Field Guides Birding Tours

TEXAS COAST MIGRATION SPECTACLE

The migration mecca of High Island plus specialties of the Big Thicket and myriad waterbirds and shorebirds.
2008
I. April 12-18 with John Coons
II. April 19-25 with John Coons

$1550 (2007 fee). 7 days
From Houston. Limit: 8
Good, simple accommodations, easy terrain, warm climate. Our staff travel agents can book your air travel for this tour. Contact us at (800) 728-4953 for more information. First tour in 2007 may be combined with BIG BEND, THE DAVIS MOUNTAINS & HILL COUNTRY.

See our triplist for 2008 (first tour) or 2007 (second tour) or 2007 (first tour) or 2006.

Tricolored Heron
Tricolored Heron, one of numerous Texas Coast breeders, by guide John Coons
Springtime on the Texas coast is Texas at its best.  Virtually all the migratory species of eastern and central North America pour northward from Mexico and Central and South America in dazzling numbers.  Each evening a flight of warblers, vireos, buntings, grosbeaks, and orioles launches from the southern rim of the Gulf of Mexico and strikes out northward over the dark waters.  Depending on the flying conditions they encounter, they arrive over the Texas coast at some time the following day.  If conditions have been favorable, most may continue well inland before landing; but if headwinds or rain add stressful conditions to the flight, thousands—sometimes tens of thousands—may drop into the very first vegetation they encounter behind the beach.  Under these infrequently encountered conditions, birding the isolated coastal groves can be truly mind-boggling.  But some migrants drop into these groves daily in any kind of weather.  Each afternoon newly arrived warblers and other migrants gradually increase to a peak before dark, ensuring a good mix, if not staggering numbers, of birds daily.

Although the focus of this short tour will be passerine migration, that’s not the only thing happening on the Texas coast in spring.  The famous Bolivar tidal flats, now protected as a shorebird preserve, combine with flooded ricefields to produce a list of up to thirty-five species of shorebirds, including such beauties as breeding-plumaged Hudsonian Godwits and Buff-breasted Sandpipers.  A recently accessible heron, egret, and Roseate Spoonbill rookery offers close views of the incredible breeding colors of these long-legged species.  A short distance inland lies the Big Thicket, where the southern pine specialties—Red-cockaded Woodpecker, Brown-headed Nuthatch, and Bachman’s Sparrow—as well as a host of southern warblers including the brilliant Prothonotary, Yellow-throated, and Swainson’s may be found.

And finally, the brackish and freshwater marshes that occupy much of the coastal plain are home to numerous interesting species, Fulvous Whistling-Duck, White, White-faced, and (rarely) Glossy ibises, King and Clapper rails, Purple Gallinule, Least Bittern, and Seaside Sparrow among them, and Sedge Wren, Nelson’s Sharp-tailed Sparrow, and American Bittern are winterers that should still be present in late April.

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