Passport to Texas

This is Passport to Texas

What started 17 years ago as a way for Texas Parks and Wildlife to promote its Coastal Birding Trails and fund conservation projects, the Great Texas Birding Classic has since become one of the country’s premier birding tournaments.

08—The birding classic allows you to test your skills and see how you rank against other birders here, in one of the best birding locations in the world.

Shelly Plante oversees nature tourism for the agency. Once held exclusively along the Texas coast, this year the tournament is statewide.

07—You can now go in your backyard; you can go down the street to your favorite park; you can travel wherever you wanted, and you can do this anywhere.

The Birding classic has also expanded the date range.

29—For the first time ever, we’re having a very long range of dates for the tournament: from April 15th through May 15th. You get to pick what day you participate. You can pick that based on the weather, on your team’s schedules –whatever works for you. In the past we designated specific days for a tournament, and everybody had to compete on those specific days regardless of weather. Well, now, you can watch weather patterns. And if there’s affront that going to ground some birds and make it a great day for birding, you can go out on that day.

More in the Birding Classic tomorrow.

That’s our show for today…with support from the Wildlife and Sport fish Restoration Program…providing funding for a variety of conservation projects throughout Texas.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.