Community

Bullbats

KEDM Public Radio | By Kelby Ouchley

Published October 24, 2016 at 9:00 AM EDT

The award for the Louisiana bird with the most misleading name should be conferred on the common nighthawk, also known as the bullbat. No part of these monikers is accurate. In the first place, they are not common anymore as long-term surveys show their populations in the United States have declined 61 percent between 1966 and 2014.

Tags

Kelby Ouchley

Kelby was a biologist and manager of National Wildlife Refuges for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for more than 30 years. He has worked with alligators in gulf coast marshes and Canada geese on Hudson Bay tundra. His most recent project was working with his brother Keith of the Louisiana Nature Conservancy on the largest floodplain restoration project in the Mississippi River Basin at the Mollicy Unit of the Upper Ouachita National Wildlife Refuge, reconnecting twenty-five square miles of former floodplain forest back to the Ouachita River.

See stories by Kelby Ouchley