The Best Fallout I’ve Ever Seen

I’m back. The trip was amazing. For those unaccustomed to birding, April and May are one of the best times to catch migration along the gulf coast. A large number of species migrate south for the winter and return in the spring. If the conditions are just right, wind or rain can impede the birds progress leading to a “fallout,” where thousands of birds literally fall out of the sky into the first available vegetation. This produces birds in unbelievable concentrations and species that normally occupy different habitats or different ranges all together in one place.

We experienced the perfect storm on Saturday. Early in the afternoon near Sabine Pass (as far southeast in Texas as one can get), a line of thunderstorms came through and dumped rain. After it ended, we birded a woodland and saw increased numbers of birds.

A very rare Gray Kingbird was found in a marshy area and reported by some birders. Having never seen one, we raced down. While that bird had moved on, I noticed something amazing over the marsh. With my binoculars, I could see dozens upon dozens of warblers (at least 8 or 10 species) coming through in waves. Now folks, if you don’t know, all of the eastern warblers are birds of big woods. Seeing so many over a marsh was unfathomable. We had also had literally hundreds of Baltimore and Orchard Orioles everywhere out in the marsh. Again, unless a birder is using hallucinogenic drugs, these are species not found in marsh habitats. There were very few trees, perhaps one every hundred yards. Each tree had 50 or more orioles in it.

With the birding this good over a marsh, we raced back to a wooded area, a patch of willow trees known to birders simply as “The Willows” and renowned for good birding in migration. In less than thirty minutes we had 18 species of warbler. How good is that? Well, in the first day we arrived, we saw 18 species by working hard the entire day never taking a break except for lunch. How many birds were there? My wife commented “I don’t know what to look at” and “I’ve never seen so many birds in my entire life”. Our hands hurt from griping our binoculars and constantly spinning the focusing wheel.

What did it look like? It looked like Blackburian, Cerulean, Golden-winged, Magnolia, Black-and-white, Bay-breasted, Yellow, Black-throated Green, Chestnut-sided, Kentucky, Blue-winged, Hooded, and Wilson’s Warblers, just to name a few. It looked like warblers that aren’t even called warblers, like American Redstart, Ovenbird, Northern Waterthrush, and Common Yellowthroat. It looked Scarlet Tanagers, Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, Blue-headed Vireos, and Indigo Buntings. And to top it all off, we saw a Black-whiskered Vireo, a very rare bird in Texas, but one that’s been showing up a little more frequently (about one per year).

It was simply some of the best birding I’ve ever had in my fourteen years. Well worth foregoing a shower for four days.

And yes, I took pictures. Not many, but I got a few nice ones.