Saturday I spent the day in and around Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge and Eagle Lake, TX. It was a cool day, mid 50s the entire time, but the constant 20+ mph wind was pretty brutal. It made for poor photography as none of the birds would sit up in the tops of the grass and bushes and everything was moving so much landscape work was difficult too. Despite that, we had a decent day birding with a half dozen sparrow species or so and lots of other birds as well.
My highlights included a flock of tens of thousands of Red-winged Blackbirds in a field in the evening. The birds kept erupting in a mass of birds then landing again. I spent a half hour or so trying to get an image of it and just never came up with anything I really liked. The wind was out of the wrong direction and they birds always ended up flying away from me instead of towards me like I had hoped.
I did end up with a couple images from the morning of a Juvenile White-crowned Sparrow that will go into my files so it wasn’t a total bust photographically speaking. It is always nice to simply get out into the field on a beautiful day. I also really enjoyed meeting some more of the local birders from Rio Brazos Audubon.
Don’t forget, if you are in the Austin or Bastrop area, I will be speaking tomorrow in Bastrop about the impact of Hurricane Ike on the natural areas of the Upper Texas Coast. Hope to see you then.
Attwater Prairie Chicken (captive bird) - Texas A&M Small Upland Bird Research Facility
Tomorrow I will be headed to Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge with the local Rio Brazos Audubon Society. Actually, I am headed down to photograph at sunrise and then meeting the rest of the group around mid morning. Should be a pretty great trip. I look forward to getting some photos as well as getting some birding and social time with other birders.
If you have been following my blog for a while, you will recognize Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge as I spent a fair bit of time down there last spring. The refuge is set up to protect the nearly extinct Attwater Prairie Chicken. These birds, technically a subspecies of the Greater Prairie Chicken, are found on just three prairies here in the Houston area and the total wild population numbers less than 75 individuals. Today, the species survives only through a captive breeding program that releases birds each year to supplement the wild population.
This past spring, I put together an article on these birds and the recovery effort for the Texas Ornithological Society’sTexas Birds Annual. I haven’t seen a copy of the article yet but hopefully there will be a copy online soon. When it is posted, I will let everyone know about it.
Tomorrow we won’t be looking for the prairie chickens but instead will be looking for songbirds, waterfowl, and more. Hopefully I will have some photos to post tomorrow night or Sunday.
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Next Tuesday, November 18, 2008, I will be presenting a lecture to the Bastrop County Audubon Society on the impact of Hurricane Ike on the preserves on the Upper Texas Coast. I will be speaking and showing photos from most of the private reserves as well as National Wildlife Refuges but will be focusing on the roll of the Texas Ornithological Society. Bastrop Audubon will be holding a fundraiser at the meeting to help raise money for TOS Preserve recovery.
For more information on time and location though not much more detail, check out the link here.
It won’t all be doom and gloom as some of the area weren’t hit all that hard. See the above image for an example of an area of Houston Audubon Society’s Smith Oaks that was impacted mostly by fallen limbs and trees. The storm surge did not reach here, leaving flowers to bloom and a fair amount of greenery elsewhere.
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McFaddin National Wildlife Refuge has just finished a brand new visitor center and office building when Ike hit. It was so new that they hadn’t even finished installing all of the interpretive exhibits. The above image is what the facility looks like now. What is even more amazing, is that this was primarily water damage. You can’t see it from here, but the roof is entirely intact, including the solar panels. Across the road is the Gulf of Mexico and during Ike, the storm surge simply swept through this brand new building. To give you an idea of scale, it is 14 feet to the base of the second floor.
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The town of Sabine Pass was located on the really bad side of the storm and took a really hard hit. This was especially devastating as this area had only just been able to recover from Hurricane Rita in 2006. I don’t have any data to back this up, but after visiting Sabine Pass twice now, I don’t believe there are more than a handful of buildings in the area that are still structurally sound.
Just outside Sabine Pass is a small patch of woods, Sabine Woods, owned by the Texas Ornithological Society (TOS) and protected as an important migration stop for songbirds as they reach the Texas coast after crossing the Gulf of Mexico during spring migration. Like the preserves at High Island, this small patch of woods is often the first trees the birds can land in to feed before continuing north. The second panorama above is taken in Sabine Woods. Here the damage was different from that at High Island. There was very little debris: a couple hoses, a couple big anchor lines, some small trash. A few large trees were down, but mostly the big trees did fine. During my first visit, Ron Weeks (president of TOS) and I had 7 or 8 species of warblers feeding in the few remaining green oak trees. What was so impressive though was the power of water. I know I say it a lot, but it blew me away. Small shrubs, grass, and other undergrowth was devastated. The few small ponds were now filled with saltwater and required pumping. However, overall, the woods weren’t too badly damaged and should once again be a haven for birds this spring.
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After Hurricane Ike barreled through the towns of Bolivar, Glaveston, Sabine Pass, and other areas along the Upper Texas Coast, we were all inundated with photographs and video of the devastation to homes, business, and other manmade structures throughout the region. What didn’t receive much attention was the impact of Ike on the numerous natural areas scattered along the coast. I set out to try and document some of this impact and will continue to create images as the areas recover from the damage.
Click and Drag within image to explore the scene. You can zoom in and out with Cmd/Ctrl and Shift.
Part of this project is to use traditional still photography but I am trying to incorporate a new technique as well, spherical panoramas. I first began this technique this past summer in Costa Rica while working on Canopy in the Clouds and am continuing to expand on my skills. Spherical panoramas capture the world in a unique way and I am especially interested in how this type of imagery can be used as a teaching tool. I will write much more about this technique, my setup, and my plans for how I will use it in the future, but today I just wanted to show you a few images.
The top image is taken from what remains of Front Street in High Island. The huge debris pile is on the edge of the Texas Ornithological Society’s Hooks Woods Bird Sanctuary. Much of the debris, including the side of the house came from the lots on the other side of the street (towards the sun) where there is no longer anything but a concrete slab.
The lower image is Highway 87 just past the entrance to McFaddin National Wildlife Refuge outside of Sabine Pass. The section of the highway between Sabine Pass and High Island has been closed to traffic for several years because of movement of the dunes. However while the road may not have been maintained, it has not completely collapsed but rather been buried by sand. The storm surge associated with Hurricane Ike simply ate into the dunes, undercut the road, and you see what remains. Previously, where you see water by the side of the road was a fragile, yet complete, dune.
Juvenile White-crowned Sparrow - Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge, Texas
Attwater Prairie Chicken (captive bird) - Texas A&M Small Upland Bird Research Facility
