This pre-festival trip will explore some of the best birding spots on the Clear Lake Loop of the Upper Texas Coast - Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail. This area contains a variety of habitats, including approximately 60 acres of oak woodlands, riparian edge habitat along the bayou, freshwater ponds, wetlands, and bay waters. This amazing habitat diversity attracts a wide variety of resident and migratory bird species, as well as other wildlife such as turtles, deer, alligators, and swamp rabbits. We'll…

Our trip begins with a bus ride to the Gulf Coast Bird Observatory to watch migrant songbirds being caught in mist nets and banded by professional bird banders. This project establishes baseline data for the GCBO property on both resident and migratory bird populations. Banding allows the observatory to obtain information about the physical condition of migrants at this intermediate location between the coast and the bottomland forests lying well inland. Both coastal woodlots and inland bottomland forests are known to be extremely important stopover habitats for nearctic-neotropical migrants that move through the Gulf of Mexico region. Birds that are captured for banding can provide valuable information about their relative physical condition. What a unique opportunity….and that is just the start of this exciting field trip!

Don’t miss this popular field trip to the Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge, which is designated an Internationally Significant Shorebird site and contains more water than land within its 44,000+ acres. We’ll leave dark and early on our bus trip to the refuge, crossing San Luis Pass at sunrise and making a quick stop to check for rails in the lagoons. As we continue westward along the Bluewater Highway, we’ll check the small lagoons along the way for nesting herons and keep an eye out over the wetlands for raptors.  We’ll continue along the levee road that follows Oyster Creek, offering the possibility of Ospreys, White Pelicans, and lingering winter waterfowl.