Located on both the Central and Mississippi Flyways, Louisiana's Outback plays a vital role in the lives of 300 bird species. Some of these winged wonders live here year-round, an ever-present flash and flurry of color in motion.

Still others come in the fall. Seeking refuge from the blustering northern winds, they swoop down in magnificent flock formations that stretch as far as the eye can see. As many as half of all land birds that breed in eastern North America pass through Louisiana twice each year.

Louisiana's Outback also benefits from the little understood phenomenon of western birds migrating east in the winter. Several sites along the Creole Nature Trail rank among the best birding locations in the country.

Cattle egrets, roseate spoonbills, neotropic cormorants; anhingas; great blue, tricolored, and little blue herons; great and snowy egrets; black-crowned and yellow-crowned night herons; white and white-faced ibises; king rails; American coots; common moorhens; purple gallinules; and black-necked stilts.

• Sabine National Wildlife Refuge, the largest waterfowl sanctuary on the Gulf Coast
• Rockefeller State Wildlife Refuge and Game Preserve, near Grand Chenier
• Cameron Prairie National Wildlife Refuge on LA 27 south of Holmwood
• Peveto Woods Bird & Butterfly Sanctuary eight miles west of Holly Beach
• Rutherford Beach southwest of Creole off LA 82/27-has hosted many of the rare gulls recorded in the state
• Jetties south of the town of Cameron where at low tide exposed tidal flats, salt marsh and rocks attract thousands of resting seabirds.