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Copyright 2006 All Rights Reserved to Connecticut Audubon Society

Texas Trip

      by Dave Williams

     As soon as my first child, Danny, could hold his head up I started walking in the woods with him on my back.  When we began I knew next to nothing about birds—the standard cardinal, blue jay, crow repertoire.  His existence compelled me to finally address this ignorance, which had gnawed at me for years.  We would return from our walks and pour over bird books.  His Petersen’s sat next to GOOD NIGHT MOON on the shelf beside his bed.  At eighteen-months he could identify about thirty species, and by the time he was eight when people asked him his favorite holiday he would say, in complete earnestness, “Eagle Weekend.” (This “holiday” is an annual family event that evolved from a visit by my two of my wife’s brothers and an eagle watching boat trip to a full-family, weekend-long extravaganza—my wife is one of nine, all of whom hate to miss a party—which we have since aligned with the Eagle Festival.)  I feared that eventually this passion would fade but when at 10 he started memorizing Sibley, section by section, with no particular plan—he began with the ducks for some reason—and finished with the sparrows and warblers on a long drive to bird in Maine a year and half later it seemed clear his interest was here to stay.

     Three years ago at the Eagle Festival Mary Dowdell of Connecticut Audubon saw Danny standing above deck in ten-degree weather, scanning for eagles with a chapped face and watery eyes.  She told him that CT Audubon offered scholarships to kids like him and suggested he write a letter to apply.  He did.  Later that year Andy Griswold, director of Connecticut Audubon Ecotravel, called to offer Danny a scholarship for the Texas trip in April of 2005. 

     The trip was tremendous from start to finish.   Danny said afterward it felt like a pilgrimage.  The variety and abundance of birds, the beauty and diversity of the land, and the chance to spend ten days birding with my 13-year old-son, my brother-in-law and a small but stellar group of people made for an extraordinary and irreplaceable experience. 

     One of the beauties of birding is the possibility of seeing birds almost anywhere but on a first trip to Texas the perpetual anticipation of something new, unusual, or beautiful was exhilarating.    Before we got out of Houston—or even out of the car--we found a Yellow-crowned Night-heron in a ditch in the median, a Fulvous Whistling-Duck in a pond on the side of the road, a Loggerhead Shrike on a fence, a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher on a telephone wire, and a Swainson’s Hawk soaring overhead, as well as an apparently lascivious Turkey Vulture perched on a billboard platform staring up at the vast picture of a voluptuous woman selling beer.

     Half an hour later we pulled off the highway and walked a hundred yards to the Trinity River Watershed rookery.  There, while cars and trucks roared past a place not even listed on our itinerary, were thousands of birds feeding, displaying, mating, and nesting.  We found twenty-five species—and a large alligator studying us from 20 yards beyond the platform—in about 15 minutes, including Anhingas, Neotropic Cormorants, Tricolored and Little Blue Heron, White and White-faced Ibis and Roseate Spoonbills.  We were like giddy kids.

     A couple of days later driving south along the Bolivar Peninsula to Bolivar flats Danny spotted our first White-tailed Kite chasing our first two Crested Caracara across a field.  Later that day we were barreling south along route 35 toward Rockport when Ken Elkins, Andy’s co-leader, spotted a hawk on the ground.  Just as Andy got the van stopped I spied what looked like a gray and white raptor sitting on a fence just off the highway.  As I stammered “Is that a…”, Danny shouted  “It’s a White Tailed Hawk!” And sure enough, it was.  The bird lifted up and was joined by a second, cruising attentively above us.  We realized the bird had been sitting on a nest, four feet off the ground and twenty yards from the highway.  Andy and I hustled over to peak in—fuzzy, white hatchlings encircled by several bloody mouse corpses.

     Next day we had a spectacular morning, one of Danny’s favorites, exploring part of Aransas NWR by boat.  We had prolonged looks at the season’s lone remaining Whooping Crane feeding in a mudflat (while two King Rails skulked and darted around it), Long-billed Curlews, Marbled Godwits, a White-tailed Hawk kiting above the boat, hundreds of Avocets, six species of terns, an Eared Grebe, and the first Magnificent Frigate bird of the season.

       There are far too many birding highlights to include here—the trip was almost nothing but highlights—but when I asked Danny to name a few more he mentioned our tour of King Ranch where we saw several lifers within minutes of arriving including a Great Kiskadee, a Buff-bellied Hummingbird, Green Jays, Audubon’s and Altamira Orioles, and a Ferruginous Pygmy Owl, as well as a truly awesome kettle of some 1,500 White Pelicans swirling above us.   

     A few days before trip’s end Ken tallied our species and it appeared that we might, with luck and perseverance, approach the species total record for the on CT Audubon Texas trip of 275.   After birding along the Rio Grande, and at one point standing on Falcon Dam with one foot in Mexico and one in the U.S., we headed to Concan and Neal’s Lodge in the Texas Hill Country for an ideal conclusion to the trip. It was lush green hills and valleys, rocky rivers and streams--and lots of birds.  During one half hour stretch before dinner we had eight species of sparrow at a drip behind the lodge, as well as a varied bunting—a first ever there--and a Zone Tailed hawk Andy picked out from a group of vultures.  We did a spectacular drive into the Texas Hill Country to Lost Maples State Park in search of the Golden-cheeked Warbler, which we found  only after a long hike into the hills and some persistent listening and looking.  That night Andy did such a convincing Barred Owl call from the back of our cabin that an indignant owl perched in the trees twenty yards from us and would not go away.  Our last night we cruised the Pecan Trail near Neal’s and found our first Poor Wills, and our last species of the trip.  Final tally: 276.

     In addition to the phenomenal birding and the astounding beauty and variety of the country, when talking to Danny about our ten days in Texas he keeps coming back to the spirit of the trip, the pleasure of being surrounded by curious and knowledgeable people who loved birds and were happy to look for them and talk about them all day.  One of his favorite parts was the driving—we drove over 1,700 miles—in part because of the endless potential for something new, but also because of the enthusiasm, warmth, camaraderie, and humor shared by the group and its leaders.  Danny and I would like to extend our most heartfelt gratitude to Andy, Ken, and Connecticut Audubon for making this extraordinary experience possible.