Scenic splendor

February 6, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

Birds, tourists spend languid days on Texas Gulf coast

By Ellen Creager

Detroit Free Press

AUSTWELL, Texas

The Aransas National Wildlife Refuge is the winter home of the whooping crane, a bird on the verge of extinction.

I drove 20 miles off the main road to get there.

I climbed a tall observation tower.

In the distance, at least four football fields away, were, or at least seemed to be, two white dots in the waving reeds.

“Whooping cranes,” a man announced to his wife.

He lifted his camera to shoot a photograph in which, no doubt, the birds would appear the size of two dots of lint.

It was then that I couldn’t help but brag.

“I already saw three whooping cranes, down in Lamar, in somebody’s back yard,” I piped up.

They looked skeptical.

“No, really,” I said. “They were right there, by the Big Tree.”

This time of year, the western Louisiana and Texas Gulf coast is teeming with Winter Texans from Northern states.

The region also attracts migratory waterfowl that spend winters much like humans do — lounging around and gobbling seafood.

This year, 268 whoopers are bunking in or near the wildlife refuge, including 45 chicks. That is a good number for the only wild flock in existence. It is an incredible comeback for a bird that in 1941 numbered just 16 left in the world.

The hard part is that most cranes feed far from the refuge’s observation tower, making them hard to spot.

Luckily, someone at the Rockport Chamber of Commerce earlier that day mentioned that whoopers were also sighted in a residential neighborhood in Lamar.

Let’s back up a moment. This region of Texas is called the coastal bend, with strings of barrier islands creating a tidal marsh feast for birds — and scenic splendor for humans.

“As a whole, many people don’t even realize Texas has a coast,” says RoShelle Gaskins, spokeswoman for the Galveston Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Many tourists also believe that the Gulf of Mexico is one big oil slick. But western Louisiana and Texas were untouched by last year’s Deepwater Horizon gulf oil spill.

In February, it’s too cold to swim in the area, but water temperatures rise into the 70s by April.

Anyway, the Rockport Chamber of Commerce gave me a map to the mysterious Big Tree.

With a trunk the width of a station wagon, it is the biggest tree in Texas. It is at least 1,000 years old, the survivor of countless hurricanes, floods, droughts and humans.

I stood near its comforting bulk for a moment, then turned back to the road.

That’s when I saw the cranes.

Across a big field, three of them stood.

They nibbled in a pond. They fluffed their feathers. Not far behind them, a man worked on his lawnmower in his garage.

Out of all the places in the world, the Texas Gulf Coast is the choice spot for one of the world’s rarest birds.

The Big Tree said it’s got room for you, too.