GILCHRIST, Texas — One of North America’s renowned bird-migration and bird-watching areas is strangely silent.
Blame Hurricane Ike.
“We had red-winged blackbirds, sparrows, a bunch of migrating birds,” recalled Ernest Stone, 75, leaning on his cane and surveying debris on the cratered moonscape that used to be the family beach house on Bolivar Peninsula.
“I haven’t seen a pigeon in a while,” he said. “Seagulls. You could always go out and throw a piece of bread and the seagulls would come.” Not now.
“Nothing,” his wife, Jimmie, said. “Zero.”
The same could be said for their home and beachfront community of Gilchrist, where little is standing three weeks after Ike roared ashore with 110-mph winds, a 12-foot storm surge and waves up to 26 feet. The few palm trees or patches of grass, nearly unrecognizable amid the shells and dried mud, have turned a lifeless yellow brown, killed by seawater.
For people surrounded by devastation with months of rebuilding ahead of them, the birds represent yet another piece of normalcy lost.
Bolivar Peninsula is part of what is known as the Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail, with nearby High Island a prime bird-watching spot and traditional rest stop for migrating birds heading north in the spring and south in the fall.
High Island, at 32 feet above sea level, is the highest spot on the gulf coastline for 700 miles between Mobile Bay, Ala., and the Rio Grande and attracts thousands of bird-watchers a year.
While the loss is tough for bird watchers, Ian Tizard, director of the Schubot Exotic Bird Health Center at Texas A&M University, said it might not be so bad for many of the birds: “From a migrating bird’s point of view, it’s probably not a big deal to fly a few miles on until they find a batch of trees that looks better.”
Tizard said he believes things will get better in the spring.
Just like humans, the birds need three basics that Ike took away: cover, food and water.
Texas Parks & Wildlife biologist Cliff Shackleford said a good rain would ease the island’s woes.
