In January 2017 I visited New Orleans, Louisiana, for a couple of days with my partner, Kim. The images in the first video slideshow below are not my normal nature phtography but give some sense of the city. Included are images of street musicians and artists, local architecture, and shops with items representing the culture of the city. We took a cruise on the paddlewheel steamboat Natchez that gives an idea of the commerce on the Mississippi River and the steamboat itself. The last group of images is from Whitney Plantation, a newly established museum about an hour outside the city intended to give an idea of what slavery was like. It includes small statues of enslaved childeren, several granite walls of memory with the names of enslaved individuals and statements from them, worker dwellings and the main house.

In New Orleans itself between St. Charles Avenue near Tulane and Loyala Universities and the Zoo lies Audubon Park. A large lagoon in Audubon Park is home to many wild birds. When I was there the lagoon was filled with hundreds of Black-bellied Whistling Ducks. The Black-belled Whistling Duck, Dendrocygna autumnalis, breeds from the southern United States to south central South America. It occurs in quiet, shallow freshwater ponds and estuarine wetlands and marshes. It nests mainly in tree cavities but may also nest on the ground. Below is an intmate video slideshow of what I observed at Audubon Park. The images also include shots of two Double-crested Cormorants and several White Ibises.