Birdlife of Houston, Galveston, and the Upper Texas Coast

History

history John James Audubon, the fountainhead from whom so much of America’s ornithological knowledge flows, visited the Upper Texas Coast (UTC) in 1837. A fledgling republic but a year old, Texas seduced Audubon not only with its promise of wildlife yet unnamed (he did find a new species of rattlesnake) but with its ragtag muster of colonists who had captured the American imagination with their improbable defeat of Santa Ana’s numerically stronger Mexican army. Audubon’s descriptions of the city of Galveston and the new capital of Houston were singularly unflattering, particularly his brief meeting with Sam Houston, president of the new republic. Yet his infatuation with the birdlife of Galveston Bay and its tributary , Buffalo Bayou, remains vividly etched in his writings.“Ah, my dear friend,” he wrote in a letter to Reverend Bachman,“would that you were here just now to see the Snipes innumerable, the Blackbirds, the Gallinules, and the Curlews that surround us; — that you could listen as I do now, to the delightful notes of the Mocking-bird, pouring forth his soul in melody as the glorious orb of day is fast descending towards the western horizon; —that you could gaze on the Great Herons which, after spreading their broad wings, croak aloud as if doubtful regarding the purpose of our visit to these shores!” In 1938 George Williams remarked that “except for three or four articles recording observations made during a few days of the year, there has been published no survey of bird life along any part of the Texas coast lying north of the Rio Grande Valley.” Sixty-five years later, surprisingly few publications have appeared negating Williams’s statement. Early publications and papers, including those by John James Audubon (1831–39, 1840–44), Henry Nehrling (1882), John Allen Singley (1893), and George Finlay Simmons (1914), contained simple lists of birds and habitats seen during brief visits to the region. John K. Strecker’s (1912) account provided preliminary information on the statewide abundance and seasonal occurrence of Texas birds with limited reference to the UTC. George Williams (1938) supplied the first comprehensive description of the upper coast’s waterbirds . This important paper, now largely forgotten, offered insight into the breadth, magnitude, and dynamics of regional waterbird populations and movements. Most significant, Williams’s observations now furnish a critical historical perspective for contemporary studies. Arlie McKay lived in Cove through the early 1970s, working for what was then Humble Oil Company. A “patch birder” who rarely left his neighborhood, he found a number of state and local firsts and regularly communicated with birding luminaries of the time, such as George Williams and Connie Hagar. Arlie recorded his daily sightings on the backs of discarded voting ballots, using a numerical code he created. Although effectively blind in his later years, Arlie identified the area’s first Rock Wren by sound (later confirmed by Ben Feltner). He was a mentor and inspiration for many UTC birders, including Ben Feltner , Victor Emanuel, and, in Arlie’s last years, Ted Eubanks. Most subsequent publications remained bound to a traditional checklist format augmented by brief descriptions of expected arrival and departure dates, regional distribution, and general approximations of relative abundance. Among the more contemporary are The Birds of Galveston Island (Hall et al. 1959), Checklist of Birds of the Upper Texas Coast (Williams 1962), the Texas Ornithological Society’s checklists (Arnold and Kutac 1974; TOS 1984, 1995), and the expanded A Birder’s Checklist of the Upper Texas Coast (Richardson et al. 1998). Of special importance is Harry C. Oberholser’s two-volume The Birdlife of Texas (1974), edited and to a large extent written by Edward Kincaid. This work presents a wealth of information relating to the distribution, plumage, and biology of Texas birds. When appropriate, we call attention to changes that have occurred along the Upper Texas Coast since its publication. Other recent works pertaining to East Texas birds include Birds of Texas: A Field Guide (Rappole and Blacklock 1994), Birds of the Texas Coastal Bend (Rappole and Blacklock 1985), The Birds of Texas (Tveten 1993), and The TOS Handbook of Texas Birds (Lockwood and Freeman 2004). Note that Birds of Texas: A Field Guide includes many records never accepted by the Texas Bird Records Committee, so its coverage of East Texas is quite different than our own. All four texts include bibliographies useful to birders on the Upper Texas Coast. The Gulf Coast Migrant, published by George Williams from...