A frequent question from readers is, "Where can I take out-of-town guests during the holidays to see birds?"
Many spots in and around Houston, including parks and wildlife refuges, are good for birding. These are my favorites.
A visit to the 34,000-acre Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge east of Houston rewards you with a mind-boggling variety of birds, including egrets, herons, ducks, moorhens, ibises, grebes, geese, terns, marsh wrens, hawks, kites and songbirds. And don't forget snowy egrets and roseate spoonbills.
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In the winter, enjoy ruddy ducks, ring-necked ducks, lesser scaup, red-tailed hawks, Northern harriers, snow geese, Eastern phoebes, savannah and seaside sparrows.
Drive the 2.5-mile, paved loop around Shoveler Pond for easy viewing. You'll also likely be startled by alligators, some looking like dinosaurs. Go to Grassy Point at the end of Frozen Point Road along the bay to find highly sought-after seaside sparrows.
Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge
When: Daily, sunrise to sunset
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Where: 4318 FM 1985, headquarters at 4017 FM 563
Tickets: Free; fws.gov/refuge/anahuac
Galveston Island's 2,000-acre state park provides an ideal landscape for birding, especially on the bay side, which has coastal prairies, oak trees, marshes and freshwater ponds. An observation platform offers a breathtaking view accented by egrets, herons, roseate spoonbills and soaring white-tailed kites.
The ponds reveal wintertime white pelicans, greater yellowlegs, red-breasted mergansers and, perhaps, eared grebes. Other water birds, like great egrets, Northern shovelers and willets, put on an elaborate show. In winter, songbirds, like Northern flickers, ruby-crowned kinglets and house wrens, scurry among the oak trees.
Along the Gulf side, laughing, ring-billed and herring gulls swoop over the shoreline, as do royal and Caspian terns. Busy little winter shorebirds, including sanderlings, dunlins, and Western and least sandpipers, hurry along the beach.
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Galveston Island State Park
When: 7 a.m.-10 p.m. daily
Where: 14901 FM 3005, Galveston Island
Tickets: $5, free for ages 11 and younger; tpwd.texas.gov
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The 4,897-acre Brazos Bend State Park encompasses woodlands and lakes, with multiple songbirds and water birds. Good spots are at 40-Acre and Elm lakes and along the Creekfield Lake Nature Trail.
In winter, the lakes hold ducks such as gadwalls, American wigeons, mallards, northern pintails and buffleheads. An uncommon winter bird called an American bittern may pop into view while camouflaged as though a stand of reeds. Resident birds like great blue, little blue and tricolored herons splash the lakes with contrasting colors.
This time of year you'll also find such woodpeckers as yellow-bellied sapsuckers and Northern flickers. Red-bellied, downy and pileated woodpeckers live in the park year round. Both woodlands and fields harbor blue-headed vireos, brown creepers, hermit thrushes, and LeConte's and song sparrows in the winter.
Brazos Bend State Park
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When: 8 a.m.-10 p.m. daily
Where: 21901 FM 762
Tickets: $7, ages 11 and younger free; tpwd.texas.gov
The serene 2,083-acre wooded Huntsville State Park includes a 210-acre lake and rests at the western end of America's Southern pine forest.
Lake Raven - misnamed because crows, not ravens, live there - holds handsome wintertime ducks, like mallards and American wigeons, plus incomparably beautiful resident wood ducks. This time of year, look for a bald eagle perched on trees surrounding the fish-laden lake.
Seasonal songbirds, including American goldfinches, dark-eyed juncos and white-throated sparrows sing as though it was spring. The brown thrasher sings more than even a mockingbird. Hammering on trees are up to seven woodpecker species, including the hairy woodpecker, which looks like a large version of the resident downy woodpecker.
Huntsville State Park
When: 7 a.m.-10 p.m. daily, closed 5 p.m. Sunday-noon Wednesday and 5 p.m. Jan. 6-noon Jan. 9
Where: Six miles south of Huntsville on Park Road 40 off I-45
Tickets: $5, free for ages 11 and younger; tpwd.texas.gov
Harris County's Precinct 4 Kleb Woods Nature Preserve, containing 132 acres, seamlessly unites nature with restorations of a 19th-century German-American farm. Spectacular birds often show up at the feeders, gardens and trees by the nature center building.
Pine warblers utter a musical trilling in the pine trees before alighting on feeders, switching their normal diet of insects to seeds for winter nourishment. Chipping sparrows with similar but more mechanical trilling songs may feed along the ground. Brown-headed nuthatches, much sought after by out-of-town birders, strut peculiarly, headfirst down tree trunks.
The star attraction might be a rufous hummingbird that breeds in the Pacific Northwest and has settled in for the season at the hummingbird feeders.
Kleb Woods Nature Center
When: 7 a.m.-dusk daily
Where: 20303 Draper, Tomball
Tickets: Free; pct3.hctx.net/parks
Three more spots
Matt Cook Wildlife Viewing Platform next to the Katy Prairie Conservancy's 140-acre Warren Lake near Waller
Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge near Angleton
Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge near Sealy
