Tuesday, May 15, 2001

Big success for spring meeting of birders club

Leah Pummill, president of the Audubon Outdoor Club of Corpus Christi, opened a recent meeting by welcoming members and guests to the last indoor meeting of the Outdoor Club for this year. She urged them to attend the next meeting, a picnic at Fred B. Jones Sanctuary on June 12.
   April, she told us, was a busy, busy month. It was spring migration for our friends, the birds. And the city was the chosen site for the spring meeting of the Texas Ornithological Society Spring Meeting.... here.
   The spring meeting of the TOS was a great success not simply because it was well planned and executed, but because of the impossible-to-insure ingredient: many visible birds. Pummill read a highly complimentary letter from TOS president, Lily Engles, thanking the Audubon Outdoor Club for a memorable meeting.
   With Audubon Outdoor Club of Corpus Christi serving as host, the whole club made it their business to be sure that everyone of the 162 registered attendees had a good time, with many sightings of our best birds. More than 230 species were found.
   Well-done hospitality
   Although the field trips were the best part of the meeting, programs and hospitality were also well done. If you are a local birder who does not belong to TOS, pick up a membership application at Nature's Bird and join. The rewards will be numerous.
   At Packery Channel Park, behind the Visitor's Center Building, is a secret place, well-known to birds. I heard a cardinal tell an indigo bunting, "Follow the blue hose!" I did. It leads from the water faucet on the wall along a sandy path, not far, to an opening in the live oak. Turn in. There may be other birders.
   One day during migration I followed this procedure and was amazed to find about 10 others there. Perfectly silent, all of them sat or knelt on the side of the sand dune, facing the same direction, binoculars at the ready. In a hollow below their feet was a small, bowl-shaped pool, paved with little stones, and with logs and sticks around its leafy sides. Tree branches almost cover an opening in the canopy.
   Blending perfectly
   A water thrush, tail a bobbing, advanced on the water that trickled from the blue hose into the pool. Behind it, blending perfectly into the leafy pattern, a Swainson's thrush stared suspiciously at the birders.
   Down through the overhead branches, another bird was coming. Silently everyone shifted binoculars and aimed at the new arrival. The quickest birder identified it a second before most of the others: a Cape May warbler! Excitement coursed through the group like electricity. This was an unusual and much valued sighting.
   After the little rufous and yellow Cape May, with its red cheek, had a long drink, another bird was spotted coming shyly from behind a log. This too was an unusual, delightful visitor, a blackpoll warbler, a male. His attire was more formal: a black cap above his white cheek, a black stripe above a white breast. Some years blackpolls are not seen here.
  
  

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Phyllis Yochem, a Corpus Christi resident, has studied birds in Texas since 1960.

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