Saturday Morning Sharpstown Roost

[Laverne]

Good Morning Everybody. Such a lovely day - I hope you're enjoying it. Mike and I got up this morning at 5:00 am and drove over to the Sharpstown Mall. The roost is still there and still very large. The birds are still roosting in three areas of the parking lot.

We wanted to be there this morning when they left the roost. We had never seen that.

We arrived around 6:00 am. There was movement in the roost when we got there. Some of the birds would fly from one group of trees to another and it seemed they were leaving the roost to poop. It sounded like rain hitting the pavement all around us. At about 6:20 a very large number of birds began streaming out of the trees. This first wave circled overhead once and then disappeared to the Southwest. The birds weren't streaming up - they were streaming out to the side at about tree height across the parking lot and then they were rising. As they gained altitude they would circle back around and make one big pass over the entire roosting area and then continue on to the SW until you couldn't see them. For a while there was a steady trickle out of the trees and then at about 6:40 an 18-wheeler pulled out from the mall delivery area and drove right beside the trees. Its trailer even scraped the limbs on the roost trees as it went by. By the time that happened all birds were in the air. The truck had caused mass exodus. This huge flock of birds swirled around overhead a few more times than the earlier ones had. Then they all headed out. 15 - 20 Purple Martins slowly drifted overhead as we pulled out of the parking lot and headed for home at 6:45.

It all happened pretty fast and it wasn't nearly as dramatic as the evening show at this roost. But, it was interesting. I haven't been able to detect this roost on radar. I don't know if it is just me or the behavior of the roost. All the PMs headed SW. I didn't see a single bird go off in the direction of downtown Houston. They were headed away from town.

All my pictures came out fuzzy. The morning darkness and my camera don't get along. I did get a pretty good video of the mass exodus - I'll see if I can figure out how to post that for y'all.

[Guest]

That sounds like a pretty good way to start the day to me. Shelly posted some good videos of a roost,you might get some help there.

[Al Denton]

Laverne, It all happens so fast at the A.M. roosts doesn't it. I visited the Raleigh roost at dawn several times when it was still there or either relocated. It was a small roost of 3,000 to 5,000 birds which settled into a small group of Bradford Pear trees in a shopping center parking lot....anyway, on my first a.m. trip I arrived a little before 6(still dark and all was fairly quiet and still) At dawn a little more movement and more vocals started. At or around 6:20 I heard one bird get very loud and this got the others stirring and moving around and this started the exodus out of the trees. They all left out the same way from the trees and made a half circle over the parking lot and then they were gone. The whole thing lasted only a few minutes, but certainly worth missing a little sleep. Al