The Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail - North Texas Route

March 17, 2012

Friday, March 16th we spent preparing to travel and traveling west.  The steep bridge over Lake Charles in southern Louisiana near the Texas border was as slow going this time as it was when we headed east.  Road work had the bridge closed to one lane in each direction, with the other two lanes east and west shut down.  Traffic was backed up for miles.  Luckily, we were listening to a book on CD, enjoying getting caught up on the story.  It kept us from getting overly irritated at drivers bullying their way in to the single file line of traffic.

On the way, and once we crossed the Sabine river which marks the border between Texas and Louisiana, the welcome center at the Texas border on I-10 was  a wonderful find.  Racks and racks of brochures on sites throughout Texas were available at no charge.  We were just as surprised to have access to the Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail brochures that we'd found on a website and had wanted to purchase, here also free of charge for the asking.

Once we had crossed the Louisiana border, Duffy arranged for us to stay at Claiborne West Park at the beginning of the Sabine Loop, known to birders.   The park has two, count them - TWO, grassy spaces without hookups for RVs to park for up to three nights at $3 per night.  Other spots were available for tent campers, but either no tent campers were there in March, or they were somewhere else in the park.  I'm not sure I would feel comfortable tenting from what I've learned about snakes and alligators in these parts.  In a beautiful, spacious setting, this is an ideal family destination for locals on a weekend, those who live comfortably with the wildlife. 

We walked down to the bayou where we watched an osprey and a great egret both watching for their dinner.  We strolled around the path on the berm above the pond looking for birds, then after finding a pair of cardinals, we headed back to our rig.  We were told alligators inhabit the pond, but we saw none, and we stayed back.  The most populous residents were hungry mosquitoes.  The park closed to the public at 6:00pm, so we had it pretty much to ourselves for the night.  A few people had parked outside the park entrance and walked in.  We talked to a couple, who belong to Texas Audubon and Golden Triangle Audubon, who were most helpful in providing information for our quest, including a recommendation to visit Sabine Woods, already on Duffy's list.

Preferring to stay closer to where we would be birding, along the Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail, on Saturday we pulled up stakes (hadn't even unhitched) and headed south through Port Arthur and High Island.  Our hunt for birds on Saturday took us to Sea Rim State Park on the gulf coast, Sabine Woods run by the Texas Ornithological Society, and Texas Point Wildlife Refuge.  These last two were wooded and included ponds and bayous, which meant there were mosquitoes by the thousands. 

Some of the birding areas we explored were small and appeared to have been vandalized.  Indeed they were - by Hurricane Ike in September 2008.  I recall this hurricane as it reached to Houston where so many Katrina refugees were still stranded, and devastated the coastline from Louisiana to Corpus Christi, TX.  The Bolivar Peninsula where we ended up spending the night at an RV park, has been rebuilt since the 2008 hurricane, which was one of the costliest in U.S. history next to Katrina. 

The homes that have been built or rebuilt along the beach front and even inland are two- and three-stories high, with pilings beneath the second story, and many times an outdoor patio on the second story.  Any storage areas at ground level are built with break-away walls to allow a surge in ocean waters to burst through.  In 2008, we have been told, the wall of water reached 13 to 20 feet high, depending upon who we spoke with and where they were at the time and how far inland they lived.  Even the elementary and middle school, in one building together, are built along the beach on stilts above ground.  Everything here looks tentative, not permanent.  I imagine that's become the way of life since this coastline was wiped out, utterly destroyed.

Until next time. . .,
Pam