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08 May 2001 Texas Birding Bonanza
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Contest winner Sue Schulman (left)
and Mary Burger
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A weekend of birding during spring migration on the Upper Texas Coast. Could I stand it? It is, as they say, a dirty job, but someone had to do it and it was my turn. Concerns that songbird migration would be slow to nonexistent were unfounded, and enough shorebirds remained to keep things interesting.
Sue Schulman of Colorado won the Grand Prize in Texas Parks and Wildlife’s Texas Birdwatching Bonanza raffle - guided Texas birding weekends in the Rio Grande Valley, the Upper Texas Coast and the Fort Davis-Big Bend areas. Fermata, Inc. donated the first two of these weekends, and I was pleased to lead the second one for Sue. On this occasion, her friend Mary Burger, also from Colorado, joined her for the weekend.
Ted Eubanks’ March 8th Trip du Jour discussed the Rio Grande Valley weekend he guided for Sue Schulman and her traveling companion Jim Sandor. View their journey here.
I rendezvoused with Sue and Mary not long after dawn on Friday May 4th at the W.G. Jones State Forest just southwest of Conroe. The forest has a thriving population of Red-cockaded Woodpeckers, and Mary’s Hit List included this federally endangered species. Within a few minutes, we tracked down the woodpecker’s burry call and had it in the ‘scope. Further wandering in the woods produced Wood Ducks, a vocal Yellow-breasted Chat, the first of many singing Hooded Warblers, Red-eyed and White-eyed vireos, Summer Tanagers, Indigo Buntings, and other locally common species. We continued east to the Big Creek Scenic Area just west of Shepherd where I’d seen a singing Louisiana Waterthrush a couple days earlier. The waterthrush was skittish when I "spished" at it inside the forest, but eventually rewarded our patience by foraging in the open along the edge of Big Creek. Other creatures of interest along the creek were Acadian Flycatcher, Green Anolis lizards, Phantom Craneflies, and butterflies such as Southern Pearly-eye, Little Wood Satyr, and several lovely Palamedes Swallowtails. Not far north of Shepherd, we paused along U.S. 59 where hundreds of Cattle Egrets, White Ibis, Little Blue Herons, and a few Roseate Spoonbills nest at pools along the highway. Turning east at Livingston, we stopped briefly at the LPC Dogwood Trail, adding more Indigo Buntings and several Carolina Wrens but little else, then drove to Martin Dies, Jr. State Park at the confluence of the Neches and Angelina rivers. At our first stop along Steinhagen Lake in the western part of the park, the trees were alive with birds including singing Northern Parula, Yellow-throated Warbler, Red-eyed and Yellow-throated vireos, Eastern Wood-Pewee, and Great Crested Flycatcher. Continuing to the main park entrance road south of 190, we watched an eye-popping Prothonotary Warbler singing in the parking lot, and foraging Downy, Red-headed, and Pileated woodpeckers. A short drive east brought us to Jasper, where we enjoyed the hospitality at the historic Belle-Jim B&B, one of the oldest wooden-structure hotels in Texas. Read more about Jasper and the Belle-Jim B&B in Seth Davidson’s World Nature Trails Tour du Jour for August 18, 2000 here.
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Purple Cone-flower in Longleaf Pine understory
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Besides comfortable beds and gracious hosts, Jasper provided us with our first Common Nighthawks PEENTing over the courthouse roof and a tasty dinner at the Catfish Cabin.
We began Saturday with an early breakfast at the Belle-Jim then left for Boykin Springs a bit to the northwest. En route, we were pelted with rain that threatened to ruin the morning’s birding, but as we arrived at the entrance road, the sky began to brighten. Like nearly all of our stops during the weekend, Boykin Springs is a site on the Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail. The entrance road passes through a managed woodland of statuesque Longleaf Pines, a threatened habitat and home to a number of the state’s more localized birds such as Bachman’s Sparrow, Brown-headed Nuthatch and numerous Red-cockaded Woodpeckers, as well as many more common species. Unlike the birding sites north of Silsbee popularized decades ago by Jim Lane but now seriously degraded by timber cutting, petroleum extraction, and a seemingly endless supply of roadside trash, the area around Boykin Springs, including its numerous southeastern plants and butterflies, is a feast for the eyes as well as the checklist. As the sun came out, drying the rain from the roadside’s abundant Purple Coneflowers, we began to hear the minor whistled notes of Bachman’s Sparrows, and, after some listening and walking, we had a ten minute look at this piney woods specialty singing from atop a bit of low brush. Brown-headed Nuthatches called overhead like so many airborne rubber ducks. All around us Northern Cardinals, Indigo Buntings, Summer Tanagers, and Pine Warblers joined the morning chorus. A bright migrant Magnolia Warbler foreshadowed the afternoon’s experience along the coast. We returned to 190 then dropped south on FM 92 west of Martin Dies, Jr. SP. Along the way, we stopped at a favorite bayou for Swainson’s Warbler and cruised plantations of young pine trees for cooperative Prairie Warblers. In Beaumont, we pulled into the water
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Spoonbills and other waders nesting at Claybottom
Pond, High Island
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Bolivar Flats
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Sunday morning found us soaking in the rich dawn glow at the Waffle House in Winnie, long a breakfast favorite of birders from around the world. Our first stop was at the Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge East Bayou Tract on FM 1985 in Chambers County. Here, some of the only currently flooded rice fields on the Upper Texas coast can be found, and we were rewarded with Buff-breasted, Semipalmated, Stilt, and White-rumped sandpipers, Long-billed Dowitchers, Purple Gallinule, Fulvous Whistling Ducks, and a very close Dickcissel. We continued to High Island where we spent much of the morning at Boy Scout Woods and Smith Oaks looking at the likes of Philadelphia, Yellow-throated, and Red-eyed vireos, Northern Waterthrush, Golden-winged, Bay-breasted, Hooded, Chestnut-sided, and Magnolia warblers plus another male Black-throated Blue. Of interest was the presence of Nashville Warblers at both woods. Nashville Warblers, unlike most of the other migrants we observed, are not trans-Gulf migrants and, during spring, are often scarce in the Gulf edge migrant traps, even while common in nearby Houston. Before leaving, we visited the rookery at Claybottom Pond where Roseate Spoonbills, Tricolored Herons, Snowy, Great, Cattle egrets, and Black-crowned Night-Herons incubated their eggs just a few meters from our path as American Anhingas circled overhead. From the woods, we moved to High Island’s south oil field where Semipalmated Sandpipers pecked just outside the car windows, both Common and (one) Lesser nighthawks sat in the road, a Black-necked Stilt incubated eggs and a dozen alternate plumage Black-bellied Plovers graced the flats. Progressing down the Bolivar Peninsula, Rollover Pass yielded Reddish Egret and a variety of terns; Yacht Basin road was full of Whimbrels and Long-billed Curlews, as well as an obliging Clapper Rail, and the Bolivar Flats added Wilson’s Plover, scads of bright American Avocets, Red Knots, Short-billed Dowitchers, Sanderlings well into alternate plumage, Black Skimmer, and hundreds of Brown Pelicans. Out of time and wishing we had another day in the field, we ended the trip with a ferry ride, a drive back to Houston and a farewell Chinese meal.
Trip du Jour: May 7, 2001
Texas Birdwatching Bonanza
The Big Thicket and the Upper Texas Coast
by Bob Behrstock
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