photo by Mary Judson, The South Jetty

Port Aransas birders counted a total of 208 different bird species during a 72-hour window in late April to win the 2010 America's Birdiest City in the Small Coastal City category. The count was held in conjunction with the Great Texas Birding Classic allowing the city to take advantage of species sighted by a Big Sit! team and several Roughwings teams. Port Aransas is the home to the Leonabell Turnbull Birding Center and Paradise Pond, both of which are GCBO Site Partners. Nearby Corpus Christi was awarded the Large Coastal City award with 243 species and the local county, Nueces, was named the Birdiest County with 262 species. The Texas Coastal Bend is surely a great place to see birds! Now in it's 10th year, the America's Birdiest City Contest is coordinated by another GCBO Site Partner, the Dauphin Island Bird Sanctuaries in Alabama.

Mitchell Dale, owner of McCree Ford in Dickinson and a strong supporter of the Great Texas Birding Classic offers a weekend at his Sick Dog Ranch in Jim Wells County as part of the Birding Classic Auction. This year the trip was won by GCBO Advisory Board member Faust Parker. Faust, his wife Julie and their friends Warren and Tomi Abbott spent this past Memorial Day weekend at the Sick Dog with GCBO staff John Arvin and Carol Jones. John and Carol led the birding while Mitchell and his wife Dianne played host and hostess. South Texas had had a tremendous amount of rain this spring and the brush country was lush (an uncommon condition). Birds were extremely active with breeding activities. Favorites were glowing Vermilion Flycatchers, ubiquitous male Northern Bobwhites, and gorgeous male Bullock’s Orioles. Look for your chance to bid on this trip in next year's Birding Classic Auction.

Autumn is hummingbird season in Texas, as thousands of these tiny creatures move through the state on their southward migration to Mexico and Central America. Many Ruby-throats will travel 600 miles straight across the Gulf to the Yucatan Peninsula while others will fly around the edges of the Gulf to points in Mexico. Be sure to mark your calendars for September 11th and 18th when we will host our annual Xtreme Hummingbird Xtravaganza. This year we will host the event on the middle two Saturdays to allow everyone a chance to attend while not straining our dedicated volunteers! You can watch hummingbird banding, adopt a hummingbird, browse the Nature Store, walk the nature trails, or buy a plant to attract hummingbirds and butterflies. If you would like to volunteer to help with this event, please contact Reba.

Last January 13, Fred Dietrich, a hummingbird bander, put a numbered band on a Rufous Hummingbird that was coming to a feeder at a home in Tallahassee Florida. Fred determined that it was a second year female, meaning it had been hatched the previous summer. Fast forward to June 28. In Chenega Bay Alaska, Kate McLaughlin caught a Rufous Hummingbird with someone else's band on it. Yep, you guessed it - it was Fred's bird from Florida!  This little hummingbird was nesting nearly 4,000 miles from where she spent the winter. Wow!  Rufous Hummingbirds (along with several other species) commonly spend their winter in the southeastern U.S. including Texas. This recovery is significant as the longest distance between capture sites but also because it gives us information about migration routes of these birds. Without banding, we would never know these things. Leave your hummingbird feeder up this winter and see if you get a special winter visitor. If so, give us a call and we'll see if we can come and band it!

Join us from 8:00 until noon on Saturday, July 17th for our monthly bird banding session.  Watch as GCBO Research Associates Robert & Kay Lookingbill band the birds and explain how to determine the species, age, and sex of birds in the hand.  We'll be catching newly fledged young birds and perhaps a newly arrived hummingbird or two this month.  Come out and see what surprises are in store for us. This is a great way to get kids excited about wildlife, but all ages are welcome.  See the map on our webpage for directions.  Note that mapquest and googlemaps will not guide you to the right place using our address. Entry into our sanctuary and bird banding is free of charge.