February 10, 2023
Chris talks with Bill Sain, a long-time leader in the American Birding Association, and Maureen Frank, Associate Professor of Conservation Biology at Sul Ross State University about BIRDS! The Big Bend area hosts a tremendously rich diversity of bird species, and watching them is an endless source of pleasure for newbies and veteran birders alike. What are the easiest birds to find? What are the rarest birds in the area? What bird did Bill’s dad want to be reincarnated as? Listen and find out!
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Transcript for “Birding in the Big Bend”:
Chris Ruggia
Hello. Welcome. Thank you for joining us again for Heart of the Big Bend. This is a podcast and radio show coming to you every other week about visiting the beautiful Big Bend of Texas. Specifically, we will cover what’s happening in Alpine, an incredibly friendly small town nestled in a desert mountain valley at the heart of the Big Bend region. With easy day trips from Alpine, you can take in everything this amazing region has to offer. I’m Chris Ruggia, director of Tourism for the city of Alpine and today we’re going to talk about birds and I have two people who know so much more than I do to share some information with you about this topic. We have Bill Sain who’s been in Alpine for quite a while now and has quite the background with the American Birding Association. And then we also have, brand new to Alpine, Maureen Frank, who’s a new associate professor for Conservation Biology at Sul Ross and the Borderland Research Institute. Welcome.
Maureen Frank
Thank you.
Chris R
So birds, this is a huge topic. There’s a lot of birds in this area, it’s incredibly rich with the diversity of birds and so I’m going to be the token ignorant person – I know a bird when I see one, but that’s as far as it goes. I certainly enjoy them when you’re here. So, I’m going to ask you to educate me and the listeners about birds in the area. Now there’s a couple of different threads that we can take. I mean, there’s my situation, which is the novice, the entry level. We come out and don’t know what birds we’re looking at, but we see there’s some birds there; and then obviously there’s the enthusiasts who really know what they’re doing. So, I’m hoping that we can share some information that will enhance the visit for both of these kinds of people. So, the novice birder, for starters, let’s say a person’s coming to the area, what are they likely to see first? What’s a recognizable bird that they might encounter first?
Bill Sain
Well, typically throughout the year there will be a variety of birds, but the ones you typically see first are the ones that are soaring around above you. So, with the exception during the winter, the Turkey Vultures are probably the first thing they’ll see. They actually migrate out during the winter and they should be coming back. In fact, there may be a few back already.
Chris R
Yes, a lot of people might not know that the Easter rabbit might be a sign of spring other parts of the world or the country, but here it’s with the return of the Turkey Vulture, absolutely spring is here. And we see them in my neighborhood, circling above the big pine tree that they’re going to sleep on, and they come back to the same trees, and there’s these huge kettles, they’re called, those huge funnels of beautifully soaring Turkey Vultures up in the air. And people might think vultures are so ugly until you see one up in the sky.
Bill S
Yeah. My dad had always said that if reincarnation was true, he wanted to come back as a Turkey Vulture. He continued on saying he didn’t really care too much for their eating habits, but he looked like they looked like they had so much fun while they were flying around up there. And he passed away seven or eight years ago. And at the graveside services, a Turkey Vulture flew right by his casket right before the service has started. And my mom turned to me and said, well, there’s your dad coming to see who showed up for his funeral. But, yeah, they are very graceful as they’re soaring around. If you watch them for a while, you see they barely even flap. They just use the air currents to stay up there. They have really broad wings and they’re pretty good sized.
Chris R
Yeah. And driving along the highway, I guess if it’s not a vulture, it might be a hawk. But we’re driving by so fast, and I don’t know, as I’ve already expressed, I don’t have a lot of knowledge about it. So, the most I get is hawk. And then it’s gone.
Bill S
Yeah. There’s three hawks that are typically about the same size you find here. Redtail hawk is probably most common. There’s also one called the Ferruginous Hawk and the Swainson’s Hawk. You might also see Golden Eagles, both soaring, as well as sitting on the side of the road competing with the Turkey Vultures to eat something dead. Or I see them a lot out by the prairie dog town, which is just north of Marathon.
