2008 Spring Bird Walk Reports
What a great spring!! Great birds, great birders and lots of guided bird walks made this spring exceptional.
In early 2008 Houston Audubon began a partnership with Tropical Birding, a tour company that purchased a house across the street from Boy Scout Woods. Their plan was to create a birding information center and a 40-foot birding tower in hopes of getting beginning birders really excited about birding. Our goal is for birders to have a great birding experience visiting the Houston Audubon sanctuaries. It was a perfect partnership.
Blackburnian Warbler at High Island, spring 2008 © David McDonald
The plan was to have 6 free sanctuary bird walks with Tropical Birding guides every day from March 22 to May 4. There would be 5 walks in the High Island sanctuaries and one at Bolivar Flats. Daily website reports would also be made about what was being seen. The plan worked!!!
Young enthusiastic guides from around the world found all kinds of birds in the woods. Their persistence and energy made every bird walk worthwhile. On April 11th, 102 species were seen during the afternoon bird walk at Boy Scout Woods, with highlights of a Peregrine flyover, nest building Purple Gallinules and 20+ species of warblers.
I don't know that I have ever heard of that many species being found in Boy Scout Woods. The guides reminded those of us who have been birding at High Island for years just how special it is.
The walks at Bolivar Flats chronicled shorebird migration on the beach and in the fields along Hwy. 87. Participants were pleased to have help learning how to sort out terns, gulls and shorebirds in and out of breeding plumage. The guides not only helped identify the regular birds on the beach but found some rare and unusual species. The rarest was a probable Elegant Tern. It might have been a Cayenne Tern – even good photos weren't conclusive.
The website reports, posted on Texbirds, the HAS website and Tropical Birding's Birding High Island website were exceptional and kept the birding world up to date on what was happening on the Upper Texas Coast. We found out that Sam Woods was a master at prose.
Fortunately our partnership with Tropical Birding will continue. Next spring there will once again be lots of free bird walks and great birding.
Special thanks to our birdwalk guides: Moez Ali, Nick Athanas, Keith Barnes, Ken Behrens, Erin Brandt, Jen Brumfield, Iain Campbell, Cristina Cervantes, Jose Illanes, Scott Olmstead, Michael Retter, Benji Schwartz, and Sam Woods.
