A Birder's Paradise

A bobcat checks out my nature camera in the early morning at Anahuac Refuge.

It's the end of the road for us here at Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge in Anahuac, Texas. We leave this weekend after a unique series of experiences. The astonishing – that's the only adjective I can use – number of birds we have seen almost defies belief. The endless, unremitting winds that sweep across the prairie and the rice fields wore on us and flogged the awning above the slide-outs of our motorhome. The joy of meeting birders who make the journey to Anahuac from all over the world – China, the Netherlands, Britain, Germany, Japan, Sweden, and many other countries – added to the adventure.

These people, including folks from all over the U.S., of course, had made the pilgrimage here because they are avid bird watchers. They are ‘way beyond casual birders. These folks have a handful of birds they have not yet seen on their “life list” and they make the journey here because this is where their birds are.

I'll always remember, with affection, a burly Texan who came into the center and, after viewing the whiteboard, he asked: "Do y'all have a slot for a liberal Texan to be listed?"

Jo and I often sit in the visitor center and make the visitors welcome with free coffee, while we invite them to list the birds they had seen on their visit on our whiteboard. We counted 131 species on one incredible day. These fragile creatures had all flown in from Mexico, Central and South America – some as far south as Tiera Del Fuego on the tip of Argentina. They soar north at around 6,000 feet, catching the southern trade winds. Their travels are often done at night so stars are involved in their navigation.

When they cross the Gulf of Mexico, however, they sometimes run into a cold front that pushes down from the northern U.S. and Canada. 

This massive change in the wind is like hitting a cliff and the exhausted birds falter.

Stilts stand in the shallow water in Anahuac.

They drop from the sky by the hundreds. Many of those who drop survive when they land in Anahuac. They eat, rest, sleep and then, when the front moves on, they rise up and head inland and north on their way to the central U.S. or even into the Arctic. Others are not so lucky. Last Wednesday, for example, buntings and warblers and hummingbirds hit the cold front wall. They swooped down in an attempt to avoid the “cliff” and 400 of them smashed into a 23-story building on Galveston Island, to our south. The dead birds piled up on the pavement, lured there by the lights of the tall building.

The government has to provide us with trucks, SUVs and hybrid vehicles so we can get around on our various jobs. We live in a little community of six couples in their motorhomes. 

Distances are vast. It takes us 40 minutes to drive to the Visitor Center at headquarters, where we currently are running the center. Virtually everything we do means a 25-45 minute journey. We are not permitted to use the government vehicles for our weekly grocery shopping or to drive around to see the various sights.

Robert pushes through the swamp in search of
wood duck houses in need of cleaning.

The land is billiard-table flat. There are 45,000 acres in the Refuge, much of it under cultivation by the local farmers. They lease the land for their rice crop with the proviso that they sow a second rice crop which is designated for use by the birds. Even though the fields seem utterly flat, they are not. So the farmers bring in a laser measuring device. This permits them to measure down to one inch. Once they plot that, they plough furrows in their fields, creating dams. The field are then flooded and the little dams are opened and closed to control the water so it is distributed evenly across the entire field. Then they hire a pilot and plane to load up with rice seed and that pilot sprays the fields with rice. In a matter of days, the fields have sprung to life with green shoots. At no point do you see young or old Vietnamese women stooped in the fields, stuffing the rice shoots into the flooded fields!

I should mention that we are astonished by the variety of television stations that come out of Houston, 50 miles to our west. Not only are there myriad Spanish language stations, but you can watch Chinese TV, Thai and Vietnamese TV on numerous channels.

Now, we roll on again, this time to another wildlife refuge in Long Island, New York. It'll be interesting to compare the two refuges...and maybe to meet up with the birds we saw down here in Texas.

One of the hundreds of alligators that live on Shoveler's Pond in the Anahuac Refuge.