Chris R
Right. Which is highway 385.
Bill S
Correct.
Maureen F
And golden eagles are so much bigger than the hawks that if you think that maybe you saw a golden eagle, you probably didn’t, because when you see one, you’ll realize how much bigger they are. And vultures are pretty good size, too. But it surprises a lot of people to realize that eagles will scavenge quite a bit, but the vultures kind of, to go back to them for a second. They’re pretty incredible animals. And so, yeah, they’re eating dead stuff. But the other benefit, if you were to come back as a Turkey Vulture, you never have to worry about getting food poisoning because they provide a really valuable service to us, and that their stomach acidity is so high that it’s not just that they tolerate bacteria, it destroys it, like E. coli and salmonella. It gets destroyed inside of them. And it’s so awesome to have them on the landscape. Animals are going to die. And so, it’s nice to have vultures clean. It up so that we don’t have…yeah.
Bill S
Just imagine what it would be like if there was dead animals everywhere.
Maureen F
It would be much worse than having vultures. Vultures are pretty cool.
Chris R
Yeah. And the other time we’re going to see them most often is early in the morning when they sun their wings. So they’ll be up on a fence post with their wings spread out, warming up.
Bill S
Right. They warm up like that. They also need the heat of the day to help create thermal so that causes the air to rise. And so, they’re so big they use that to help them get the lift and get up into higher areas.
Maureen F
They’re waiting for a ride.
Bill S
And that’s actually how the Turkey Vultures, when they actually leave, and a lot of hawks, when they migrate, they’ll find those thermals. And you talked about kettling and you’ll get a group of them, they start going around circles and the lift is carrying up into a higher elevation. At some point they’ll find a jet stream or something like that. And then when they get that, they follow it until that dies out. Then they find another thermal and one way up to another jet stream. So that’s how a lot of the hawks and Turkey Vultures will migrate.
Chris R
And so if I’m again, I’m interested in birds but don’t know a lot and I’m new to the area. What are some good spots to go to see some birds that I might be able to recognize or to learn a little bit?
Bill S
The Davis Mountains State Park and Big Bend National Park. There’s a number of places there you can go. Davis Mountain State Park has a couple of bird feeding stations and in each one of those they have photos of what should be there. And there’s also information checklist and other booklets that they’ll have available. You can look at reference guides, things like that to help you learn what you’re seeing coming into the feeders.
Chris R
Yeah. And I believe CDRI, the Chihuahuan Desert Research Institute, also has a bird blind, and I bet they have a handout for you. They’ve got quite a few publications. I don’t know if they have one specifically about birds, but I doubt they have a big checklist sign. I don’t think they have that like the state park. One thing for folks new to the area that I might suggest is stopping at the Alpine Visitor Center or the Fort Davis Chamber of Commerce because there’s a publication about birding sites in the area that Cecilia Riley put together. And then Alpine and Fort Davis, we partnered to print up the publications and so that has a list of sites all around the area. So, it goes up from Balmorea near the state park and I guess over to.
Bill S
I drove through Langtry a couple of days ago and stopped at the visitor center there, at the TxDOT Visitor Center. And they mentioned birds and they handed me one of those.
Chris R
Excellent.
Maureen F
The Langtry Visitor Center is good for anybody who’s coming to Alpine or they’re leaving from Alpine. I highly recommend the Langtry Visitor enter.
Chris R
Yeah. So that’s taking 90 because most folks are going to take 10. So, if you want a little more leisurely drive, a little different scenic pallet then you’ll hit Langtry to the east of us.
Maureen F
And then the other thing I’d say for folks who are coming to this area and especially if you’re new to birding, just make sure you’ve got a good field guide or some sort of reference and especially if you take some time to go through it and know what you might expect beforehand can be really helpful. And a lot of times when field guides are split like eastern and western US, a lot of times Texas ends up in Eastern. But if you’re coming to Alpine you probably need a western field guide or both.
