Bluebonnet Swamp Nature Center is a 103-acre nature conservation park administered by the Recreation and Park Commission for the Parish of East Baton Rouge (also known as "BREC"), and located at 10503 N. Oak Hills Parkway,

Baton Rouge, Louisiana Baton Rouge ( ; ) is a city in and the capital of the U.S. state of Louisiana. Located the eastern bank of the Mississippi River, it is the parish seat of East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana's most populous parish—the equivalent of counties i ...

70810. It is open to the public Tuesday - Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. (except for some holidays) for a nominal fee. The facility was opened as BREC's first nature conservation based park on 17 May 1997.

Facilities, programs, and nature preserve

The main exhibit building is a 9500-square-foot structure containing both live animal exhibits and photographic displays of the park's flora and fauna, as well as ecology and art exhibits. It houses the largest public display of vintage Louisiana duck decoys, donated by the late Charles W. Frank, Jr. The education building (newly renovated in 2014) was added to the facility to serve as a separate space for educational programs. There are programs and special events that run throughout the year, including monthly bird walks and bird talks, and periodic pet days, toddler sessions, day camps, art shows, and night hikes. Special events include the gem and mineral themed "Rockin' at the Swamp" every March, the antique waterfowl decoy themed "Duck Duck Goose Day" every August, and the child-friendly Halloween themed "Swamp Haunted Hikes" every October. Gravel trails and

boardwalk A boardwalk (alternatively board walk, boarded path, or promenade) is an elevated footpath, walkway, or causeway built with wooden planks that enables pedestrians to cross wet, fragile, or marshy land. They are also in effect a low type of bridge ...

s run through over a mile of baldcypress-

tupelo Tupelo , genus ''Nyssa'' , is a small genus of deciduous trees with alternate, simple leaves. It is sometimes included in the subfamily Nyssoideae of the dogwood family, Cornaceae, but is placed by other authorities in the family Nyssaceae. In ...

swamp,

beech Beech (''Fagus'') is a genus of deciduous trees in the family Fagaceae, native to temperate Europe, Asia, and North America. Recent classifications recognize 10 to 13 species in two distinct subgenera, ''Engleriana'' and ''Fagus''. The ''Engle ...

magnolia ''Magnolia'' is a large genus of about 210 to 340The number of species in the genus ''Magnolia'' depends on the taxonomic view that one takes up. Recent molecular and morphological research shows that former genera ''Talauma'', ''Dugandiodendro ...

and

hardwood Hardwood is wood from dicot trees. These are usually found in broad-leaved temperate and tropical forests. In temperate and boreal latitudes they are mostly deciduous, but in tropics and subtropics mostly evergreen. Hardwood (which comes from ...

forests. Birds, squirrels, turtles, snakes, insects, and spiders are regularly seen inhabitants along with other common urban wildlife such as raccoons, armadillos, opossums, and swamp cottontails. Also known to visit the site are foxes, coyotes, deer, and otters.

Research activities

Bluebonnet Swamp Nature Center was the premiere research station for the Louisiana Bird Observatory (formerly known as the Bluebonnet Bird Monitoring Project). This project is designed to study year-round population trends and

moulting In biology, moulting (British English), or molting (American English), also known as sloughing, shedding, or in many invertebrates, ecdysis, is the manner in which an animal routinely casts off a part of its body (often, but not always, an outer ...

patterns in southern bird populations. This project has conducted

bird banding Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweig ...

programs since March 2010. Since then, a protocol has been drafted based on recommendations from the North American Banding Council, the Handbook of Bird Monitoring Techniques and the Klamath Demographic Network. The publications produced from this project include an examination of

indigo bunting The indigo bunting (''Passerina cyanea'') is a small seed-eating bird in the cardinal family, Cardinalidae. It is migratory, ranging from southern Canada to northern Florida during the breeding season, and from southern Florida to northern Sout ...

moulting patterns and

Barred Owl The barred owl (''Strix varia''), also known as the northern barred owl, striped owl or, more informally, hoot owl, is a North American large species of owl. A member of the true owl family, Strigidae, they belong to the genus '' Strix'', whic ...

foraging behavior. Thousands of birds have been banded largely by

LSU Louisiana State University (officially Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, commonly referred to as LSU) is a public land-grant research university in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The university was founded in 1860 near ...

undergraduate and graduate students, as parts of research projects.

Associated publications

Academic publications based on research conducted at Bluebonnet: * Kahn, P. H. and S. R. Kellert. 2002
Children and Nature: Psychological, Sociocultural, and Evolutionary Investigations
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. * Louv, R. 2005
Last child in the woods: saving our children from nature deficit disorder
Algonquin Books, Chapel Hill, North Carolina. * Froehlich, D. and E. Sprong. 2009
Teens band: inspiring teen bird banders as ambassadors for bird conservation
Pages 471–478 in The Proceedings of the Fourth International Partners in Flight Conference: Tundra to Tropics * Saracco, J. F., D. F. DeSante and D. R. Kaschube. 2008
Assessing landbird monitoring programs and demographic causes of population trends
Journal of Wildlife Management. 72:1665–1673. * Wolfe, J. D. and C. J. Ralph. 2009
Effects of the El Niño Southern Oscillation on nearctic-neotropical migrant condition in Central America
The Auk. 126:809–814. * Ralph, C. J. 2001. The North American Bander's Study Guide. The North American Bander's Council, Point Reyes Station, California, USA. * Ralph, C. J., G. R. Geupel, P. Pyle, T. E. Martin, and D. F DeSante. 1993
Handbook of field methods for monitoring landbirds
General Technical Report PSW-GTR-144. Pacific Southwest Research Station, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture. * Ralph, C. J., K. R. Hollinger and R. I. Frey. 2004
Redwood Sciences Laboratory and the Klamath Demographic Monitoring Network mist-netting station management procedures
U.S. Forest Service, Redwood Sciences Laboratory, Arcata, California.

Facilities, programs, and nature preserve

Research activities

Associated publications

References

See also