First of the Year Hike

Sunrise on the Katy Prairie

I have a longstanding tradition of getting out for a hike on the first day of the year. The Houston area is not gifted with obvious natural beauty like majestic mountains, or vast primeval forests, or even, you know, topography. That being said there are some wild places left one can find and appreciate with patience.

The Katy Prairie, or what remains of it, is one of those places. One the western edge of Houston, between the city and the Brazos River Valley lies a large swath of what was once native tallgrass prairie and wetlands covering over a thousand square miles. In its current form, it is a rapidly developing area (the black humor among conservationists is that the most common structure on the prairie are "for sale" signs) of agricultural lands, with some remnant or restored prairie areas. Even in a state far from what must have been a sweeping landscape of coastal grasslands and marshes, the Prairie is still an impressive landscape. Equally impressive is the rate and mostly wildcat nature of development pushing into it. It is an oddly poignant feeling to be on site for the disappearance of an ecosystem. Not that it doesn't have its advocates. The Katy Prairie Conservancy has made great strides in preserving and restoring invaluable pieces of the area. But in the face of distribution centers the size of city-states of yore, massive master-planned communities, and the general press of Houston's swelling population, the Prairie's future is nebulous.

For Sale!

Among the many riches of the prairie are the abundance of bird life there.  Migratory waterfowl and prairie birds swarm through its open areas. Innumerable flocks of Snow Geese, Sandhill Cranes, and blackbirds pass through and stop over in the area. Even in an area rich in avifauna, being located smack dab on the continental entry point of the Central Migratory Flyway, the prairie is especially treasured by wildlife enthusiasts. Which only goes to underline the tremendous loss its unrestrained development represents.

Snow Geese in Flight

I got a last minute invitation from a friend to join one of their teams on a late Audubon Christmas Bird Count for Cypress Creek, one of my project watersheds at work. Get up ridiculously early on the first day of the new year, to muck through cold, boot high water in marshes, and count birds? For Science?

Yes, please.

So well before dawn I kissed my half-asleep wife goodbye, slapped on some knee-high rubber boots, and hit the road. The hurried arrangements I had made had me meeting a couple birders at a lake sometime before dawn to watch waterfowl come in for the morning. As I drove through the dark, roughly-paved backroads of the Prairie, the inky-black stand of trees around me seemed to reach out a form against  lightening sky. A Great Horned Owl sat atop a lonely telephone post. A damn good first bird of the year. I pulled the car over, and listened in the hush. I couldn't see the owl, only its black silhouette on the only slightly less dark indigo of the sky, but I could tell from its movements it was watching me. It stayed, and I stayed. For a few minutes there was just a swirl of prairie wind, and darkness, the owl, and me.

With our meeting time looming, I reluctantly got back in the car and drove to our rendezvous. On the way, birds of all manner shot out from the road to fence lines, or blazed briefly in my headlights. The sheer number of them was astounding, like driving through clouds of insects on a hot summer day. As I drove, the prairie fire of morning blazed across the eastern horizon .

Moon, Planet, Fire, Earth

The small lake was motionless that morning, as we watched ducks circle down and plow into the glass of its surface (I would like to say something more poetic like the ducks lighted effortlessly on the water, but, well, they're ducks.) The trees and grasses around us erupted in birdsong, so many species that it was impossible to pick out any one at a time for the sheer cacophony. Armadas of Sandhill Cranes bugled their way across the horizon, and flights of ducks passed endlessly overhead. Raptors sluggishly heaved themselves into the early morning air, and sparrows darted like arrows back and forth in the brush.

Prairie Lake Morning

Savannah Sparrow in Morning Light

Gadwall Drake

Sedge Wren in Prairie Grasses

The rest of the morning was a blur of wading through knee-deep water in marshes, and hiking deep into old farming properties with a congenial group of birders. It is always humbling to me to walk and learn with people who have such fantastic stores of natural knowledge and such willingness to impart it on others. The highlight of the trip was exploring an old barn and finding two Barn Owls peering down on us from above. All in all our small mile-square area recorded about 70 species in only four hours of birding. I had to beg off at lunch to get back to my family, but it was an energizing start to the year.

Old Barn

      

Solitary Tree                                           Rust

 

Barn Owls in Barn                                               Kingfisher in Flight

Sentinel Cows

Farmscape