Bill S
Typically the split when they split eastern or westerns like the 100 meridian which runs right through the middle of Texas.
Chris R
Okay. Yeah.
Maureen F
So especially for this part of the state you need some of your western birds. The other thing is there’s a lot of good apps out there as well. Merlin Bird ID is a free one that’s done by the Corneille lab of ornithology and you can actually, you can search for birds and limit it to where you are. So, you can put in Alpine and you can put in this time of year and that’s a good way to kind of flip through before you come and see what you might expect or once you get out here and to look at things.
Bill S
And then around town, and most towns here, you’ll see a number of different types of doves and pigeons and various blackbirds, Great-Tail Grackles and Eurasian Starling. So, there’s a lot of those kind of things that if you live in town you’ve probably seen.
Chris R
We have a couple of Curve-billed Thrashers that are our neighbors. They’re not afraid and they walk around a lot. So, they’re hopping around the yard as we’re doing our watering and things.
Bill S
And we have the Northern Mockingbird which of course is the state bird, and the Curve-billed Thrasher is basically a cousin. So, they have some of their calls are a little bit similar, not quite, but because they are related, they do have some similarities
Chris R
And they seem to like to nest in the cacti. We have some cholla in the field next to our house and they nest in there.
Maureen F
We have a really fun town bird right now too. Sometimes if you’re in the city and just want to do some really casual birding, a lot of times birders like to go to cemeteries because there can be good birds because you’ve got nice big old trees. But here, Kokernot Park is right near, there’s some great trees there and that’s often a good place to find birds. And lately we’ve had a Lewis’s Woodpecker hanging around which is normally no farther east than New Mexico, really.
Bill S
In fact I stopped on my way here today and looked at it like five minutes ago and we do typically get that every year, every other year up in the Davis Mountains. But this is the first one in the ten years I’ve been here that it’s been in Brewster County and it’s here in the park.
Chris R
Yeah. And in Cecilia’s booklet in Alpine, Maureen, you mentioned the Cemetery and Kokernot Park, and those are the two sites that she mentions in Alpine proper. The cemetery is well, you just look on a map you’re headed out towards south of town, out towards Big Bend National Park and then you’ll take a left and I’m not sure which road it is though. Yeah. And then Kokernot Park is a very large park complex, a bunch of it is city land and then next to that is Sul Ross property, which includes Kokernot Lodge, and Alpine Creek runs through there. There are plans for bird habitat enhancement with some water trying to restore the ponds from the spring. That originally was kind of the founding purpose, that’s what Alpine came from, Burgess spring. And so, the idea is to get water there again and it will be more inviting to some of the birds.
Bill S
And the trees around there are the cottonwoods. I think they’re very good for birds. I go there frequently. Sometimes there’s owls roosting there and there’s all sorts of there’s even hummingbirds that sometimes are flying around up in those trees.
Maureen F
And you made a good point too, is that especially out here, if you’re coming to visit you should remember this for multiple reasons, but we are in a desert so make sure you always have water with you even if you’re just going to the park. But also keep in mind that water is a huge draw for wildlife and because there’s just not that much of it out here and so if you find water that’s why Lake Balmorea is a fantastic place to go birding because that draws in birds.
Chris R
Absolutely.
Bill S
And that point brings up another point, is that one of the reasons that this area is so good for birds and has such a large number of birds is because of the diversity of habitat. You have the area along the Rio Grande which provides water and some habitat and then you have the Chihuahuan Desert, then you have various mountain ranges like the Chisos Mountains, the Davis Mountains and that’s a sky island concept.
