Mammoth Pursues Spring Migration, Day 5

Sun Apr 14
Heading to Reelfoot Lake at last!

So on we drove, up through the the flat river plains of Arkansas and southeast Missouri.  We got to watch the precious alluvial topsoil blowing away in a strong wind from the southwest.  Then we crossed the Mississippi river on I-155 and headed north on little roads where the wind, at our tail, wasn't a problem.

Crossing the Mississippi

 

I figured this place, where I always wanted to go but don't think Dad ever took us there, would be a perfect place to see the best of spring migration but not have to go too far from home. And it was, sort of--there were yellow-rumped warblers migrating all over the freaking place. For a while it seemed like ever single bird I picked out of the trees was yet another yellow-rumped warbler. After a while I learned to ignore them--if it was staying fairly low, moving kind of slow, and easy to see...it was just another butterbutt. Skip it!

Reelfoot Lake was formed in northwestern Tennessee when the region subsided during the 1811–12 New Madrid earthquakes, which were centered around New Madrid, Missouri.
A land survey begun by Henry Rutherford in 1785 identified the existent waterway as the Reelfoot River. The now extinct river flowed into the Mississippi River prior to the earthquakes of 1811 and 1812.[3] Jedidiah Morse, in 1797, described the river as 30 yards wide, 7 miles from the mouth.[4] Eliza Bryan, an eyewitness to the earthquakes, wrote in 1816 from Missouri Territory that an enormous lake had grown on the other side of the Mississippi River...

It was an exaggeration, but still, there was the lake where little or no lake existed before.

I can't find a good article explaining it, but after the massive decline of eagles and osprey due to DDT concentrating in their food chain, in the late 1970's eagles were reintroduced into the lake area. It was a big deal at the time--my dad was the one who told me about it, and he was fairly excited.

There is an interesting article here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/opinion/the-eagles-of-reelfoot-lake.html
but it doesn't mention the repopulation project.
 
Anyway, back to camp. Molly and I took a nice walk, looking for the trail which we couldn't find and watching stupid butterbutts in the trees but also a pair of osprey gathering sticks to add to their enormous nest out in the lake.  We don't think they had chicks yet, but Ed did see one take food to the other.

What a lovely place!