Date: 5/7/25 10:32 am From: Todd Ballinger <todd.ballinger...> Subject: Re: Big spring migration day at Lake Fayetteville
Thank you, Joe, for sharing some of the history of this place that has
become so special to so many of us.
On Tue, May 6, 2025 at 9:15 PM Joseph Neal <joeneal...> wrote:
> Out at Lake Fayetteville Park today I was totally overwhelmed by a storm
> of swallows – mainly Northern Rough-winged but also some Barn – filling the
> sky, and Middle Earth around the trees, and then down the rushing torrents
> below what we call “The Million Dollar Bridge” over the spillway at
> Veterans Park area of Lake Fayetteville – a Canada Warbler migrant singing
> in the willows -- Spotted Sandpiper walking limestone slabs –
> Ran into Kenny Younger there. Told me that Jeremy Cohen had yesterday
> tallied an incredible 104 species during an almost 15-hour day with
> 12-miles of mostly walking. Link to Jeremy’s eBird list: *https://ebird.org/checklist/S233743644 > <https://ebird.org/checklist/S233743644>*.
> Standing with Kenny on Million Dollar Bridge … I’m taking in the news. I’m
> imagining how Jeremy’s long birding day. How he birded from “can to can’t”
> (as coal miners used to call their work days). Also uploading into my mind:
> my old friend Mike Mlodinow.
> He used to walk the whole lake. Not owning a car, he took the bus to NWA
> Mall, walked across Highway 71 to Lake Fayetteville. Carrying his spotting
> scope, too, he was once stopped by Fayetteville police who had been called
> by someone who thought he was a terrorist carrying a machine gun! Recounted
> here in a film about Mike: *https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcl7zw5xujE > <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcl7zw5xujE>*.
> Mike did the big circle around the lake. Habitat by habitat, Yellow
> Warbler by Yellow Warbler. During Empidonax season, Least Flycatcher by
> Alder Flycatcher by Yellow-bellied Flycatcher. There must be some special
> category for someone doing it all no matter what.
> Thinking about Jeremy’s 104 also got me on to Dr H. David Chapman, who
> once lived only 2-blocks from the lake. Birded it regularly enough he
> eventually produced a book, “The Bird Life of Lake Fayetteville, with a
> list of plants, mammals and reptiles.” He certainly covered the habitats.
> He also was interested in how the place became a lake at all. That’s
> covered in an article he wrote and published in Washington County
> Historical’s Society’s Flashback: “The History of Lake Fayetteville” (2011,
> Volume 61, Number 3).
> Part of what is now lake was prior to 1900 Tallgrass Prairie. Must have
> been Greater Prairie-Chickens where now we find our Empidonaxes!
> So far as I know most recent claimant to the 100 species honor at Lake
> Fayetteville is my friend and former regular birding buddy, now Dr Vivek
> Govind Kumar, who on May 3, 2020, along with Todd Ballinger (for part of
> that day) achieved 101. Here is that eBird submission: *https://ebird.org/checklist/S68347732 > <https://ebird.org/checklist/S68347732>*.
> eBird is full of records submitted by Doug James and Bill Beall in the
> early 1950s. The lake had mudflats and shorebirds. What is now forest was
> then farm.
> It’s fun to compare. The vast sweep of time. To know the park is right
> down the road. All of us birders just waiting for that next rainy spring
> day with a cold front.
>
>
>
--
Todd Ballinger, MA, NBCT
English 11/AP English Language and Composition
Fayetteville High School