Maureen F
Yeah, as you go up in elevation in these mountains it’s going to get cooler, which of course is wonderful if you’re coming to visit us during the summertime. And also, you tend to get more precipitation. And so, you’ve got these areas basically, like Bill said, sky islands, these habitats that are kind of unique. So, it’s like this whole surrounded by desert and then you’ve got these areas that are cooler and wetter than everything surrounding them. You can get unique species in there as well. And it’s such a cool area because, yeah, in one day you could be along the Rio Grande, come up to Alpine, head up to Fort Davis, or, you know, up into the Chinati. Is there any of the other you know, there’s so many places to explore, all these different mountain ranges with sky islands that have that just have completely different birds, completely different vegetation.
Bill S
Yeah, completely. Yeah. The water availability, the vegetation will change as you change elevation. As you’re driving up in the mountains, you’ll see how it goes from one type of plants and trees to another to another. And each of those will host a different group of birds, bird species.
Chris R
And yeah, you mentioned within the day, even within an hour in the National Park, with the Chisos Mountains being the only complete mountain range contained within a National Park. You get from say, Santa Elena canyon up to the Chisos Basin in a very short drive.
Bill S
In fact, Big Bend National Park has the largest list of bird species of any national park. I think it’s also got the largest plant species.
Chris R
That may well be.
Bill S
If you want to go anywhere to see have a good chance of seeing a wide variety of species, then the National Park is the place to be.
Chris R
So, we’ve done a little bit then about the entry level birder and of course, you’re bringing an expert level of insight to that topic. But now, let’s say, speaking to your peers, if I’m an experienced birder and I’ve never been out to this area, what am I looking to see? What are the high points?
Bill S
The premier thing that birders come here for is the Colima Warbler, which is found up in the Chisos Mountains. That’s the only place to see them, the only place they nest in the US. They’re fairly common in Mexico, but as far as coming this far north, that’s about it. There might be a few up in the Davis Mountains, but there are very few and far between if they’re there. And there’s actually quite a few companies around the country that offer birding tours and almost all of them will bring at least one or two groups here, usually starting about mid-April through mid-May. After that it’s a little bit too hot, so they don’t do that.
But in addition to that, they’re also looking for the Montezuma quail, which are typically found here in Alpine, there’s usually some up on Hancock Hill or over in the Sunny Glenn area up in the higher elevations. I live on Hancock Hill and we can occasionally hear them calling up above us. And once or twice I’ve seen them in the neighborhood. Unfortunately, they’re very easily impacted by drought and so they tend to kind of constrict their range when they’re in a drought. So, I haven’t heard any for the last couple of years.
Maureen F
And another good place to see those Chris mentioned: CDRI is where I got to see the ones that I’ve seen, and then sometimes Davis Mountain State Park, they’ll be in there as well. Texas has four different species of quails and bobwhite is the one that most everybody thinks of. We don’t have bobwhites out here, scaled quail which are out here, and then gamble’s quail is the fourth. But Montezuma’s are in other places that they live, like in Arizona and New Mexico, they’re much more abundant. And here some people call them the ghost quail or they don’t really exist.
Bill S
I sometimes refer to them as the mythical Montezuma.
Chris R
So, when folks are coming out to find something special here, is it mostly like a bird that they’ve never seen before or is it a bird they’ve seen before but never in that spot?
Bill S
It depends. Birding. There’s kind of an entire spectrum of who is a birder. There’re those people who just have bird feeders in their backyards and they just enjoy the birds that come there, those people that will go for walks and parks and things and maybe have binoculars and watch the birds. Then there’s people that you might want to call Chasers that will chase specific birds or Listers, they’ll go to different places just to keep a list. I have lists for what I’ve seen in my yard, what I’ve seen in every county that I’ve been in and every state I’ve been in. And I may be a little bit obsessive about that.
Chris R
We take our fun where we get it.
Bill S
And so that’s why the Lewis’s Woodpecker that’s here in Kokernot Park, it’s actually been bringing a lot of people from around the state because they want to see that one in this area. Some people haven’t seen it in the state at all, but others want to see it in this county. There’s something called the Century Club, which is a challenge to try and see at least 100 species in a county and do that in at least 100 counties within Texas. And I just finished Webb County, which is Laredo this past weekend, which was number 44 for me. So I’ve seen at least 100 species in 44 counties.
