A newcomer asked me recently: “Are there any birds to see in the summer? What do local birders do during the hot season?”
Eager not to disappoint a potential recruit to the island’s nature scene, I may have oversold the case a bit. But there is indeed an interesting mix of birds on Galveston Island in the summer, and birders don’t “hibernate” from June through Labor Day.
Yes, it’s smart to take your walk early or late in the day to avoid the high sun and smart to pick the drier days with a cooling wind when the “mosquies” are less obnoxious.
Early starts are best for birding, too. Brenda and I walk frequently in the summer in the same varied habitats as we do all year, on the beach, through grassy uplands, wood motts and tidal wetlands.
Our favorite locations are ones where we can walk longish distances and combine exercise with nature watching, such as gulf and bay sides of the bridge at San Luis Pass, the trails in the state park or from our house to and around Lafitte’s Cove Nature Preserve and to some extent, though not yet developed enough, at the East End, Lagoon and Big Reef.
I am not an ornithologist, so I am permitted a little license with how I group the birds that are on our island during the summer.
Group 1 includes primarily our well-known year-round resident breeders, like the herons, brown pelicans, doves, laughing gulls, skimmers, willets, some types of terns, mockingbirds, grackles, etc.
Being abundant, they provide the guarantee that any summer walk can be a birding walk.
In addition, I include in Group 1 some less-common “summer lingerers,” individuals without a breeding urge, whose kind we might have seen during the winter or spring but would normally have moved northward out of or through our area by summer. It’s not unusual to see a member of the plover or sandpiper family on the beach.
Group 2 includes the truly interesting and unique birds of summer.
In this group I do include a small subgroup, best defined as nonbreeding summer wanderers or vagrants, which have spread out from their home range south of us.
The magnificent frigate bird is the best example. If you are on the ferry, look up, around and high; this bird likely will be visible.
Maybe some of you have seen the males with their bright red throat sacs up close on the Galápagos Islands. They are big but very lightweight birds.
Most of my Group 2 birds are the individual birds of some spring migratory species that find the conditions on Galveston Island just right, even though most of their species journey deeper into North America to nest and reproduce. Their numbers are fewer, and the chance of spotting them are less than when their kind is flooding through in the spring or fall.
One does have to be luckier and perhaps a bit better birder to spot some of them, but that’s what adds to the fun. They arrive in the spring and stay into or through the summer.
A common one is the purple martin. The martins prefer to fly high for food and the swallows low; their preferred food is different. But be warned, martins leave us early and will be heading for “home” by mid-July, perhaps after having raised two broods of young here. Before they leave, watch them congregate in flocks on the wires.
Their kin, the barn, cave and cliff swallows, also grace our area in the summer and will head south later. Cave and cliff swallows have found man-made structures as good as the real thing. Take the service road and check for their two different style nests under the first bridge north of Omega Bay.
Similar in flying and feeding style, but not at all related, are the fast flying chimney swift and “loop the loop” common nighthawk, with its wild, frequent cry.
There are many other aerial feeding birds that summer on the island. Unlike the swallows and swifts that are in perpetual motion, others tend to perch and sortie out to feed from bushes, branches and wires. They are, therefore, easier to see.
The most beautiful and acrobatic is the scissor-tailed flycatcher, with its long, scissor tail. It is difficult to not be moved by its colors, gray overall with a peach-colored underside and an orange-red patch under its wing pit.
The eastern kingbird, another flying insect eater, is black with a white underside and a white tip on its tail, and gives good views. The eastern-wood pewee and other small flycatchers are duller but still interesting to spot and watch. Not common but not to be discounted in the summer is a view of a great crested flycatcher.
Also drawn by our summer insect populations are the locally breeding vireos. They tend to skulk and forage among the leaves in the trees and bushes.
In the deep woods, my favorite summer sighting is of a member of the cuckoo family, the yellow-billed cuckoo. It flies very flat and directly into the deep brush, but if you are quiet, it will sit for awhile.
Its color is a warm brown with rufous-edged wings in flight and a strikingly white underside and a yellow (slightly down-curved) bill.
Some may think the colorful warblers, tanagers, orioles and buntings have long migrated northward by July. That’s true to a large degree but not completely.
In the brush and trees, it’s not unusual to find breeding pairs of orchard orioles on the island, and certainly there are pairs of painted buntings around. Other summering neo-tropical birds, such as indigo buntings, may be sighted.
In the wetlands, our common all-year-round “waders” get supplemented by several species of related good-sized birds.
Yellow-crowned night-herons are common, stalking in the salt marshes for crustaceans.
Solitary hunting green herons are everywhere, and particularly obvious feeding on the insects that crowd the canal bulkheads above the tide line. The purple gallinule wends quietly through marsh grass, while the less shy black-necked stilts rise into the air at the slightest provocation, trailing their long, bubble gum-colored legs.
Flying above the wetlands, you could see a the gull-billed tern. It has a short, black bill and swoops for insects and fiddler crabs on the salt flats. Some other more characteristic members of the tern family visit for the summer and breed on the island, like the sandwich (with its black beak tipped with yellow — think “mustard”) and the diminutive least tern.
On the north side of the state park, or on Big Reef, a pair or two of summering Wilson’s plovers might attempt some precarious nesting. So do take care and quickly bring official attention to dune buggies that might be tearing up their fragile habitat.
So now, I hope you won’t listen to those who proclaim summer the “birding doldrums.” Keep walking, stay healthy and learn more about the cadence of island bird life throughout the year.
Mort Voller is immediate past president of the Galveston Island Nature Tourism Council and an enthusiastic birder and nature tourism advocate.
