The best place to bird-watch is in the backyard. Don’t take visitors for granted.
My yard is full of birds, from ruby-throated hummingbirds to American goldfinches, purple martins to brown-headed nuthatches and northern cardinals to eastern bluebirds.
The male hummingbirds, with gleaming red throats, will soon be heading north to breeding grounds as will the goldfinches, with blazing yellow bodies and courtly black wings. Purple martins will raise young in the martin house this summer and head toward Brazilian winter homes in August.
Brown-headed nuthatches also will rear young but remain in my yard all year, as will a pair of eastern bluebirds that already have nurtured four chicks and are now brooding another clutch of eggs.
My yard is an exciting place for bird-watching, as are many of your yards, with bird feeders, nest boxes, birdbaths, trees, bushes and flower gardens. And though I travel to places near and far to see birds, I’m always thrilled to see the birds in my yard and in nearby parks.
Most of the migratory songbirds of April that came through the Houston area have left for northern breeding grounds. But plenty of them stuck around to breed.
A male summer tanager, for example, with its bright red color like a northern cardinal but lacking the cardinal’s red crest and black face, migrates from the tropics to breed in neighborhood deciduous trees. It skulks through a tree canopy but can be located by its call sounding like “pic-ee-tuktuk.” The female is the color of mustard with a tinge of green.
The eye-catching prothonotary warbler with a rich, golden cowl and steel-blue wings breeds in bottomland hardwood forests in places like Jesse H. Jones Park & Nature Center or Brazos Bend State Park. The bird nests in tree cavities, like abandoned downy woodpecker holes or in crevices of cypress tree knees.
Birds always have a home in Houston. Though, yes, they come and go and some become scarce during autumn when migratory birds return to the tropics.
Ruby-throated hummingbirds will soon become scarce as they head north, but they’ll return in virtual swarms on their way back to the tropics during August and September, instigating celebratory hummingbird festivals from Houston to Rockport.
Others, like bluebirds and cardinals, abide with us all year. The danger is in feeling ho hum about them.
Our forefathers felt that way about commonplace Attwater’s prairie chickens, now struggling against extinction. Same blasé attitude toward huge flocks of migratory passenger pigeons, now gone forever.
Birds bring us joy, a sense of something greater than ourselves, and merit a harbor in our yards with food, water, and shelter. Let’s not take them for granted, even during these months full of the songbirds’ sounds.