Top 100 Birding Sites of the World

Information

SITE RANK

HABITAT Woodland, scrub, pond, marsh

KEY SPECIES Huge numbers of migrants of various kinds, but especially warblers (more than 30 species in a day if possible); breeding waterbirds including various herons and Roseate Spoonbill

TIME OF YEAR Mid-March to mid-May is the best time, with some decent birding in the fall and winter

If birds are exhausted after their journey, normally shy species can give fantastic views to birders. This is a male Rose-breasted Grosbeak.

Whoever gave High Island its name certainly had a sense of humour, because this small wooded rise on the Texas coast is neither an island nor is it very high. In fact it is the skin of a subterranean salt dome that lies close to the land’s surface and lifts the ground very slightly above the marshy plain upon which it lies. This creates little more than a pimple on the flat coastline, but it provides the only opportunity for miles around for trees to take root and grow.

The ironic name is not very funny, but High Island has a big reputation for putting smiles on birders’ faces. Many is the visitor who has come away from this modest-looking place blabbering that it has provided the best single birding experience of his or her entire life. High Island is consistently in everybody’s top ten birding sites in the USA. Yet if you visit in the summer you will be completely bewildered by such accolades, since the best you will see is plenty of waterbirds and a lot of Northern Cardinals and Blue Jays. Spring is the time to come.

High Island’s reputation is built on its magnetic attraction for northbound migrants. It lies just over 1 km from the Gulf Coast of Texas, on a major migration route for birds that have wintered in Mexico or South America and are heading north to breed in the forests of eastern North America. In spring, millions of travelling birds are funnelled through to the northern tip of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico and from there they set out on a 1,000-km flight across the Gulf of Mexico to Texas. In the right conditions many thousands of birds will be undertaking this journey simultaneously.

If you are a bird approaching from a height, you will see High Island as a small patch of dark green lushness amid a vast sea of grassy marsh. After your 18-hour flight, you could be forgiven for wanting to drop down and take a rest and a feed the moment you sight land; and since High Island is the only joint in town, it is here that you will end up. Thus, on a typical spring day, there will always be some migrants foraging in the woodlands here.

However, these ‘normal’ conditions are not what really excite birders. At times during the migration season, strong cold fronts cross the Texas coast and enter the Gulf during the daytime, and when this happens they bring strong northerly winds and rain behind them. Suddenly, things change for the worse for the migrants, who are still flying over the water. Approaching the end of their marathon journey, with reserves already depleted, they hit strong headwinds and rain and their routine flight becomes an emergency. The journey becomes a struggle for survival, and many perish. Those that do make it, however, often make landfall in a state of exhaustion, and it is here that High Island comes into its own for both birders and birds. The birds gratefully flop down into shelter and rich feeding grounds, and the birders thrill to a phenomenon known as a ‘fall-out’.

Although fall-outs are bad for the birds themselves, there is no doubt that they are among the most exciting events for a birder. The name is apt, because birds may literally fall out of the sky in a veritable shower, and bushes that were empty a few minutes before can almost instantaneously become full of colourful sprites. You can see as many birds together in a single view as you would encounter in thousands of square kilometres of their breeding habitat, and of course there will also be dozens of species all showing at the same time. It is not uncommon in spring for 30 species of American wood warblers to be on High Island simultaneously; you could see Grey-cheeked, Swainson’s and Hermit Thrushes, plus Veery, feeding alongside each other; you can see 20 or 30 Scarlet Tanagers or Rose-breasted Grosbeaks in the same tree, and even more Grey Catbirds in the same patch of scrub. All the while, the birds are too exhausted to care about what danger birders might be to them, so they go about their business within a few metres of enthralled watchers.

A quirk of High Island is that, since the trip from Mexico takes a night and half a day, the main arrivals of birds here are not at dawn, as at most migrant traps in the world, but usually from midday onwards. A birder arriving too early will receive amused looks from the volunteer rangers.

The season at High Island begins in mid-March and ends in mid-May. During that time, the volunteer guides are always present in the main wooded areas, Boy Scout Woods (Lewis Smith Woods) and Smith Oaks Bird Sanctuary, both of which are owned and run by the Houston Audubon Society. The former site consists of groves of hackberry and oak trees, and it has an excellent boardwalk and trail that cater for wheelchair users. Birds can perform to the gallery here, because there literally are galleries, tiered rows of seats that overlook certain hot-spots; this may be the only place in the world with such an arrangement for general birding. Meanwhile, Smith Oaks is larger and the trees are older. This sanctuary also has a pond with a truly splendid waterbird colony on an island; in 2006 there were 190 pairs of Great Egrets here, plus 97 pairs of Snowy Egrets, 67 of Cattle Egrets, 35 of Tricoloured Herons, one of Little Blue Heron, three of Black-crowned Night Herons, 69 of Neotropic Cormorants and no fewer than 86 of Roseate Spoonbills. They make great viewing when the birding is slow.

The season at High Island begins with Black-and-white Warblers in mid-March and ends with Mourning Warblers in mid-May. April is the peak month but autumn can be excellent, although it is never as spectacular or as showy as in the spring. High Island, therefore, is very much a seasonal hot-spot – but what a hot-spot it is.

‘Fallout’ conditions can bring migrant Grey Catbirds to High Island, often in large numbers.

Up to 30 Scarlet Tanagers have been counted in a single tree on High Island.

As a sideshow to the migration-watching, more than 80 pairs of Roseate Spoonbills breed at Smith Oaks.