Photo credit: Dana Nelson, Cattail Marsh, December 18, 2018. Credit for Website Design: Jeff Pittman.
You are welcome to attend monthly meetings, featuring speakers on birding and natural history topics, and including a delicious member-provided evening meal -- with desserts! Our monthly field trips are fun and educational, and focus on locations along the coast, marshes, prairies, and forests of the area.
Membership Meeting
Thursday April 17, 2025 7:00 p.m.
Garden Center, Tyrrell Park, Beaumont
Trans-Gulf Bird Migration Viewed from Weather Radars on the Northern Gulf Coast
Sidney Gauthreaux, PhD
Dr. Gauthreaux began exploring the use of weather surveillance radar (WSR-57) to detect, quantify, and monitor migrating birds in the atmosphere at the National Weather Service installation in New Orleans while a college freshman at LSU-New Orleans in 1959. His graduate research focused on the use of the WSR-57 to study the arrival of spring trans-Gulf bird migration in southwestern and southeastern Louisiana for his M.S. (August 1965) and PhD. (August 1968) degrees at LSU-Baton Rouge. He continued his radar research at the WSR-57 station in Athens, GA while on a post-doctorate fellowship at the Institute of Ecology at the University of Georgia (1968-1970), and in August 1970 joined the faculty at Clemson University where he continued to work with the WSR-57 in Slidell, LA until he began research with the new Doppler WSR-88D south of Houston in Dickinson, TX in the spring of 1992. His research with this radar has continued beyond his retirement from Clemson in May 2006 and the end of his Visiting Professorship at the University of Illinois in September 2019.
We plan to have the doors open at 6:00 p.m. The meeting will start at 7:00 p.m.
Field trip to Sabine Woods
Saturday April 19, 2025
This trip will look for Neotropical migrants at the height of spring migration. We will assemble at Sabine Woods at 7:30 a.m. In most years, the GTAS group has divided into two or more parties to keep the number of birders with each leader as small as possible. (You should be able to find a group if you are unable to be there quite that early, but there are likely to be other organized groups in the Woods on this Saturday.)
We have portable toilets available at the entrance during spring migration, but even with an increased number, there may not be as much capacity on April weekends as would be ideal!
This trip involves relatively easy walking on the trails at Sabine Woods to look for migrant songbirds, although another option is to sit at one of the six water features (three of them new) and wait for the birds to come to you. The trails may be muddy and slippery if it has rained in the prior day or two. Armadillos and feral pigs have been very active, so there will be holes to avoid! There is a $10 sanctuary pass donation at Sabine Woods for those who are not members of Golden Triangle Audubon or TOS.
Saturday May 10, 2025
Spring Migration Count
On International Migratory Bird Day, we undertake an all-Jefferson-County Bird Count. We have been doing these counts since 1995, so they have become a valuable way to monitor changes in local bird populations. International Migratory Bird Day/Global Big Day is the second Saturday in May. The count attempts to cover as much of Jefferson County as is reasonably possible. We will welcome birders at the intermediate level and higher, especially if you are able to count in the early morning from Contact John Whittle at gtaudubon.org for more information.