Chris R
You have a little work to do still.
Bill S
Yes.
Maureen F
He’s telling you to go birding Bill.
Chris R
That’s just more enjoyment.
Maureen F
Yeah, it’s definitely kind of a mix. But it’s neat sometimes to see things that are out here. So, Roadrunners are an awesome one that we haven’t even talked about yet and a very iconic Texas species. And they’re actually interesting because their range has expanded east a little bit. There’s lots of places in Texas you can see them. You can be around San Antonio; you can be more out this way. You can be in the southern part of the state. For some people, we’ve got that image of the Roadrunner in the desert. If that’s the image that you’re looking for, Alpine is a great place to find them.
Chris R
And that’s the one bird that you’re going to want to watch out for on the road. You’ll see the other birds in the road, but that Roadrunner might well be right in front of you.
Maureen F
They earn their name.
Chris R
Don’t hit the Roadrunner if you can help it.
Bill S
And Roadrunner is actually my favorite bird. I’m wearing a red hat now, but the one I had this morning has a Roadrunner on it. If you go outside and look at my vehicle, you’ll see my license plate has a Roadrunner. Texas Parks and Wildlife just came out with a Keep Nature Wild license plate that has a Roadrunner on it. So, I went ahead and ordered that as soon as I could.
Chris R
Right.
Maureen F
And then there’s definitely those species, too, that you might find them in other parts of the state, but they’re easier to find here. Zone-tailed Hawks are one we haven’t talked about that there’s maybe places you can find them a little more reliably than a certain other parts of the state.
Bill S
And Zone-tailed Hawks, going back to Turkey Vultures, they actually mimic Turkey Vultures. So, they look a little bit like Turkey Vultures and they fly like them. They prey on other birds. And the birds have gotten used to not paying attention to Turkey Vultures because they’re not worried about them as being a threat. And then, like, one out of every 100 Turkey Vultures soaring overhead suddenly comes down and has lunch, “invites them for lunch.”
Maureen F
So that’s kind of, I guess, a tip. If you are a more experienced birder and you’re coming out to this region, check all the Turkey Vultures. You’ll see all the birders out here, you’d think that maybe we were just in love with Turkey Vultures, but it’s because we’re checking to make sure if there’s a zone tailed hawk among them that’s so interesting.
Chris R
So, on a slightly different topic, Maureen, you’re here to do research, a conservation biologist. And I’m always interested about what we’re studying in our area. So, what’s going on with the research picture for birds?
Maureen F
Yeah, I did just start in January, so it’s very new. But the kind of the things that I’m interested in and have worked on a little bit in the past are species of greatest conservation need. And so, these are all species of life, actually. They’ve got plants and lichen and mollusks and stuff listed out too. But this is a state designated list of species that are not threatened or endangered right now. But either their populations are declining or the habitat that’s available for them is declining or there’s just other threats or maybe we just simply don’t have enough information about them.
The idea is that if we can recognize and prioritize management for these species now, we can prevent them from becoming threatened or endangered later. There’s plenty of those all around the state, but especially here around the Alpine area, there’s some very interesting species that I think it’s an interesting question of how we manage them.
And we haven’t actually talked about this a whole lot yet, but when you’re looking at lists of places you can go birding in this area, this is Texas and a lot of it is privately owned. 95% of the state is privately owned. And actually, out in Big Bend, there’s probably more public land than you think of in the rest of the state because Big Bend Ranch State Park is huge and Big Bend National Park is huge. But there’s still a lot of private ranches. And I have always had a passion for how we sustainably manage those private lands, how do we help landowners sustainably manage those for those species.
And one question that we’ve actually been talking about a lot recently is, quite a bit of research has been done about different grazing systems and how that benefits breeding birds. But there’s not a lot about how that looks different during the winter season. And we have some very important species that come here in the winter and just kind of in general we don’t know as much about birds during their migration periods and during the winter.
