Recently, my wife, Nancy, and I returned from Central America, having seen North American migrant birds like Baltimore Orioles spending the winter among resident tropical birds. That was during our seventh trip to Panama and Costa Rica, where we are increasingly impressed by efforts to save lowland tropical and mountain cloud forests through education of residents and especially foreign visitors like us. I thought: why is it that I so rarely see or hear any foreigner in a Central Texas nature preserve?  

Cedar Waxwing
Bill Ravenscroft photo

Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker
Bill Ravenscroft photo

Yellow-Rumped Warbler
Bill Ravenscroft photo

Northern Flicker
Bill Ravenscroft photo

Soon after returning home, I spent part of a sunny morning in my community’s private forest preserve. It was every bit as great an experience as one in Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula National Park. How beautiful this little bit of Texas was, with green, yellow and red-leaved trees used by a mix of resident and wintering birds. 

For an hour, I accompanied an eye-catching flock eating insects in trees or among dead leaves on the ground. We all moved together over several hundred feet up and down slopes near the creek, reminding me about keeping nature alive.  

Led by our resident Carolina Chickadees and hybrid Tufted/Black-crested Titmice, I recorded the winter-only visitors: Hermit Thrushes, Brown Creepers, Ruby and Golden-crowned Kinglets, Orange-crowned and Yellow-rumped Warblers, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker and Northern Flicker.  Each species was using the forest in a unique way that ecologists call its ecological niche. Together, all contribute to the forest’s energy intake-outflow, and thus its health.

The most abundant flock members included at least a dozen or more each of Ruby-crowned Kinglets and Yellow-rumped Warblers chasing local airborne and leaf-inhabiting insects. Both birds are strictly northerners. 

While watching a Hermit Thrush, I remembered the sweet-singing Wood Thrush that used to nest here until developers cut down too much of its necessary forest to “plant” suburbia. I really miss this bird’s beautiful morning and evening song.

Except for the tree bark-feeding sapsucker, flicker, and creeper that poked, pried, and chiseled wood, my surrounding winter visitors were catching insects on the beautifully colored tree leaves or in the fresh earth carpet of fallen brown and tan leaves. 

Their local host birds were also “picnicking,” mingled among them. Oh, how I wished for a group of nearby resident people, who might learn about Central Texas’ fantastic natural history and its contributions to their lives.  

I was just as delighted to find my rain gauge holding 3 inches of water after my two-week absence. And the preserve’s creek was running again!  Wandering a half-mile up and down the area trail, I was so thankful that we’d saved this part of native forest. 

Returning home, I walked through a reforested draw where home-builders had dumped broken concrete, wood panels, window glass, and plastic pipes. They tried to hide the trash beneath soil, but I picked up eight pieces of broken window glass the rain had washed out on the trail.

Then I sat outside on my patio, thinking about locally lost wildlife amid Central Texas’ increasing numbers of people and the 80 percent of original nature humans have destroyed on Earth. I am one of those people, having built a house on the forest’s edge. 

Will we learn to conserve in time to save ourselves by saving our remaining forests and their essential exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide with all life? So far, it’s getting better and better in some places, like Costa Rica, but not so good in too many countries elsewhere on Earth.   

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