Shorebirds find much-needed sanctuary at Bolivar Flats.
So many migratory shorebirds were spread out on Houston Audubon Society’s Bolivar Flats Shorebird Sanctuary that you could either jump for joy or pull your hair out trying to identify them all.
My wife, Kathy, and I strode slowly, looking at the multitude of birds along the expansive mudcaked beach at the tip of Bolivar Peninsula. It was mid-April, at the rush of shorebird migration, continuing even now.
Shorebirds can be tough to identify because they lack the glitzy colors and distinctive patterns characteristic of songbirds, such as tanagers, warblers and orioles. Shorebirds, instead, are hued in browns, grays, whites, russets and black markings that blend with tidal sand and mud.
Among the shorebirds at the Flats were plovers and sandpipers, some no bigger than backyard songbirds. Hundreds of them scurrying hither and thither over the soft mud while pecking the ground with quick beak thrusts to grab invertebrates, including marine worms and sand hoppers.
The birds moved as frenetically as people shopping on Christmas Eve, so that no sooner had we focused our binoculars or spotting scope or camera on one bird than it hustled out of view. We also had to be patient to discern one species from another.
I focused my spotting scope on six red knots, plump robin-size birds with brick-red breasts and grayish backs with ruddy spots. They were once common migrants on Bolivar Flats, but their populations have plummeted due to human degradation of beach habitat and overharvesting of horseshoe crab eggs on their migratory stop at Delaware Bay.
A man walked up and pointed out stilt sandpipers that I rather stupidly didn’t expect to see. But there they were in front of me, with their telltale dark-gray plumage, marked on the underside by dense dark bars and a ruddy patch on the face.
Meanwhile, Kathy was photographing piping plovers, handsome sparrowsize shorebirds with a sand-colored back, a black
collar, a black band on the forehead, orange legs and a two-toned orange and black beak. The birds darted from one feeding spot to the next while eluding my wife’s close-up camera shots.
Piping plovers are highly endangered, with a population of fewer than 6,000, due to degradation of breeding and wintering
grounds by housing development and human recreation.
Yet, the tenacity of the plovers and all shorebirds to make perilous migratory journeys makes them worthy to see, no matter whether we know them by name or not.