It’s kind of this idea of, okay, bird populations are declining. What do we do? We need to make sure there’s more baby birds, right? So, there’s been a lot of effort put into the breeding seasons and that is important. But for a lot of species, it’s like, well, we’ve done this work and their populations are still declining. And it’s because you need to look at the whole picture, right? If you don’t have as many adults surviving the winter to go to the breeding area and have more babies, then you’re still going to have an issue. So that’s a really interesting question to me is looking at how we make sure that we’ve got really good habitat during the winter for a lot of those species.
Another thing that’s interesting to me is some of the owls that are potentially up here. We haven’t really dived into, well, you mentioned great horned owls sometimes.
Chris R
I know, yeah, I’ll hear those. I know that one. And I’ll see a little silhouette at dusk up in a tree. Sometimes on the eaves of the Courthouse,
Bill S
I think they nested there a couple of years ago.
Maureen F
But there’s a project with a different faculty, Sul Ross, there’s some ongoing projects with Montezuma, but there’s also some interest in Owls that are also a little bit more cryptic. And birders aren’t going to catch them as much, right. Because they’re not out during the day. There’s some interest in tying together that work in some local areas and see if we can learn a little bit more about some of the owls that may be here that we just don’t know much about. Yeah. We depend a lot on private landowner partnerships and then, of course, funding from various organizations to get that work done. So that’s kind of where I’m at right now, is diving into all of that and figuring out where we’re going to go.
Chris R
Well, I always love reading the little summaries that BRI puts out because I’m a cartoonist, I love to draw the animals out here. I always want to know what’s actually happening.
Maureen F
Well, stay tuned. Hopefully I’ll have some more updates on the future.
Chris R
Well, thank you so much.
Bill S
Now, birds have been an economic draw for this area. She was talking about the studies of the species that winter down here. There was a study, I think there were three different graduate students who worked on it through borderlands research. It ended like, maybe four or five years ago. And during that time frame, they were looking for volunteers to come out to help them with the process. And during that three-year period, I think they had at least 100 people come from all over Texas to come in and spend at least one day helping them. Some stayed multiple days. Those birding tour companies, they come through, they usually spend the night up in somewhere for a couple of nights in the Davis Mountains and then go down to Big Bend and spend a couple of nights there. And then there’s also just a lot of individual birders that come out here and stay for a few days all over the area.
Chris R
Yeah. Well, let’s say I want to come and I want a little guidance for what I’m going to find. And where would I go? What would you suggest? Who would I talk to?
Bill S
Well, there’s a Facebook page called the Trans-Pecos Birds and Birding. That’s one resource if you’re on Facebook. Other than that, there’s not really anything any guides or anything that are out there other than the one you mentioned that Cecilia had put out. They do every other year, Fort Davis, host the Davis Mountain hummingbird celebration, which is coming up this in August, towards the end of August, I think it’s the 17th or the 20th, but don’t quote me on that. And it’s not just about hummingbirds. They go to various places and look at other birds. But there’s at least eight or nine species of hummingbirds out here during migration, during the August time frame. So, this festival is timed to happen during the height of that migration. Most of the rest of Texas, they get one or two, maybe as many as four. And so West Texas especially, coming through the Davis Mountains, there’s a lot of different hummingbird diversity, very colorful ones, big ones. I think the second largest hummingbird we get in the US is found here. Actually, the largest one is seen sometimes down in Big Bend National Park.
Chris R
Now, if folks want to do those field trips for the hummingbird celebration, they absolutely need to be watching the schedule, because I know the last one that they did, it sold out kind of the same day.
Bill S
Right. I believe they’ll have the registration open on May 15. Okay, I think I saw that recently. And so, there is a Davis Mountain Hummingbirds Celebration website. You can just Google that, that will pull it up for you.
