The Laccasine Pool is one part of the Laccasine National Wildlife Refuge in Cameron Parish, southwest Louisiana. It is a freshwater wetland prepared for auto touring with an elevated gravel road around 16,000 acres of marsh.

And it is best to stay in your car! On the day in June 2024 I visited, two rather large ‘gators got into a fight maybe 40 yards from me driving by. What a commotion! It didn’t last long and I don’t think any serious damage was done, but it sure stirred up the birds!

For me, of course, birds were the primary reason to be there, and to drive slowly, window open, camera at the ready. I saw a Little Blue Heron (Egretta caerulea), a pair of Boat-tailed Grackles (Quiscalus major), Moorhens (Gallinula sp.), a pair of Yellow-crowned Night Herons (Nyctanassa violacea) and more.

But the special surprise was the White-faced Ibis (Plegadis chihi) that I did not see until it lifted off the marsh to fly away. My first shot is blurry, but by the second frame, I had the bird in focus, and in the third frame captured a downbeat blazing in the bright sun with this bird’s awesome feathers of many colors.

Here’s the thing. Most of the time in most kinds of light, these colors would not be there. Literally. Because the colors are not “in” the feathers, per se. The colors are in how the feathers reflect light. It’s an example of “iridescence,” which has to do with the structure of the feathers more than pigment. Depending on what kind of light strikes at what angle, different colors can be produced. I am truly fortunate to have captured this because one does not get such a good look at it very often.

A word about photography: This photograph is kind of hard to look at. It’s not going to win any awards! The background of brown, tangled marsh grass is distracting. The bird was too close to the grass for good separation and I was using the largest depth of field possible to enhance the possibility of getting birds–especially a moving bird like this–in the sharply focused zone. Of course, with Photoshop, I could remove the background and put something else in its place, but… I don’t do that. This is where the bird lives. Marshes are messy.

BTW, for you language nerds, “Laccasine” comes from Cajun French “la cassine,” meaning “the little house.” Tradition has it that a local Indian chief once had such a house somewhere in these parts.

#YearInReview