Baytown Nature Center, 1/10/10

I decided to kill some time on Sunday at the Baytown Nature Center (BNC). For those of you who don't know the history of the BNC, here's a brief one. The area used to be called the Brownwood subdivision and in Baytown, it was the place to live. It is a peninsula surrounded by three bays. Because of underground water use and other reasons, the land began sinking. In 1961, Hurricane Carla caused damage to it, but the houses were rebuilt. In 1983, Hurricane Alicia all but wiped out the subdivision. The city of Baytown stepped in a bought all the property and made a nature center out of it. I still remember birding out there with abandoned houses along the streets, boats and other garbage piled up alongside the roads. The city has cleaned it up and it is a very nice place to go birding now. You can still see the roads that once took people to their homes, and in a few places you can see the concrete slabs where the houses once stood. But it is nature's again, and the birds don't disappoint! If you're interested in checking it out, it is site number UTC039 on the Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail. Check this website for more info. (If you go, don't turn on Shreck to get to the BNC as the directions on the website say. Continue south on Bayway and the entrance will be about 1/2 mile past Shreck on the right.) There is a $3 entrance fee at the gate.

It was cold on Sunday. I was glad to have my heavy coat! Most of the birds I saw were expected, but there were a couple of nice ones that I didn't necessarily expect. One of those was the Cave Swallow. There were several of them that were flying around with Tree Swallows. They were feeding over one of the freshwater ponds. The Cave Swallow has expanded its range over the past ten to fifteen years. When the BNC first became a nature center, it would have been rare here, but now you should expect to see them. There were two birds that weren't necessarily surprises, but were really nice to see. White-crowned Sparrows foraged alongside one of the streets. A Marsh Wren called incessantly from deep inside some reeds before finally coming out and giving me some great looks at him. There weren't as many ducks as I had hoped for. Black-bellied Whistling-duck (another bird that has expanded its range significantly over the last 20 years), Mallard, Northern Shoveler and Green-winged Teal were the only ducks I saw. Brown Pelicans dive-bombed fish in the bays. A Reddish Egret performed his dance trying to scare up prey in one of the tidal ponds. It was a fun day. I ended up with 48 species.

Birds Seen at the Baytown Nature Center, 1/10/10 (48 species): Black-bellied Whistling-Duck, Mallard, Northern Shoveler, Green-winged Teal, Pied-billed Grebe, Brown Pelican, Neotropic Cormorant, Great Blue Heron, Great Egret, Snowy Egret, Little Blue Heron, Reddish Egret, White Ibis, Roseate Spoonbill, Osprey, Cooper's Hawk, Red-shouldered Hawk, Red-tailed Hawk, Killdeer, Least Sandpiper, Laughing Gull, Ring-billed Gull, Herring Gull, Mourning Dove, Belted Kingfisher, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Eastern Phoebe, Blue Jay, Tree Swallow, Cave Swallow, Carolina Chickadee, Carolina Wren, House Wren, Marsh Wren, Ruby-crowned Kinglet, American Robin, Northern Mockingbird, Cedar Waxwing, Orange-crowned Warbler, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Song Sparrow, Lincoln's Sparrow, White-throated Sparrow, White-crowned Sparrow, Northern Cardinal, Red-winged Blackbird, Great-tailed Grackle, American Goldfinch