Passport to Texas

Event | Birding: A Bird Count for All Download

This is Passport to Texas

The Great Texas Birding Classic – the world’s biggest, longest and wildest bird watching tournament – welcomes birders of all ages and abilities to form teams.

07— We’ve added some really good entry level tournaments, so beginning birders can take part; it’s not just the hard core listers anymore. Anyone can do this.

Shelly Plante is nature tourism manager for Texas Parks and Wildlife.

20— I loved seeing more families involved last year; a family of four could go out and do a sunrise to noon tournament because it’s an all ages tournament. A group of co-workers and their kids might go out and do a Big Sit, because there’s an unlimited number of people that can be on that team – it’s not a three to five person team like some of the others. So, there really is enough variety that you can find something that fits your needs.

The deadline to register a team is April 1. And your team can compete any day from April 15 to May 15.

23— And you don’t pick that ahead of time. Some people have really flexible schedules, and so they don’t tell me until 24 hours out from their tournament day that they’re going to go birding. They wait, look at weather patterns, see when birding is going to be really good. If it’s a really good birding day, and there’s a cold front, and birds are everywhere – they can just pick on the fly: “We’re going to go tomorrow; that’s our day.” And they just shoot me an email. So, it’s really flexible.

Check out all the Great Texas Birding Classic tournaments and register your team by April 1 at birdingclassic.org.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti