April 19-25, 2025 with John Coons
We enjoyed a wonderful week of spring migration on the Upper Texas Coast as well as finding a number of the breeding birds in the piney woods of east Texas. It was birdy every day, with always something new to keep us busy. We gathered on our first evening for dinner in Houston and went over the plan for the next days. The following morning we were off after breakfast to Jones State Forest to track down Red-cockaded Woodpeckers. It took a little bit of following the calls before we had scope views at this rather rare specialty of the southeast US. A singing Summer Tanager was in a nearby tree top and we had nice looks at Pine Warbler and a couple of tiny Brown-headed Nuthatches. We then headed west toward the Big Thicket area and made a stop near the Trinity River. Here we were treated to a dynamite view of a singing Swainson’s Warbler soon after we had seen Northern Parula, Hooded Warbler, and Prothonotary Warblers. A Kentucky Warbler also made an appearance. After lunch on Easter Sunday, where kids were doing an egg hunt in parts of the restaurant, we had great views of a Prairie Warbler singing from the top of a shrub. A locally breeding Yellow-throated Vireo was just overhead. We made a stop at Steinhagen Lake near Jasper and had fabulous views of a Yellow-throated Warbler and more Prothonotarys, but the highlight here was a Swallow-tailed Kite that was flying back and forth over a wooded section of the lake. After getting situated at our motel, we did a Sunday dinner buffet where the choice of pies and various cakes was difficult.
The next morning, we were out for sunrise to find the quite local Bachman’s Sparrow. We heard one singing just off the road right away and Emma spotted it perched in a shrub where we watched it for several minutes giving its beautiful song. We watched an American Kestrel after a fly-over of two Bald Eagles and a Pileated Woodpecker before heading back to the motel to pack up and head south. We stopped at Cattail Marsh at the edge of Beaumont where it was misty and windy. Good conditions for migrants to appear. Here we saw a good number of Purple Gallinules and got our first taste of several waterbirds. After lunch we detoured through some agricultural fields, stopping at a turf farm where we found at least 35 Buff-breasted Sandpipers and a couple of Upland Sandpipers, At a nearby wet field were our first Scissor-tailed Flycatchers, Swainson’s Hawks. Whimbrels, and smaller shorebirds, including four White-rumped Sandpipers, while we scoped a singing Dickcissel on a shrub top. We continued on to Winnie and checked in to our motel, dropped our luggage, and quickly headed to High Island to see how the weather conditions had influenced migration. We arrived at Boy Scout Woods to find lots of birders next to the field station. Lots of birds were in the pecan and mulberry trees and we spent a while seeing what was moving through. Cape May Warbler, quite uncommon here, was one of the first birds we saw, along with Blackpoll, Tennessee, and Black-throated Green warblers, and Scarlet and Summer tanagers. Finally entering Boy Scout Woods we saw Golden-winged Warbler, Blackburnian, Blue-winged, Bay-breasted, Chestnut-sided, American Redstart, an Ovenbird at the water drip, and more tanagers and both Baltimore and Orchard orioles, Blue Grosbeak and Rose-breasted Grosbeak. The birding was very exciting.
We headed to Anahuac NWR (now called Jocelyn Nungaray NWR) the next morning but stopped at some wet fields to scope shorebirds on the way. Here we had great views of King Rail right at the road edge. There were good number of Lesser and Greater yellowlegs for a close comparison, Willets, and Whimbrels. At the refuge we saw three baby Barn Owls under a roof with mom hiding from us. We did a drive around Shoveler Pond where we had looks at three Least Bitterns and several Black-bellied and Fulvous whistling-ducks along with Stilt Sandpipers, lots of dowitchers, more Lesser Yellowlegs, our first Gull-billed Terns, Crested Caracaras, Yellow-crowned Night-Herons, and an American Bittern. After lunch and a stop at the motel, we returned to High Island where the migrant activity from the previous day had obviously waned, but we did watch a rather rare Lawrence’s Warbler bathing at the water drip. We headed to the rookery at Smith Woods where we enjoyed views of nesting Roseate Spoonbills, Great, Snowy, and Western Cattle-Egrets, along with Tricolored Herons and many Neotropic Cormorants. We spent some time just watching the interaction of the birds at the nests where many of the Great Egrets had young.
