Great Texas Birding Classic, Part 2 of 2
Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife
The Great Texas Birding Classic is April 27 through May 4. Shelley Plante, nature tourism coordinator for Parks and Wildlife, says there is a tournament for every age group.
We have kids teams for thirteen and under; we call it the rough wings tournament. It’s always a lot of fun. Birders of that age group go out about eight hours during the day, so it’s not a huge, long day. And we have a teenager competition called the Gliders. We also have adults, and we have something called the Big Sit, which is like a big tailgate party for birders. And any age can compete, and those teams can have up to ten people on them, whereas the other teams are only three to five people—enough to fit in a car, basically.
The Energy Saver tournament is new this year.
Our concern was, we have all of these people that are driving around the Texas coast for habitat conservation, and they are burning fossil fuels in the process. So, why don’t we have more than just the Big Sit as something that people can do in a more stationary way. So, the Energy Saver tournament, people are required to go at least fifty miles, but they can just do fifty miles. And the winning team is the team that sees the most species per mile. And they are going to be eligible for a new ten thousand dollar grant project that they get to fund.
Money raised from the Birding Classic funds coastal conservation projects. Learn more at passporttotexas.org.
That’s our show… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.
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CLICK HERE to read about past year’s highlights.
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