Passport to Texas

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

If you’ve never seen a hummingbird in your part of Texas, it’s not because they aren’t around.

There’s not a county in Texas where you won’t see at least two species of hummingbird. In fact, there’s not a state in the United States—with the exception of Hawaii—that doesn’t have at least two hummingbird species.

Okay, maybe that is not a lot of hummers, but they are out there. Mark Klym coordinates the Texas hummingbird Roundup. He says Texas has 18 species of hummingbirds, and one region boasts the most.

Certainly the greatest variety would be in the David Mountains area. The David Mountains and the Chisos Mountains—out in West Texas.

If you want to attract hummingbirds passing through the area, you could put up feeders, but Klym says there is a better way.

That feeder, even in a good garden, is nothing more than a fast food stop. You want to provide plants that these birds can go to for nectar. But also, you want to provide plants that will attract insects, because these birds are heavy insect eaters.

At passporttotexas.org, find links to hummingbird appropriate plants, as well as information on how you can participate in the Hummingbird Roundup.

That’s our show… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.
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Find the top hummingbird plants as recommended by About.com: http://birding.about.com/library/weekly/aa053001a.htm

 

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Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

The Eleventh Annual Great Backyard Bird Count takes place February 15 through 18. It’s a citizen science project for birders of all ages, and Joshua Rose says it’s great for beginners.

And one of the reasons it was named the Backyard Bird Count is because that’s where most people start paying attention to birds. That’s where I started paying attention to birds—in my own backyard. And the interest grew and developed from there.

Rose is a natural resource specialist at Bentsen Rio Grand Valley State Park. The park is part of the World Birding Center. The four-day, national event creates a real-time snapshot of where the birds are across the continent. Rose says it’s not unusual for an amateur birder who participates in this event to teach the experts a thing or two. The Audubon’s Oriole is a good example.

The Sibley Guide to Birds, http://www.sibleyguides.com/sibleyguide.htm, shows the Audubon’s Oriole as being restricted mainly to the southern tip of Texas, down here where Bentsen SP is located. This person was well north of that area, and was reporting a number of Audubon’s Orioles, but they sent me photographs of it, and I wound up determining that the range of this oriole is actually much greater, and goes further north than is shown in the field guides. So, I certainly learned something new there, and I guess the folks who write the field guides have some things to learn, too.

With field guide, and bird list in hand, you, too can participate in this event. Participants can upload their findings to a special online database.

Find a link to more information, including the data forms at passporttotexas.org.

That’s our show… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.
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Amarillo: Panhandle Bird Club
http://www.wtamu.edu/~rmatlack/panhandlebirdclub

Birds of the Upper Texas Coast
http://www.texasbirding.net/

BirdNet, by the Ornithological Council
http://www.nmnh.si.edu/BIRDNET/index.html

Corpus Christi: The South Texas Birding Forum
http://www.caller2.com/periodic/birdingindex.html

Galveston Island Birding Brochure
http://www.galveston.com/islandbirding/

Llano Estacado Audubon Society (LEAS)
http://www.leas.bizland.com/

Migrating Texas Animals
http://riceinfo.rice.edu/armadillo/Ftbend/texmig.html

Purple Martins in Texas
http://www.rice.edu/armadillo/Ftbend/pmartin.html

Refugio County Birding
http://www.refugiocountytx.org/Recreation/birding/

San Antonio, Birds of Texas
http://pages.sbcglobal.net/whbauer/tx_birds.htm

Texas Coast Birding Trail Map
http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/huntwild/wild/wildlife_trails/coastal/upper/

Texas Gulf Coast Birding and Naturalist Web
http://texasnaturalist.net/

Texas Ornithological Society
http://www.texasbirds.org/

 

 Great Backyard Bird Count, Part 2 of 2: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

Calling all bird lovers. On February 15 through 18, you have a chance to participate in The Eleventh Annual Great Backyard Bird Count.

The Great Backyard bird count is a nationwide event coordinated by the National Audubon Society and the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology.

Joshua Rose is a natural resource specialist at Bentsen Rio Grande Valley State Park. The park is part of the World Birding Center.

The Backyard Bird Count started as a count where people just count on their own property, in their own backyard. But over the years they’ve gradually expanded it, and encouraged people to count birds not just in their backyards, but also to count in, say, local city parks and around their neighborhoods, and wherever they happen to spend time that weekend.

The Great Backyard Bird Count, says Rose, is one of the first steps many people take when first getting involved birding. All you need is a field guide and an internet connection.

The whole count works through an online data entry. The data is entered through a website, and so when a person reports bird sightings to the Great Backyard Bird Count, the website has blanks to fill in for where and when they counted the birds and for how long.

Find a link for the data forms at passporttotexas.org.

That’s our show… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

 

 Great Backyard Bird Count, Part 1 of 2: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

The four counties of the Rio Grande Valley; Cameron, Hidalgo, Starr and Willacy. There are more bird species have been recorded in those counties, than in 46 of the 50 United States.

Joshua Rose is a Natural Resource Specialist at the World Birding Center at the Bentsen Rio-Grande Valley State Park The Center is hosting a Christmas Bird Count on January 2nd.

Everyone that wants to conduct a Christmas Bird Count, they submit to the National Audubon Society. They draw out a circle and if they circle doesn’t overlap with any other count circle, then the Audubon Society approves it. Each circle is supposed to be fifteen miles in diameter. We divide the circle up into different zones and then we recruit a whole bunch of volunteers and we assign those volunteers each to one of those zones in the circle.

Birders can make the count as competitive as they want.

When we divide up our zones for the count and assign our teams, we also tend to assign the different teams different amounts of time. So certain teams will have a smaller area; they can cover the whole area and count all the birds in five or six hours. Where as the really hardcore, borderline insane people, like myself, will start before dawn and keep going until after dark.

More information on Christmas Bird Counts available at passporttotexas.org.

That’s our show…with research and writing help from Kate Lipinski… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

 

 Christmas Bird Count: The Event: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

“Side hunts” were a popular Christmas tradition in the 1800’s; outdoor enthusiasts picked sides and whoever shot the most animals by the end of the day won. In 1900, a man named Frank Chapman proposed people should count birds, not hunt them…and the Christmas Bird Count was born.

The Christmas Bird Count is an event that goes on across the entire country. It’s coordinated nationwide by the National Audubon Society.

Joshua Rose is a Natural Resource Specialist at the World Birding Center at Bentsen Rio Grande Valley State Park.

The fact is that birding has become not just a pleasant leisure activity, to go out and wander around seeing birds but has become something of a competitive sport.

Over fifty-thousand birders took part in last years count.

The real mission is conservation. We want to know how many birds of each species there are out there to know if one certain kind of bird needs some more focused conversation action. Or maybe some bird that was rare, for instance the bald eagle or the peregrine falcon, is getting more common and whatever we’re doing for them in terms of conservation seems to be working.

More on the Christmas Bird Count at the World Birding Center tomorrow. For more information visit passporttotexas.org

That’s our show…with research and writing help from Kate Lipinski… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

 

 Christmas Bird Count: The History: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download