Houston Audublog

We're excited to welcome a new team member to the Education Department - Javier Salas ! Javier considers himself an artist but holds a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science from The University of Texas at San Antonio. There, he ran cross country and worked as an ecology summer camp counselor and in monarch butterfly conservation. Since then, he has volunteered and worked at three different wildlife rehab centers, including the Alaska Raptor Center doing public education programs. After relocating for seasonal work at Lake Houston Wilderness Park in 2020, he became enamored with the diversity of birds in Houston and eventually discovered the Houston Audubon Raptor Center. Now that he is a part of the Houston Audubon team, he is excited to get people passionate about conservation through birds. In his spare time, he runs his personal art business and goes on trail hikes throughout the Houston area. Javier answered a few questions for us so everyone can get to know him a little

Houston Audubon announced the 2020 Laura Singleton Exceptional Volunteer at a virtual event celebrating our volunteers at the conclusion of National Volunteer Week. Our deserving honoree for 2020 is JD Carballo , volunteer maintenance technician at Edith L. Moore Nature Sanctuary.  JD has been an active and frequent volunteer at Edith L. Moore since 2014. We chose to honor him because of the unique and wide-ranging projects he has taken on throughout the sanctuary, including showing up during times of crisis. Due to his close proximity to the sanctuary, JD sometimes arrived on site before staff to take care of any issues. He also helped us prepare the sanctuary for unprecedented issues, such as the pandemic and extreme weather events. He kept an eye on the sanctuary and made sure cameras were up and gates were secure when staff were working from home. JD's contributions went above and beyond, showing a true sense of ownership and pride in our sanctuary.  Here are some things those

Rose-breasted Grosbeak ( Pheucticus ludovicianus ) Family: Cardinalidae Rose-breasted Grosbeaks are stocky, medium-sized songbirds with very large conical bills. The breeding plumage of adult males is striking; they have a black hood and back, a bright red chevron that extends from the black throat down the middle of the breast, and the underparts and rump are white. Females and immatures have brown upperparts, buff underparts with dark brown streaking, a thin whitish crown stripe and a bold whitish eyebrow.    Arriving from winter homes in southern Mexico, Central America and northern South America, Rose-breasted Grosbeaks are currently moving through the Houston area on their journey to their northern breeding grounds. The birds are stopping to rest and feed on seeds, fruits and insects. They can often be observed gorging on any Mulberry Tree they can find. They will also readily visit backyard feeders and consume sunflower seeds with abandon.  The song of the Rose-breasted Grosbeak

Happy Earth Day from all of us at Houston Audubon! Although we think every day should be Earth Day, we’re excited for a chance to celebrate the planet that sustains the people and wildlife that call it home.  There are many easy actions you can take to promote a healthier and happier Earth. If you're looking for a place to start and have a soft spot for our feathered friends, you can help locally by turning your community into a Bird-Friendly Community! Supporting birds in your yard or local spaces can make a huge conservation impact for not only wildlife, but people as well. As we like to say, “where birds thrive, people prosper.” There are four key steps to being Bird-Friendly! We've outlined them below, along with suggestions on how you can work towards each.  Get Connected With Others   Learn from others who are making efforts to create a happier and healthier world! This spring, there are a number of opportunities for you to connect with others doing great things for bi

Here at Houston Audubon we are so appreciative of the younger generations; from Elementary School to College, young people are a big part of our volunteer efforts. The initiative they take in finding ways to help out at our sanctuaries is super inspiring!  This was particularly true throughout the pandemic, as youth continued to work to help us, even as their school schedules were in limbo and they weren't able to gather in groups. Some of the contributions of youth volunteers in 2020 included: Eagle Scout Projects! Scouts built a shed, helped us clear out invasive plants, designed, built and installed a solar powered compost bin, developed a volunteer project to control invasive plants, and created and mounted new signs on our trails at Edith L. Moore; as well as built owl boxes for our High Island Sanctuaries.  High School clubs were also helpful to us! At Edith L. Moore, student activists from Memorial Teens for Green and Langham Creek Students Protecting Animals of America