Maureen F
And I think also, like Bill mentioned, if you are coming out to this area on that Trans-Pecos birding Facebook page, sometimes just saying, “is there anybody in the area who wants to go birding with me?” Because sometimes you know, you never have to twist Bill’s arm too hard to get him to go out birding with you. But there’s lots of folks out there that might say, “yeah, I’m in the area,” or “I’m available,” so that can be a good way to find somebody else as well. Or people give you tips and things.
Bill S
And some of the local parks, the Davis Mountain State Park will do birdwalks. They have a regular schedule. I’m not sure about the national park. Big Band Ranch State Park, I don’t think has any birdwalks, but I could be wrong on that. They have a new ranger there who’s a birder, and so he’s been doing a lot of birding down in the area. He’s the first birder who’s lived in that park, in Presidio in the southern part of Brewster and Presidio counties. So, he’s been really encouraging or enticing a lot of us to go down there with all the birds he’s been seeing, but you can find some of those local people. Lee Hoy operates the Big Bend photography and birding tours.
Chris R
Right. And his photos are gorgeous.
Bills S
Yeah, he is an outstanding photographer.
Chris R
He worked at Langtry for a really long time for he retired and started and then we all realized, oh my gosh, what a photographer!
Bill S
You can look up his website and possibly hire him as a guide or ask him questions. There are also a few other Facebook pages. It’s mostly based on Facebook, but there’s TEXbirds that you can also just go on there and ask journal questions or say, I’m going here, where should I go?
Maureen F
And one other thing you can do, and more serious birds are probably aware of this, but there’s also a citizen science database called eBird, and it’s ebird.org. And that’s another place that you can see hotspots. So you can hit the map that says Explore hotspots and zoom in to this area. And what’s cool about that is that you can see different the markers for each site are shaded differently depending on how many species have been seen. And then you can also click on that particular site, click on the bar charts, which is basically like the full species list. And then if, you know, say, okay, I’m going to be visiting in March, you can limit it just to what’s been seen in March, so you can kind of have a good expectation of what you might see. The other thing is if you have an eBird account, you can sign up to get alerts for rare birds. And so more serious birders, again, may already be aware of that, but I keep Brewster County eBird alert right now. It’s like every day somebody else saw the Lewis’s woodpecker you go see, went to the park to see it, but you can get those and kind of see where they were at. And that can be useful as well for keeping track of those rare species
Bill S
It’s also good for keeping track of birders.
Chris R
Excellent. Well, yeah, well, I definitely recommend that anybody coming through pick up a copy of that booklet of the birding sites because it’ll tell you there’s at least 20 different sites and it tells you what species you’re likely to see there. It’s something that Cecilia put together for, for friends visiting her so she didn’t have to say the same stuff every time. It’s great info from somebody who really knows what they’re doing.
Maureen F
Something I will say, too, that I just remembered. So that site, obviously those are all public sites that you can get into in that book. That’s one of the neat things about the Hummingbird Festival. And there’s quite a few festivals around the state that have started trying to do this, but it will get you sometimes onto private properties that you wouldn’t otherwise get onto. And sometimes when you’re trying to see species that are a little rarer or a little more avoidance of humans, that can be a good option. Kind of another plug for that festival or other festivals around the state. Bill was just in Laredo. He’s guiding at the end of April for the Agrilife Extension, Birding the Border in Del Rio and all of those get people opportunities to go on private lands.
Chris R
Excellent. Well, thank you guys so much for sharing your expertise with our listeners and with me. Really grateful for that. And is there anything else you want to toss out there before we sign off?
Bill S
No, I don’t think so.
Chris R
We covered it, we’re done. Well, thanks again, you guys, and thank all of you for joining us again for Heart of the Big Bend. You can get more information about the show at visitalpinetx.com/podcast or search for Heart of the Big Bend on Apple Podcast, Spotify and most other podcast apps. And for everyone listening live on KVLF/KALP Radio in alpine, we’ll be back in two Fridays. Thanks, everybody.
Outro
You’ve been listening to the Heart of the Big Bend. Hope you liked what you heard and that you’ll find the time to experience all that the Big Bend has to offer. See you soon, partner.