On Easter morning this year we worshiped at a small church in Austin called St. Francis' Anglican Church. It was good. The congregation uses the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, so we had to read through some of the prayers, and we unknowingly attended the earlier said mass. Well, we knew it was the earlier mass, but we didn't see that it was a said mass. It doesn't really matter, though, because we were able to celebrate the resurrection with fellow Christians, and that's what's important. Afterward everyone was very kind and welcoming to us.
The church was near downtown Austin, so we swung by the Capitol afterward. It's a very beautiful building made of nice red stone. In the picture below, you can see a beautiful woman in front of it, too.
There were some interesting memorials on the grounds as well, including one to the Texas Rangers, one to firemen, one to cowboys, and one to the great Confederate States of America that came off as particularly un-neighborly. The verdant grounds seemed decent for migrant songbirds, but we didn't see any. Still, we enjoyed the White-winged Doves and Blue Jays that were common all around.
Then it was time for a long drive to Winnie, Texas -- east of Houston. It took about four hours to get there, but there wasn't any traffic and we got to listen to Jane Eyre on the way.
After checking in at our hotel that afternoon and changing, we headed down to High Island for our first visit to this birding mecca. High Island is among the most famous birding locations in the country. It is heavily visited by as many as 10,000 American and foreign birders interested in observing the spectacle of spring migration close-up and personal.
The location's powerful attraction is due to its unique bio-geography. The upper Texas coast between Galveston and the Louisiana border is very flat. It consists of coastal prairie, agricultural fields (lots of rice), and brackish marsh-lands. For many miles, this flat expanse stretches inland uninterrupted by any relief. There are no hills, few groups of trees, and few enough houses away from the immediate coast.
That is good habitat for many birds, and the area teems with wading birds, rails and shorebirds. But it is not very welcoming to tired migrant song birds in need of rest, shelter and fuel after their marathon nocturnal flight over the Gulf of Mexico. After their four to six-hundred mile over-water flight, they have to make a decision. If the flight was good, they'll be able to continue on into the insect-rich interior of east Texas, where pine woods and bayous promise good food and good cover. If, however, conditions conspire against them, such as an unforeseen mid-morning cold front sweeping into the gulf from the midwest (the trans-gulf flight taking more than 12 hours even in the best conditions), they will seek shelter in the first spot of trees that they find. For many miles along the upper Texas coast, that is High Island.
High Island is not an island. It is a salt dome where a protruding salt column has pushed the soil several feet higher than the surrounding wetlands. The resulting higher ground provides ample space for many hardwood trees to grow, especially oaks, and these trees are like a lighthouse to weary neotropical migrants. It's a very small town, mostly residences with one motel and no traffic signal, but its avian population can swell exponentially given the right weather!
When we arrived on Sunday, there was a southeasterly wind. It was blowing strongly, probably about 15-20 mph, and the birding was slow in High Island. Most birds were able to happily continue on their way to the interior, so there were only a few flocks of Orchard Orioles, female buntings, some Baltimore Orioles, Rose-breasted Grosbeak and a rare Western Tanager around. Later searching turned up a male Scarlet Tanager in the late evening. While our hopes for oodles of warblers went unfulfilled, we did enjoy the rookery at Smith Oaks. There we watched Roseate Spoonbills sweeping the shallows for water while the hum and smell of the nesting birds provided an interesting spectacle.
The best part of the evening, however, was a brief experience with a Magnolia Warbler, which was a lifer for us. We saw two, and the first one was seen well by Libby but poorly by me. The second one we found I was able to see quite well, also, and so we added our only lifer for the day!
Pictures of the day can be found on Flickr.
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