By Clay Carrington

Why is a Nature Conservancy preserve in Texas the undisputed heavyweight champion of North American birding? Let's just say it's the last chance for a good meal.

The Clive Runnells Family Mad Island Marsh Preserve — located on the Texas Gulf Coast, midway between Louisiana and Mexico — provides nesting and feeding grounds for up to 250 species of resident and visiting birds. For many migratory birds, Mad Island Marsh is the last opportunity to rest and scare up food before the long flight south across the Gulf of Mexico.

That’s why Matagorda County-Mad Island Marsh — a 15-mile diameter circle that includes the 7,063-acre preserve — claimed top North American species honors in the National Audubon Society’s Christmas Bird Count every year from 1997 to 2005.

Two dozen hearty birders assembled on the preserve grounds on Dec. 17 to help recover that distinction.

Go Where the Birds Are

Mad Island Marsh already teems with birds as an icy dawn breaks over the preserve. Cackling and Canada geese mix with ducks, egrets, herons and ibises on the 200-acre lake fronting the preserve lodge. 

To the west, a flotilla of more than 100,000 snow geese stretches out, making the far shore seem dusted with powdery snow. Clearly, the birds are here — they just need to be counted.

The Christmas Bird Count — which can run any single day between Dec. 14 and Jan. 5 — is a snapshot of the number and distribution of bird species in the Western Hemisphere.

It has grown from humble origins into a multi-national undertaking featuring nearly 60,000 participants in the United States, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, Latin America and the Pacific Islands. The data gleaned from the count is used to help determine avian conservation priorities and strategies worldwide.

During the count, every bird definitively seen or heard on the preserve will be noted. It’s not necessarily a scientific process: Because birds often travel in enormous flocks and rarely sit still, the count is more of an estimate than a census. However, the methods are consistent from year to year and generate a reliable and valuable data set.

Birders: A Rare Breed

At 7 a.m., the two dozen participating birders fan out to cover their assigned areas. Among them are Conservancy staff, preserve volunteers and visiting birders — including Malkolm Boothroyd, a 15-year-old from the town of Whitehorse in Canada’s Yukon Territory.

Malkolm is an avowed birder and on a quest of sorts with his parents, Wendy Boothroyd and Ken Madsen. They are midway through “Bird Year,” a 10,000-mile, fossil fuel-free bicycling trip from the Yukon to Florida via the Pacific and Gulf coasts. Their goal is to do as much birding as possible while raising money and awareness for bird conservation through their website, birdyear.com.

Malkolm is birding exclusively on foot and bicycle, but when the opportunity arises to add a coveted species to his lifetime bird list, he can’t refuse a little gasoline-powered help. Preserve manager Jared Laing fires up a tractor and drags a roller chopper — think of a spiked, metal telephone pole — across a grassy field to flush out a yellow rail, an elusive, nocturnal bird.

With each pass of the big machine, a small, mustard-colored bird pops up, flies a short distance and sets back down in taller grass. Malkolm stalks behind the tractor, camera at the ready in pursuit of the perfect photo. Jared shouts over the roar of the engine that the best vantage point is beside him on the tractor. “No fossil fuels!” Malkolm shouts back, unwilling to compromise.

Nearly an hour later, his patience finally pays off with a beautiful photograph. By day’s end, he’ll add five other new species to his bird list.

Malkolm’s age may set him apart from the rest of the birders, but his intensity and passion are common to the group. Expert birders are an interesting breed. Many have a near-encyclopedic knowledge of birds and are capable of identifying the most obscure species in the blink of an eye.

To a birder, the slightest variation in a sighting — a banded eye here or lightly streaked breast there — can mean the difference between the mundane and the sublime. It’s a cerebral pursuit, requiring equal measures of patience, skill and confidence. 

The Dangers of the Marsh

On the preserve's upland prairie, Laing and Conservancy field biologist Scott Summers scan the terrain and call out sightings to each other. The land, blanketed in cordgrass and shimmering silver bluestem, seems tranquil, even harmless.

But Mad Island Marsh is always dangerous, even in the cold of winter. A startled rattlesnake darts into a nearby burrowing owl hole, slowed by the chill but still lethal. Meanwhile, volunteers working along the preserve’s intracoastal and marsh sections must keep careful watch for alligators lurking below the water’s surface.

On the prairie, the sightings vary from the common to the pulse-quickening. Jared spots what he takes to be a Le Conte’s sparrow, a skittish but familiar species. As he watches it fly, however, he grows doubtful. Le Conte’s sparrows have streaked breasts, but the breast of this small songbird is smooth and the tan color birders call “buffy.”

The bird settles in a nearby tree, allowing both Laing and Summers — the more seasoned birder — to carefully glass it. After a few moments and a careful check of David Sibley’s field guide, they excitedly pronounce it to be an olive sparrow, a species never before seen on the preserve.

The rarity of the species means a detail sheet is needed to ensure confirmation. The spot is marked with bright green tape for others — an additional sighting would greatly ease the confirmation process — but the bird proves too elusive. Nevertheless, the small olive sparrow raises a stir among the birders.

Adding it Up

By day’s end, the group records thousands of sightings — nearly all of them familiar and expected, but each, in its own way, satisfying. The unofficial count for the entire 15-mile Matagorda County-Mad Island Marsh circle tops 234 species, one more than last year.

And Mad Island Marsh Preserve itself yields a record 167 individual species. “That’s a tremendous amount of species for a tract that size,” notes Brent Ortego, a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department wildlife diversity biologist who also volunteers as the Texas Christmas Bird Count editor. 

There’s definitely an undercurrent of competition to the Christmas Bird Count. As Jared Laing says: “For some, competition makes the count more fun. It’s just human nature.” But like most birders and conservationists, he understands the count’s importance beyond rankings and honors. 

“Above all, the Christmas Bird Count is a great way of collecting data and assessing trends,” he adds. “It helps us see the big picture.”

All the participants seem to agree that the Christmas Bird Count — and birding in general — is an ideal way to spend a sunny December day. In fact, when Malkolm is asked why he loves birding — why he has such a passion for it that he doubled his 2006 school load to be able to take this year off — he doesn’t hesitate before answering.

“It’s the perfect excuse to go outside,” he says with a smile.

Clay Carrington is a conservation writer for The Nature Conservancy.

(January 2008)

Nature picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): Photos © Clay Carrington/TNC (Malkolm Boothroyd); © Malkolm Boothroyd (LeConte's Sparrow); © Malkolm Boothroyd (yellow rail); © Malkolm Boothroyd (white-tailed deer)