Lost Maples State Park, located in the Hill Country, is home to golden-cheeked warblers, blackcapped vireos and other songbirds. Red-tailed hawks and green kingfishers compete with the colorful foliage of maples in the fall.
In the Piney Woods region, journey to Huntsville State Park in the spring to view a variety of wood-warblers, buntings, tanagers and orioles migrating to summer breeding grounds. Other birds that visit the park include pileated and red-headed woodpeckers. The Kentucky prothonotaries, yellow-throated warblers and American redstarts also add their brilliant colors to the colorful palette here.
Along the Gulf Coast, visit Galveston Island State Park to view American white and brown pelicans as well as various gull, tern and black skimmer. During the winter, look for merlins and peregrine falcons. Frigatebirds visit Galveston typically in late summer and fall. In the spring, watch for tricolored herons, white ibis, black-bellied whistling ducks and blue-winged teals.
Also located in the Gulf coast region just southwest of Houston on the Brazos River, is Brazos Bend State Park. Thousands of mallards, pintails, teals and wood ducks take refuge during the winter. Birders have recorded more than 230 species in the park, including anhingas, roseate spoonbills, king rails, pied-billed grebes, white and white-faced ibis, and snowy and great egrets. There are also little blue, great blue, tricolored and green herons as well as black-crowned and yellow-crowned night herons.
Located near the geographical center of Texas, Lake Brownwood State Park is home to scissor-tailed flycatchers, canyon wrens and several species of hummingbirds. During the winter, birders flock to Palo Duro Canyon State Park to see golden eagles, prairie falcons and mountain bluebirds. Lucky birders can sometimes find a northern shrike or a bohemian waxwing in winter. Swainson’s hawk, rock wrens, canyon wrens and golden-crowned kinglets also visit these majestic canyon lands.
Stark desert vistas compete with the green rolling hills of Davis Mountains State Park, located in the Chihuahuan Desert of the Big Bend region. This is home to the largest number of hummingbird species in Texas. The higher elevations host many species of rare birds such as flammulated owls, band-tailed pigeons, nesting whippoorwills, Williamson’s sapsuckers, magnificent and blue-throated hummingbirds, gray and cordilleran flycatchers, violet-green swallows, Steller jays, house wrens, hermit thrushes, and Hutton’s and warbling vireo.
Observe the seasonal change of birds in Texas this year!
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