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COPYRIGHT 2001 Texas Monthly, Inc.
FROM THE PANHANDLE TO THE COAST, TEXAS IS A BIRDERS' PARADISE--ESPECIALLY IN THE SPRING. A GUIDE TO SIXTY SPOTS THAT WILL LEAVE YOU ALL ATWITTER.
HI. MY NAME IS PAT, AND I'M A BIRDAHOLIC. I haven't yet blacked out and woken up two days later in a strange place with a pair of binoculars in my hand, but birding has cost me more time and money than I care to think about. I once made a 2,500-mile roundtrip to Mexico to see a rare jay. I have a long shelf of bird books, and birding Web pages are bookmarked on my computer. Like everyone in my little circle of birding friends, I have a personal "bird name"--I'm the Brown-backed Solitaire, a cute Mexican thrush. And every December for years, the same item has been at the top of my Christmas list: a pair of thousand-dollar Leica binoculars. (I think I know who's going to end up buying them for herself.) Despite this obsession, though, sometimes I get lazy--serious types don't plan to go birding and then change their mind when the alarm goes off at five in the morning, and they take the time to learn their flycatchers and sparrows. Notwithstanding such lapses, I'm hooked. It may sound absurd, but seeing some fantastic bird that I've never seen before gives me, well, a rush.
Texas is a good place to be addicted to birds. It is the number one birding destination in the United States, with more birds than any other state--613 species, in fact; that's more than two thirds of the 912 species in the United States and Canada. Its geographic location in the middle of the central flyway (one of four North American avian highways) brings in birds from the Rockies, the eastern United States, Canada, and Mexico. Depending on the season, you can see dazzling tropical species, gemlike migratory songbirds, and millions of wintering waterfowl and shorebirds, all without crossing a state line or national border. Because of this abundance, birding here can be overwhelming--so many birds, so little time. It can also be oddly repetitious, because the top sites pull you back again and again. When I realized the other day that I had been to the Rio Grande Valley and the Gulf Coast a zillion times but had never really explored the Panhandle or the Piney Woods, I wondered if other birders were in the same rut.
So, with help from the experts whose names are mentioned at the end of this story, I came up with a list of the best publicly accessible birding sites across the state. There are sixty altogether, eight of them must-sees. (Do not die without visiting those listed in boldface type.) My target audience is enthusiastic amateurs, but I hope that even seasoned birders will discover here a few places they don't know. For convenience, I've divided the places into eleven two- or three-day birding weekends; each day consists of at least a pair of sites located within reasonable driving distance of each other (less than an...
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