Texas Mid-Coast Birding Festival

Texas Mid-Coast Birding Festival takes first “flight” in Port Lavaca

Birding enthusiasts traveled to Port Lavaca last weekend, May 1-4, to see the sprawling variety of avians available within the area at the city’s first annual Texas Mid-Coast Birding Festival. Drawing in even international visitors, the Bauer Community Center-hosted event had birders flying in to witness hundreds of migratory and local birds.

Birding, or the hobby of spotting and recording the presence of birds, was the focal point of the four-day event. During this event, visitors and local enthusiasts alike toured areas normally inaccessible to the public, such as Green Lake Park, Powderhorn Wildlife Management Area and Chester Island with expert guides. The tours were generally received positively by both guides and attendees.

“We were at Magic Ridge, and with this cold front that came in around midnight last night, it was epic, and I don’t use that word often,” Birding Guide Cin-Ty Lee said. “I’ve been birding for 40 years and maybe 10 times I’ve seen something like this. It was just steady streams of king birds coming up from South America and the warblers were going over us like bullets, wave after wave.”

Jason Sun, a visitor from China, was among those who traveled the farthest to attend the Texas Mid-Coast Birding Festival.

“I wanted to bird in the U.S. and searched for good places to go. That’s when I came across the festival,” Sun said.

After arriving in Houston earlier in the week, Sun registered for the festival on Monday and made his way to Port Lavaca by Thursday. He joined the Powderhorn tour on Friday — his first and only opportunity to bird in Texas before continuing his travels to New York.

“It was an amazing tour,” Sun said. “The birding and guides were great.”

Sun said he enjoyed his brief stay in Port Lavaca and hopes to return.

“The people are really nice here,” he said. “I would love to come back next year and hope my schedule will work.”

Alongside the tours, visitors to the show could also attend informational sessions which delved deep into the bird species that call Calhoun County home. Visitors could also attend exposés on bird banding, backyard birding and shorebird migrations.

“We went to Mad Island Tour, which is a nature conservatory property, which has very limited public access, and it has to be by invitation only. It’s basically a cattle ranch and rice farm that’s been converted into a wetland for migratory and we saw about 10 different species,” attendee Bill Fish said. “It’s been fabulous. Yesterday was Green Lake, and today a little far away, but it was well worth the trip.

“It was amazing,” attendee Toni Mullins said. “We’re new to birding, so we’re still learning, but the volunteers from here were delightful. We wound up exchanging email addresses and our tour guide from the conservancy was amazing. He was so knowledgeable and enthusiastic.  

Activities more suited to the public were also available; alongside an introductory birding tour through nearby Lighthouse Beach Boardwalk, a raptor demonstration featuring a variety of predatory birds by Victor Lawrence of Sky Kings Falconry showed off the capabilities of birds.

“We went on the Powderhorn Tour and it was a great experience. Our tour guide was just amazing and she had so much knowledge. I don’t even know how many species we saw, but it was well over 30,” attendee Paula Guidry said. “We’re from Louisiana, and we were visiting from Lafayette, and this was our first bird festival. We registered early and got in last night – and the weather was perfect. It was super enjoyable.”

Organized by the city of Port Lavaca and supported by local volunteers, the event is set to become a recurring fixture of the city’s yearly festival calendar, as well as another cornerstone in its plans to promote tourism to the city. Eryn Clinton visited the event with her family and said that the tour and programs she participated in with her children were both entertaining and interesting and that she couldn’t wait to come back next year.

“I loved it; I thought it was educational and I really enjoyed it. I thought it was very informative in a very approachable way, and I hope it comes back,” Clinton said. “I also enjoyed it because it was very much a family event. It was our first experience with birding in a professional way, so we see birds out here all the time. But this was the next level.”

For more information on the Texas Mid-Coast Birding Festival and to learn more about next year’s events, visit  texasmidcoastbirdingfestival.com.