Poverty Point Reservoir State Park is, not surprisingly, right near Poverty Point Reservoir. The reservoir is a 2,700 acre man made lake that provides extensive recreational activity for the area, including fishing, boating, birding, and swimming. The west side has a marina, houses, and businesses. The south east is the state park and rental cabins. The east has houses, and the north is mostly empty.

After visiting the Poverty Point National Monument, we drove a little way up the Poverty Point Parkway that runs along the east side of the lake beside the rental cabins and a few small communities. Some of the houses have their own private peninsula.

Mostly, we saw birds that we had seen in other places. There were boat loads of American Coots. We saw adults feeding babies in Yellowstone, but here it was just adults diving for food.

In a small bay between two communities on the shore of the lake, we saw a pelican, great blue heron, and cormorant. The heron booted the cormorant off the stump. You can see the splash from the cormorant in the second photo.

After a short time, the heron flew back to the shoreline.

This might be a slightly better Northern Mockingbird picture than the national monument. This area is filthy with them, they are like pigeons in New York or seagulls at the beach. We should be able to get a very good picture, eventually.

The cormorant was not traumatized by the heron; he got back on his stump.

We did see a duck that looked like it was sick or deformed, but apparently, they are supposed to look like that. The red bumps on the face are carnucles. Not trying to get personal, but we think he was the source of the “Ugly Duckling” story.

The Muscovy Duck is the only commonly domesticated duck, aside from the Mallard. They originate from South/Central America. They are considered to be shelducks, which is a kind of intermediary between ducks and geese. They are actually a large perching waterfowl that hisses instead of quacks. You can see that he is almost as large as a Canada Goose.

We do think there might have been something wrong with him. He had a foamy substance on the edge of his eye and waddled oddly.