Passport to Texas

This is Passport to Texas

Texas is a birder’s paradise in winter, and TPW non-game ornithologist, Cliff Shackelford knows why:

15— We are on the receiving end for a lot of our continent’s breeding birds that have to winter in mild climates; water birds that can’t handle water that freezes over – and we don’t have a lot of that in Texas especially the farther south you get.

Migratory species begin flocking to Texas in fall, and become our winter birds.

37— In the fall we get a lot of shorebirds we don’t see in the summer months that have bred up in the tundra. Then come your woodland birds – a lot of the vireos, warblers, tanagers… start pouring through in October. A lot of the raptors [that don’t stay, they only pass through]; things like Broad-wing Hawks, Swaisnon’s Hawks, Mississippi Kites –they’re pouring through up until October. Then the sparrows really pour in starting in October and November. So, really by mid-November, most things are in place – where they’re going to be – for the next several months.

We tell you where to find some of these migrants on tomorrow’s show.

That’s our show for today… Funding provided in part by Ram Trucks. Guts. Glory. Ram.

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