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Important Bird Areas
Texas IBA Sites
Blackjack Peninsula (Aransas NWR)
Only at Aransas NWR do the endangered whooping crane spend the winter. The brackish waters and salt marshes teeming with fish, blue crabs and clams also support pelicans, herons, egrets, spoonbills and waterfowl.
Columbia Bottomland
An estimated 29 million migrant birds pass through the Columbia Bottomlands each year in the spring. Parts of the Columbia Bottomlands are within 20 miles of downtown Houston. This area is characterized by the mixed hardwood forests stretching across the floodplains of three major rivers - Colorado, San Bernard and Brazos - and the associated bayous. The site covers most of Brazoria and Ft. Bend counties and part of Matagorda and Wharton counties. The forests extend southward to extensive marsh habitat along the Gulf of Mexico, and represents the best bottomland stopover habitat in Texas.
Columbia Bottomlands is used by over 240 species of birds each year. This includes species of concern such as: Swainson’s, Hooded, Prothonotary and Worm-eating Warblers, Bell’s Vireos, Olive-sided Flycatchers, Swallowtailed Kites and Bald Eagles, as well as migrant shorebirds.
Port Bolivar Peninsula Sanctuaries (Bolivar Flats Shorebird Sanctuary and Horseshoe Marsh Bird Sanctuary)
The Port Bolivar Peninsula Sanctuaries consist of expanses of gulf front beach, uplands, high quality salt marsh, and extremely productive mud flats. This ideal combination of habitats provides resting, feeding and breeding sites for hundreds of thousands of birds each year. Of particular interest are the large populations Piping and Wilson’s Plover, American Avocet, and Black Skimmers.
Sabal Palm Sanctuary
This 557-acre sanctuary lies approximately ten miles south of Brownsville, along the southern most bend of the Rio Grande. The sanctuary contains the largest remaining tract of Sabal Palm forest that once blanketed the Rio Grande Delta. Two hundred and eighty-nine species of birds have been recorded at the site, and diversity of species using the area is high in all seasons of the year.
Sabal Palm is one of six breeding area for the highly threatened Brownsville Common Yellowthroat. The sanctuary provides stop-over habitat for a variety of circum-gulf neotropical-nearctic migratory songbirds including Bell’s Vireo, Golden-winged Warbler, Cerulean Warbler, Olive-sided Flycatcher, Wood Thrush, Painted Bunting and Dickcissel.
Sundown Island
Sundown Island Sanctuary is a low-lying seventy-acre island built from dredge spoils in 1962. It is located near where the Matagorda ship channel and the Gulf Intra-coastal Waterway cross in Matagorda Bay, east of Port O'Connor and southeast of Port Lavaca, in the Texas coastal bend. The Island is leased from the General Land Office and managed by the National Audubon Society's Texas Coastal Sanctuaries program, as part of the Society's 13,000-acre network of 33 islands. The island is a breeding colony for 18 species of birds, including endangered Brown Pelican, and one of the largest colonies of threatened Reddish Egret on Texas Coast. In 2003, 15,000 pairs of breeding birds were found on the island. The eastern side of the island is characterized by a large sandy beach and is a breeding territory for Black Skimmers, Royal, Caspian, and Sandwich Terns.
Texas City Prairie Preserve
The Texas City Prairie Preserve features rare coastal prairie habitat and is one of the last remaining sites that supports wild Attwater's prairie chickens. At the turn of the century, there were approximately 1 million Attwater's prairie chickens along the Texas coast. However, loss of coastal prairie habitat over the years devastated the population, and less than 50 remain in the wild today, making the bird one of the most endangered in North America. The preserve is situated on Galveston Bay in Texas City, approximately 40 miles south of Houston.
In addition to habitat for the prairie chicken, the property provides a home for wintering and migrating grassland songbirds. The preserve also contains excellent wetlands that support migratory and year-round populations of waterfowl, shorebirds and wading birds, including nesting colonies of least terns and black skimmers. Other birds sighted here include brown pelican, white-faced ibis, black rail, American peregrine falcon, white-tailed hawk, reddish egrets, Forster's terns and American oystercatchers. |