On Wednesday, we went down the Bolivar Peninsula for our first saltwater birding. At Rollover Pass we watched a “dancing” Reddish Egret, with lots of Black Skimmers on a sandbar and scores of Dunlin, Semipalmated Plovers, Marbled Godwits, American Oystercatchers, and Royal and Sandwich terns. We looked for a bit before we got a close Nelson’s Sparrow in the saltmarsh. In a light rain, we stopped at the ferry landing where we spotted a quite rare Glaucous Gull that had been reported off and on for a few days. Our beach walk at Bolivar Flats was curtailed a bit by rain and wind, but we saw Wilson’s and Piping plovers, and Brenda photographed a Snowy Plover. Lots of Least Terns were flying about with tiny fish in their bills. Again, after lunch we went back to High Island where the migration was slow but it ramped up around 4:00 pm when the birds crossing the Gulf arrived. We saw a surge in both Orchard and Baltimore orioles , Summer and Scarlet tanagers, and Eastern Kingbirds. We had nice looks at a couple of Yellow-billed Cuckoos before heading back to the motel in the late-afternoon.
On our final full day of birding, we drove east to Sabine Pass on the Sabine River which makes the border with Louisiana. We first stopped in some open fields where we saw and heard singing a group of about five Bobolinks, one of the wonderful birds of open pastures. We proceeded to Sabine Woods which was going pretty good with migrants. We soon saw Magnolia Warbler, our first of a few Philadelphia Vireos, Golden-winged Warbler, a cooperative Ovenbird, and our first looks at calling White-winged Doves. We made the rounds of the woods a couple of times and stayed busy with the migrants before heading to Sea Rim State Park where we enjoyed a picnic lunch after first cruising the beach for more Wilson’s and Piping plovers among the many shorebirds. We walked the boardwalk to see a couple of hundred American Avocets among a large number of Snowy Egrets. We went back to Sabine Woods for the afternoon fallout and we experienced a good pulse of newly arriving migrants around 2:00 pm. We headed out at 3:30 pm to get ahead of the construction traffic but still got caught in it for a spell. We got back to the motel to clean up before our last dinner together.
On Friday, we packed up our van after breakfast and headed out into the rice fields hoping for a few new shorebirds. At a small bridge we had scope views of our first Cave Swallows perched right next to Cliff Swallows. A nearby singing Painted Bunting popped up in all its colors next to the road. Back into the piney woods, we made a stop and once again saw singing Northern Parula and Prothonotary Warbler on the breeding ground, just like we had started the first morning. We said our goodbyes at the hotel for some and the airport terminal for others. It was great fun birding with all of you in East Texas for a week and I hope we get together again.
Mammals encountered during our trip included:
Eastern Cottontail (Sylvilagus floridanus)
Swamp Rabbit (Sylvilagus aquaticus)
Eastern Gray Squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis)
Eastern Fox Squirrel (Sciurus niger)
Common Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) a few were seen at the mouth of Galveston Bay
Northern Raccoon (Procyon lotor) Emma spotted one in a tree at Boy Scout Woods
A few of the herps we saw:
American Bullfrog (Lithobates catesbeianus)
Red-eared Slider (Trachemys scripta elegans)
American Alligator (Alligator mississippiensis)
Green Anole (Anolis carolinensis)
Speckled Kingsnake (Lampropeltis holbrooki)
You can see my complete trip report on eBird at this link: https://ebird.org/tripreport/354507
You can download a combined PDF of this page and the eBird report at this link: https://fieldguides.com/triplists/mig25bTRIPLIST.pdf
-- John Coons