Your Adventure Awaits!
Late summer and early fall bring wonderful wildlife to Texas, and the Great Texas Wildlife Trails are your road map to discovery! Hummingbirds, hawks and monarchs all travel through the state during the upcoming months. Find out where you can view these amazing migrations and more.
Hummingbirds
Texas provides a wide range of habitats for the state's hummingbird population. Except for a few birds that stay along the coast, most hummingbirds migrate south in the winter. Here's where you can see some of them passing through.
- Along the Laguna Madre Loop and Santa Ana Loop of the Lower Texas Coast trail, buff-bellied hummingbirds can be found at several sites.
- Tens of thousands of hummingbirds, including the beautiful ruby-throated, travel through Aransas Pass in migration. They can be seen at many sites along the Aransas Loop of the Central Texas Coast trail.
- Several types of hummers can be seen on the Far West Texas trail, including black-chinned hummingbirds along the Permian Basin Loop. Blue-throated, magnificent, Lucifer and broad-tailed hummingbirds have all been seen at sites in the Big Bend Loop.
-
Ruby-throated hummers can also be spotted along the Chisolm Trail Loop and Texas Discovery Loop on the Prairies and Pineywoods West trail.
You can also take part in some awesome events and celebrations of hummingbirds:
Monarch Butterflies
During the fall, monarch butterflies use 2 principal flyways through Texas. One traverses a 300-mile-wide path stretching from Wichita Falls to Eagle Pass. Monarchs enter the Texas portion of this flyway during the last days of September. By the third week of October, most have passed through into Mexico. The second flyway is situated along the Texas coast and is traveled from roughly the third week of October to the middle of November.
- The Guadalupe Loop and Laredo Loop on the Heart of Texas East trail are great places to catch a glimpse of migrating Monarchs.
- If you travel the Concho Loop on the Heart of Texas West trail, you'll likely find Monarchs at several sites.
- The Galveston Loop on the Upper Texas Coast is a great place to see monarchs in late October or early November.
Celebrate all things pollinator, including the majestic monarch, at these events:
Hawks
Fall raptor migration peaks in the last two weeks of September. Though many small songbirds will fly across the Gulf of Mexico in migration, most raptors opt for detouring around it. Vast numbers of hawks from eastern North America, headed for tropical destinations, shift westward to bypass the Gulf via the Texas coastal plain. These events are great for hawk and other bird watching!
The Great Texas Wildlife Trails Turn 25!
This year is the 25th anniversary of the nation's first ever birding and wildlife viewing trails! To honor the occasion, the 3 original coastal birding maps have been updated for the first time since 2013. Get your printed Great Texas Wildlife Trails maps now!
Join the monarch migration!
The Great Texas Wildlife Trails are supported by Toyota.
|
