen by serious bird-watchers who have visited the area and reported their findings on eBird (www. ebird. org ), an Internet site that provides a database for ornithologists to study bird population and distribution.
Fifty species of birds have already been photographed in the park, including such rarities as a bald eagle, an American bittern, a pair of hooded mergansers and bobolinks. Photographs of bird nests taken in the park will also be included.
Although most of the photos have been taken within the park borders, some were taken on Mound Pond, an ancient oxbow lake that forms the northwestern border of the park. A few bird pictures were taken at Indian Bayou, which flows out of Mound Pond toward the Arkansas River.
One version of the CD will be put into a PowerPoint format so brief comments on each bird and the sound of its song can be added to an audio track.
Part of the bird photo album will highlight the changes among the common species of birds found today and those that were present when ancestors of American Indians, who occupied the area from 700 to 950 A. D., were building the area’s mounds. Species of birds important to the Indians but no longer found in the shadow of the mounds are the wild turkey, the passenger pigeon and the ivory-billed woodpecker. Redheaded woodpeckers, bobwhites and bobolinks were abundant then but are scarce now. Four species of birds seen in the park now were not even on this continent when the mound builders were here — the English sparrow, the European starling, the Eurasian dove, and cattle egrets.
The most populous bird in Toltec park, according to the Butlers’ count, is the red-winged blackbird. Bird scientists have suggested that before Columbus, the most numerous birds in the Southeastern United States were Carolina parakeets or the American passenger pigeons; both are now extinct.
“The Butlers’ CD will be a welcome addition to our interpretive program, and the photos they take may be used in the park’s promotions, publications and Web site,” said Stewart Carlton, the park’s recently appointed superintendent.
Cody Butler, who lives on Toltec Mound Road, first became interested in the park by attending its summer youth camps. Through this project, he has added bird-watching to his list of other outdoor hobbies of fishing, hunting, camping and geotrekking. Jerry Butler is retired from teaching at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
The project should be completed by the end of the summer. It will be available for use by school groups that make field trips to see the Toltec mounds and walk the lakeside boardwalk where they are likely to see many of the birds depicted on the CD. For more information e-mail Jerry Butler at grandoc@cablelynx. com.
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