War Eagle River float leads to bonanza of birds

After all the rain and all the flooding, there was blinking on my answering machine that truly gladdens a sodden heart.

It was Flip Putthoff with a proposal to slow-float the War Eagle River near Withrow Springs State Park. Slow-float means "paddling optional," which leaves plenty of time for bird watching. Our plan was to drift down a lazy 4.5-mile stretch of the War Eagle, enjoy the change of spring to summer and see what we could see in the way of birds.

Birding War Eagle

Here’s a partial list of birds seen on the 4.5-mile float trip:

Wood duck (2), great blue heron (3), green heron (1), great horned owl (1 fledgling perched on a high bluff), belted kingfisher (3).

Acadian flycatcher (4), yellow-throated vireo (2), cliff swallow (500, nest sites under two bridges and under two natural bluffs), northern parula (4), yellow-throated warbler (4), prothonotary warbler (2), Louisiana waterthrush (5), Kentucky warbler (2), common yellowthroat (1).

Information: Withrow Springs State Park, 479-559-2593.

— Staff report

So that's why it's 6 a.m., last Thursday, June 11, and I'm at Withrow Springs State Park, five miles north of Huntsville. I'm at our designated meeting place, an access where Arkansas 23 crosses the War Eagle on the southern edge of the park.

Flip pulls into the gravel lot with his black Buffalo canoe strapped to his truck's roof rack. It's just a few miles shuttle upriver to a put-in at the old the Highway 68 bridge. The concrete arch-style bridge is within sight, but downstream of the U.S. 412 bridge. There's a gravel lane to the access on the left as you pass Ma and Pa's Discount Gas.

Before we put in, Flip believes in picking up the litter of beer cans and snack food wrappers. It's a tradition before every float trip. In 10 minutes the access is spic 'n span.

Later on the river, we pause to remove from bushes some nylon fishing line that could easily wing-wrap and kill a great blue heron.

In three spots we portage around fallen sycamores blocking the channel. The river level is perfect for canoeing. We pass bluffs tall as 200 feet. Wet-weather springs drip curtains of water framed by wildflowers. While all this is going down, I'm birding.

In a shady pool, Flip spots a big snake in the water with an interesting pattern, kind of yellowish with some brownish and thin dark bands. It's swimming with its head and part of its heavy body out of the water. Paddler-in-chief isn't in a rush to move closer. Cottonmouth, he says.

But I see a yellow throat and call it a water snake, nonpoisonous and harmless. I get a clearer look with binoculars. I see deep facial pits and vertical eye pupils. Welcome to the world of the western cottonmouth. It peacefully goes about its business. We go about ours.

At two bluffs along the float we encounter hundreds of cliff swallows. We see nests and remnants of nests. Cliff swallows build globular mud nests shaped like jugs, one mouthful of mud at a time, under rock overhangs. In the old days, this was the only room at the inn. Now, they build under highway bridges, too.

Floods have washed away jugs under the ledges. But this is a new day and the river has gone down. As of today, foundations for new nests have been attached. Some are nearly finished. That's a lot of mud to move, and on the wing, too.

As Flip and I float by, cliff swallows energetically rebuild the future.

Joe Neal of Fayetteville is a field trip leader for the Northwest Arkansas Audubon Society and the author of several books on birds and birding. Contact him at [email protected]. Flip Putthoff is outdoors reporter for the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Contact him at fputthoff@nwadg or on Twitter @NWAFlip.

Sports on 06/18/2015

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