Scissor-tailed Flycatchers are spectacular and widespread along the Upper Texas Coast. Photo: Stéphane Moniotte
There may be no better birdwatching in North America than one encounters on the western shores of the Gulf of Mexico in spring. Between mid-March and mid-May, masses of waterbirds and passerines wing north from their wintering grounds and a significant percentage of them pass through this corridor. The waterbirds are a constant as large numbers of herons and spoonbills, shorebirds of 30 or more species and a profusion of gulls and terns fill the marshes.
Less predictable but perhaps even more spectacular are the countless thousands of migrant thrushes, vireos, warblers and buntings that reach the coast after completing their lengthy trans-Gulf of Mexico migration. If the weather is fair, most of these birds pass on and disperse among the more suitable forests in the interior but if they encounter rain or strong north winds before or as they reach the coast, large numbers may drop into the first isolated clumps of vegetation. The phenomenon constitutes one of the great visible migration spectacles in North America.
The migrants alone would draw birdwatchers to this area, but amazingly there’s more: nearby pine woods and cypress swamps are home to some of North America’s most sought-after breeding birds. Texas and Louisiana in April are simply full of birds.
This tour can be taken in conjunction with our tour Texas: The Edwards Plateau, Big Bend National Park and the Davis Mountains.
Day 1: The trip begins at 6:00 pm at our hotel near Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport. Night in Houston.
Day 2: We’ll spend the first part of the morning at Jones State Forest north of Houston. Here we’ll look for a number of birds we may not encounter again, notably the endangered Red-cockaded Woodpecker and other species such as Red-headed and Pileated Woodpeckers. In the late morning we’ll drive to Liberty, where we’ll have a picnic while scanning the skies for Swallow-tailed Kite, which has nested near here in recent years. We may also see Yellow-crowned Night-Heron, Acadian Flycatcher, and Prothonotary Warbler. After lunch we’ll continue on to High Island. Night in Winnie.
Days 3-7: These five days will be varied and, we hope, spectacular. The central focus will be High Island and Sabine Woods, celebrated landbird migrant traps but ones that requires special weather to produce a major fall of birds. If we’re lucky, cuckoos, thrushes, vireos, warblers of 25 or more species, tanagers, buntings, and orioles will fill these small woods and provide a memorable birdwatching experience. We can’t be sure that High Island will be this productive, and preliminary reports in October 2008 indicate that the area was hard hit by Hurricane Ike. It appears that Sabine Woods to the east was less severely affected, but we are still awaiting confirmation. Still, over the course of five days there is a reasonable chance that we’ll encounter a Texas-sized concentration of migrants somewhere on the Texas or Louisiana coast.
As High Island and Sabine Woods tend to have more migrants in the afternoon, we’ll spend several mornings looking at waterbirds. The heronry at nearby Smith Oaks offers intimate looks at nesting Roseate Spoonbill, Tricolored Heron, and Snowy and Great Egrets; mudflats and beaches can hold thousands of herons, gulls, terns, and shorebirds of up to 20 species including Piping and Wilson’s Plovers, often American Oystercatcher, and sometimes thousands of brilliant American Avocets. Flooded fields near Winnie can host thousands of shorebirds, including American Golden-Plover and Pectoral Sandpiper, often joined by White-rumped and Buff-breasted Sandpipers and sometimes Hudsonian Godwit. Though apparently severely affected by Hurricane Ike, the wonderful marshes at Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge have been home in the past to Least Bittern, White-faced Ibis, Clapper and King Rails, Purple Gallinule, Seaside, Nelson’s Sharp-tailed, and Le Conte’s Sparrows, and, if conditions are right, Yellow and just possibly Black Rail.
We’ll also visit eastern Texas from Jasper to Beaumont, where cypress swamps and pine woods are home to Fish Crow, Brown-headed Nuthatch, Bachman’s Sparrow, and Swainson’s Warbler, and where migrant raptors such as Mississippi Kite are often in evidence.
On one day we’ll visit Cameron Parish in southwestern Louisiana. Crossing the Sabine River, we may see a few Cave Swallows that nest under the bridge with the many Cliff Swallows. As we travel east to Johnson’s Bayou and a normally uncrowded Baton Rouge Audubon Society woodlot that captures migrants in the same way as High Island and Sabine Woods, we’ll travel through miles of unbroken fresh water marsh filled with King Rails, often with downy black chicks. Hurricane Rita in September of 2005 severely affected the coast of southwest Louisiana but it had largely recovered by the spring of 2007—and may in fact be in better shape than coastal areas to the west in eastern Texas after Hurricane Ike. Nights in Winnie.
Day 8: After a final day in the High Island area, we’ll return to Houston. Night in Houston.
Day 9: The tour concludes this morning in Houston.
Updated: 03 October 2008
Prices
- 2010 price about $2,550
- Single Occupancy Supplement $430
Notes
Maximum group size seven with one leader, 14 with two leaders.