Passport to Texas

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

Birders of a feather will flock together next month for the fourteenth annual Great Texas Birding Classic. During this weeklong event, birders from around the globe converge on the Texas coast for fun, and friendly team birding.

The area for The Great Texas Birding Classic goes from the Louisiana Border, all the way down to the Mexican border—in a forty-one county area of the Texas coast. So, it’s a very large swath of land, with a lot of different habitat types and a lot of different bird species you can see.

Shelly Plante oversees nature tourism for Texas Parks and Wildlife. The Birding Classic donates tens of thousands of dollars each year to avian conservation projects.

The top [winning] teams are the ones that get to pick what projects receive all this money. So, we give over fifty-thousand dollars to projects every year, and those winning teams are the ones that get that opportunity.

Three different flyways intersect the Texas coast, making that habitat essential to birds as they make their spring and fall migrations.

We hold this event to raise some money for that habitat for restoration projects, acquisition projects so that we can ensure that Texas remains a wonderful place for birds to visit year after year.

Registration deadline is March 22. The event is April 24 through May 2. Find a link to registration information at passporttotexas.org.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.
_________________________________________________________
For more information about how you, your business or community can be involved in this year’s event, please contact the Birding Classic Staff, call: ( 9 7 9 ) 4 8 0 – 0 9 9 9, or send an email to
Carol Jones, cjones@gcbo.org

Great Texas Birding Classic, 1 Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas

This month the Texas parks and Wildlife Television series puts the spotlight on our fine feathered friends. Series producer, Don Cash.

A couple of things we’re going to look at early in the month of February…we’re going to look at the current situation with bobwhite quail—which is a very popular bird and a very good sporting bird. And we’re going to look at ways that landowners working with our department to manage their land for better quail populations.

We’re trying to create a situation where there’re more native grasses, and less of your introduced coastal type grasses.

We’re also going to take a look at the Great Texas Coastal Birding Trails. The department has three brochures: upper coast, central coast, lower coast… And these are really handy brochures that birders can use to decide what they want to see, where they want to see it, and when they want to go see it.

Later in the month, we’re going to take a look at the Ivory Billed Woodpecker, which was extinct, but in 2005 may have been found again in Arkansas. One of our producers followed a group of researchers in East Texas—in the Big Thicket—for six months as they looked for any signs of the extinct Ivory Billed Woodpecker.

If there was a bird out there, it would have to rely on a whole lotta luck if it happened to be where we were.

So, the television show in February has lots of birds, and maybe it will help our viewers get ready for that spring birding season.

Thanks, Don.

Find a list of stations airing the series on the Texas Parks and Wildlife website.

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

TPW-TV: Birding Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas

[:05 whooping cranes calling”]

The call of the whooping crane may not be the most beautiful birdsong you’ll ever hear, but it is music to Lee Ann Linam’s ears.

A wildlife biologist, Ms. Linam, has a shared history with North America’s largest bird. Thanks to six decades of conservation, including efforts by one special family member, the species’ worldwide population has grown from 16 individuals to more than 200 birds – something Lee Ann has waited a lifetime to witness.

Well, I literally grew up with whooping cranes. My father worked for the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and when we moved to Texas in 1973, the whooper numbers were still around fifty birds. At that time, they were still very, very endangered, and yet we saw the number progressing upward. And in fact, when he died in 1986, he thought, ‘this might be the year they pass the one hundred bird mark’, and they did. And so, I feel like whoopers are a part of my life. I think that their success kind of reflects something of our family’s connection in history to the Texas coast and all the animals there.

Learn more about Whooping cranes by logging onto passporttotexas.org.

That’s our show …made possible today by the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program…working to increase fishing, hunting, shooting and boating opportunities in Texas.

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

Whooping cranes are one of the rarest bird species in North America. Whooping cranes are protected in Canada, the United States and Mexico. Because some of their habitat is federally protected, the land is managed to preserve the animals. The greatest threats to whooping cranes are man-made: power lines, illegal hunting, and habitat loss. Because the Gulf International Waterway goes through their habitat area, the cranes are susceptible to chemical spills and other petroleum-related contamination. Public awareness and support are critical to whooping cranes’ survival as a species.

Whooping Crane--A Shared Past Play Now | Play in Popup | Download