Perspectives

Juvenile White-crowned Sparrow - Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge, Texas

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’s Texas 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.