Visit Wimberley - Painted Buntings

AMAZING FEATHERED MIGRANTS INVADE HILL COUNTRY

"Neotropica Migrants, Metabolic Miracles "
Why? Some migrant's flights would be metabolically equivalent
to a person running the four minute mile for eight hours!

Scarlet Tanager are but one of 50 percent of our landbirds that leave the rainforests of Central and South America in the spring and head north to breed in the U.S. and Canada. For weeks they've been gorging on fruits and insects in the rain forest. Most have almost doubled the weight of their tiny feathered bodies. They "fell out", or landed after an average eighteen-hour flight across the Gulf to find food and a safe habitat to rest in. Now they are soaring over our heads! Some fly low and slow. Some, now svelte after their Gulf flight, fly high as 20,000 feet. Most fly at night. Daytimes, they often rest and forage if there is suitable habitat.

Red and black male Scarlet Tanagers and the green and yellow females are
looking for a feast of insects on YOUR deciduous trees. Hold off spraying till they've feasted and moved on to breed. Seeing them is a rare, joyous treat for residents and visitors of the Hill Country. Look streamside and high in the trees for the flash of red. If it is not a crested red male cardinal, you have probably found a tanager.

Skydancer

Cahkey, Cahkey, CAHKEY calls the amazingly long-tailed Scissor-Tailed Flycatcher. Watching him in flight and landing is like seeing an aerial circus act! Watch him perched on a phone wire, opening and closing his scissor tail, or rising and dropping one-hundred feet in the air to court the shorter-tailed female. Get out your binoculars and feast your eyes on the soft peachy colors on his breast and back and the dash of red under his wing.

Wimberley is lucky to be in the breeding range of this "show-bird".

Photograph © 1993, John L. Tveten
Scissor-Tailed Flycatcher
Tyrannus forficatus

Photograph © 1993
John L. Tveten
Great Crested
Flycatcher
Myiarchus crinitus

Tips

Investigate prior to using chemicals to exterminate insect larvae on your trees.
Plant native vegetation and encourage others to do so. Birds prefer smaller fruit of native trees.
Leave as many trees and under-story plants as possible on your property.
Provide water. Migratory birds often hear running or dripping water from the air.
Be concerned about deforestation in the rainforest and in our own country.

Bird-brained?
This Oriole?

Like other songbirds, the Northern Oriole navigates to breed in the insect-rich far north. How does he get back where he came from or where his parents came from?

Like other migrants, he navigates by visually observing topographic features, the stars (if one constellation is clouded over, they use another), the sun, the Earth's magnetic field, and odors. Who said birds had little brains?

Photograph © 1993 John L. Tveten
Northern Oriole
Icterus galbula

Seeing an oriole draining your hummingbird feeder is a spectacular experience! Orioles are attracted by fruit, and are sometimes enticed to lunch by slices of fruit stuck in the trees. Look also for Orchard and Scott's Orioles around Wimberley.

Photograph © 1993 John L. Tveten
Yellow-rumped Warbler (Female)
Dendroica coronata

Learn More...

Check out more about migration at the feature on Fall Migration here:

You'll also find information there about ordering migration information from Texas Parks and Wildlife.

More great information
on migration at

Article by Patsy Glenn

Photographs by
Greg W. Lasley and John L. Tveten

We highly recommend Tveten's book,
The Birds of Texas
a most useful resource for Texas birding.