Lafitte’s Cove, Galveston Island was a-hoppin’ with half a dozen warbler species the weekend before last (10/19), but last weekend (10/26) only Pine Warblers were in attendance. Technically a “partial migrant,” Pine Warblers winter on the Upper Texas Gulf Coast–one of only a few warbler species that do so. We have, once again, arrived at a time when the Neotropical migrants are mostly back or well on their way back to the tropics.
Likewise, intracontinental migrants are still moving through or settling into their winter Texas homes. Of these North American wanderers, I most look forward to the ducks and can’t wait to hit their hot spots along the Texas Coast like Rockport, the Hans and Pat Suter Wildlife Refuge City Park (Corpus Christi), and the Birding Center on South Padre Island. Loons and grebes, too, will soon begin arriving in Galveston Bay and environs, imparting a definite northern feel to the coastal Texas waterscape.
“When you’re young you prefer the vulgar months, the fullness of the seasons. As you grow older you learn to like the in-between times, the months that can’t make up their minds. Perhaps it’s a way of admitting that things can’t ever bear the same certainty again.” ― Julian Barnes, Flaubert’s Parrot
©2013 Christopher R. Cunningham. All rights reserved. No text or images may be duplicated or distributed without permission.