The River of Birds (High Island April 2026)
I’m realizing I neglected to post anything on me, Eric and company’s trip to High Island and East Texas last April.
In 2021 we had a fallout early in the week and then good birding all week culminating with Virginia, Eric and I watching orioles, grossbeaks, warblers, etc. streaming through the trees at Smith Oaks. Best birding of my life!!
In 2022 we witnessed a great, rainy fallout at Sabine Woods in which Mississippi Kites hung in the air against the front for 30 minutes or more and the woods was full of thrushes, warblers and other passerines the rest of the week. New best birding of my life!!
Other years have also been good fallouts, but May 1, 2026 topped them all!!! New best birding of my life!!!!!
Eric, George, Lane, Norris and I had rented a house on Bolivar Peninsula for the latter part of the week. On Friday we birded some in the morning, but then got rained out and went back to the house for lunch, nap and hang.
Along about 5:00pm we were sitting around inside out of the light rain when someone looked out the window and cried “there are birds coming in!!!”. We all grabbed our bins and ran outside where we spent the next 2 hours + watching (mostly) passerines come off the gulf and into the nearby low brush and small trees and then keep going inland. You can get a taste of it in the attached video.
At one point I put my hand up to mark a line and asked someone to time 1 minute while I counted everything that flew by my hand: I counted 100 birds going by in 1 minute.
We kept at it until dark around 7:00ish, but the birds kept coming in after dark too. We had flycatchers, thrushes, grosbeaks, tanagers, orioles, cuckoos, buntings, shorebirds, gnatcatchers, gulls, egrets, kites, etc. and 16 species of warbler IDed on the wing or perched briefly. I dubbed it “The River of Birds”. Can’t wait to see what will top this one!! If you turn the sound on in the video you can listen to us calling out species!
