Kingsville, Texas - Birding Environs by Air and Land

Out-of-print Texas Wildlife Loop Map

Visiting grown children has its advantage - visits are guaranteed to be scheduled so Mom and Dad stay in touch, and thus opportunities are provided to look for new wildlife viewings - best defined as bird watches. We haven't had an chance to visit the Corpus Christi, Texas area - our son's training schedule was too busy to fit us in. But with his next assignment just an hour down the road along the Gulf Coast at Kingsville - and us helping him move - a near perfect opportunity presents itself. Especially since we will be using a couple of AirTran Travel Vouchers from nearly a year ago to at least get in some Open-60 (1) viewing in a place I have never been before. Fortunately, there are no blackout dates when using the vouchers in September.

As it turns out, not only are there the Kingsville coastal estuary environs to take advantage of, there is also the King Ranch and other slightly inland sites. Lots of birding sites are listed in the State of Texas in the legend to the Kingsville Loop Map. All of this information is a part of the Great Texas Wildlife Trails program. (2) Similar information is available for the Corpus Christi area as well.

As for birding guides, there are a number that are available. According to the Amazon reader reviews, there are a number of books listed with varying degrees of acclaim. I ended up ordering the ABA Birdfinding Guide: A Birder's Guide to the Texas Coast, Fifth edition from Buteo Books. Once we fly down to San Antonio and

Cooksey and Weeks Guide

drive into the area, I am sure I can pick up another more common field guide at a book store, but thought it best to go for the on-line order of the guide - less than $30, anyway. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any reviews of the book, but can't imagine it won't be useful or lacking depth in its scope of species and descriptions - compared to the more generic regional titles. While GOOGLE'ing bird books, I also found a Website called WorldTwitch - Finding Rare Birds Around the World. The site has a nice listing of birding book titles that can be queued by world regions and other pre-selected criteria that seems less complicated than sorting through the Amazon or other book seller site. Finally, what appears to be another good book is the one published by Texas A&M titled: Finding Birds on the Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail by Eubanks, Behrstock, and Davidson. It is written specifically for the Upper Texas Coast, but I presume it would be applicable to the mid and lower regions of the Texas coast. Price, only $23.
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(1) Bird watching from the highway at 60 miles per hour with the window open.
(2) Unfortunately, it seems that the Website is not being maintained, because many of the links are not available when clicked - the state-funded program has been negatively impacted by the economic recession, so the maps are no longer available to be purchased, but may still be available at State Parks.