The numbers involved are indeed staggering, I believe estimates running in the one billion range. Suffice to say, northbound songbird migration peaks in April and the first half of May. All through that time a veritable carpet of small birds are pouring across Texas and the South.
My own usual window to this world is a small, nondescript local park wooded with mesquite and hackberry. The appeal being that it is local, and most of the trees are under 30ft in height, bringing the birds closer to eye-level.
Bear in mind, there is nothing special about this park to mark it as a "migrant trap", it is just a snapshot, per acre, of the incredible densities of migrating songbirds moving through, one that I can wander freely, with binoculars, as opposed to the surrounding residential neighborhoods, who's trees and gardens teem with similar numbers, though mostly unnoticed by the human residents.
I was most struck by this over the previous month when I had occasion to drive to Galveston one weekend, and Port Aransas the next, two hundred fifty miles east and one hundred fifty miles south of San Antonio respectively.
EVERYWHERE I pulled over on these trips, coming and going, I was quickly able to find migrating birds in the trees and bushes. Using Baltimore and Orchard Orioles as an example...... (all photos from internet)....
On migration, these move in noisy flocks through the treetops and thus are easily found, if present. Flocks quickly located in random stops around Galveston, Houston, and points east all the way to San Antonio, moving flocks quickly located every morning in that local park.
The following weekend literally HUNDREDS of orioles in one patch of woodland 100 miles South of San Antonio, large flocks moving along the coast, and large flocks also in the San Antonio area.
As abruptly as they came, the oriole migration has abruptly died down now but what kind of incredible numbers to put so many moving through so many locations over such large areas for weeks on end?
This morning, unseasonably cool and pleasant. Pleasant for humans, not so much for migrants toiling into prevailing north winds. They pile up from the south into these things like interstate traffic into a construction zone, resulting the following morning in trees teeming with furtive and fluttering little shapes, all refueling on insects as fast as they possibly can.
This morning at the park, again just a random snapshot of the carpet of songbirds piling through.....
Blackburnian Warbler, a favorite, and not often seen here, methodically creeping through the foliage....
Hordes of Yellow Warblers moving through the mesquite, these late birds likely going to streamside thickets in the Far North...
American Redstarts, adult males, females and first year males (which resemble females), the beautiful butterflies of the warbler world....
more to post, I'll finish later......