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker ( Sphyrapicus varius ) Family: Picidae The Yellow-bellied Sapsucker is a member of the woodpecker family that winters in the southeastern United States. Similar to other sapsuckers, the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker has white vertical wing patches, an unbroken white stripe from the bill to the belly, and a stout beak. Adult males have a red crown, white throat, and a white belly. Females also have a red crown however, they differ from males with their white throat and pale yellow belly. Juveniles are more of a  brownish color with a spotted crown. Their call is a high pitched and nasal sounding “neeeeah.” You may also hear five or so rapid taps followed by a slower double tap as they bore into tree trunks.  Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers winter primarily in deciduous forests. During the spring and summer, they often take advantage of edge habitats that are formed by some type of disturbance such as a timber harvest. They utilize the trees within the forest not only for s

By Sneed B. Collard III On a balmy, pre-covid morning in June 2019, I arrived at the W.G. Jones State Forest at 5:45 a.m. There I was met by an enthusiastic biologist named Donna Work. Why? So that she could teach me about one of the world’s most intriguing birds, the Red-cockaded Woodpecker. Red-cockaded Woodpeckers, or RCWOs, once occupied an immense swath of pine forest stretching from New Jersey to Florida, and west to Texas and Oklahoma. Since the early 1800s, however, human activities—including logging, farming, damming, and urban sprawl—have whittled the birds’ favored long leaf pine habitat from between 60 and 90 million acres down to about three million acres. Not surprisingly, RCWO populations plummeted from approximately 1.6 million family groups, or “clusters”, to an estimated 7,800 clusters today. In fact, the Red-cockaded Woodpecker was one of the first birds to be listed as Endangered under the Endangered Species Act of 1973. Remarkably, a few RCWO clusters can be found

Blackburnian Warbler ( Setophaga fusca ) Family: Parulidae The Blackburnian Warbler is a small songbird with a bright orange throat and face with a black crown, broad white wingbars, and a triangular ear patch. Females and juveniles are paler and yellower overall. They have a thin call that increases in speed that sounds like sleet-sleet-sleet-sleetee-sleeeee.  They live in woodland areas, specifically conifers in the summer and humid mountain forests in the winter.   They eat mostly insects and especially enjoy caterpillars.  During summer they will eat many caterpillars and sometimes beetles, ants, flies, and spiders.  During winter they will branch out and feed on some berries as well.  Blackburnian Warblers feed mostly in treetops, looking for insects along small branches. They will also search in dead leaf clumps or hover to take insects from the underside of leaves. Males tend to forage higher in the trees than females. Blackburnian Warblers will court the female by singing and p

I awoke well before dawn on April 6, 2019. A night of fitful, anxious sleep pushed me out of bed. After a year of planning, I was eager to start work at Smith Oaks Bird Sanctuary in High Island, Texas. Walking about a quarter of a mile east into the sanctuary, I reached the rookery in the middle of Claybottom Pond. I placed my microphones next to the pond, scrambled up a small hill, nestled myself under a tunnel of trees, and pressed ‘Record’. Over the next 45 minutes in the pre-dawn light, I listened to the sounds of hundreds of water birds reverberate across the pond, through the trees, and into my headphones. It was a moment I’ll never forget. That recording was the first of hundreds my team and I would make on our 2,000+ mile journey from the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana to the Minnesota/Canada border. This effort was part of the ‘Voices of a Flyway’ project that I dreamt into existence over the previous year. Supported by National Geographic, our team of three followed a

American Kestrel ( Falco sparverius ) Family: Falconiformes The American Kestrel is the smallest yet most numerous and colorful of the North American falcons. It was once referred to as the sparrow hawk because of its small size and its occasional sparrow snack. Unlike many raptors, which may prove difficult distinguishing male and females, it is quite easy to discern male and female kestrels. Both sport a white face with vertical black stripes and a short hooked bill, but the female has rufous orange wings while the male has blue-gray wings and an unbarred tail. Kestrels are found as far north as Canada down to South America’s Tierra del Fuego. In Texas, at least two subspecies occur as residents, F. s. sparverius and F s. paulus. Kestrels tend to avoid dense woodlands and can be found perching on power lines or fencing in open or lightly wooded spaces such as grasslands, deserts, parks, pastures, and urban/suburban areas. When spotted on a fence post or similar object you may be able