East Texas Quarterly Magazine Summer 2014 | Page 7

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) and the Texas
Department of Transportation
(TxDOT) jointly sponsored the
creation of the Greater Texas
Coastal Birding Trail. The Upper Coast section of the trail includes Tyler County and the surrounding areas. Along the Upper
Coast of the trail are 125 birding
sites and the trail consists of 15
separate loops. Each loop encompasses a variety of sites and
birds.
Tyler County is part of the
Big Thicket
Loop
which
includes birding sites from Bon Wier in Newton
County to Martin Dies, Jr. State Park and beyond.
Some of the birding sites along the Big Thicket Loop
are:
Tony Houseman State Park and Wildlife
Management Area:
The Greater Texas Birding Trail begins as soon as you
enter the state from Louisiana on Interstate 10. Situ-

with indistinct black streaking on the sides of the
breast, a white belly and undertail coverts, dark wings
with faint bluish tinge, and two broad whitish
wing-bars. Adult females are duller and variable, but
always with browner and grayer upperparts, a paler
yellow throat and breast, duller white belly and
undertail coverts. The bill is black and relatively heavy
for a warbler.
Some birders think the pine warbler is native to Texas,
but pine warbler’s habitat ranges from southwestern
Manitoba across Canada to southern New Brunswick,
south to eastern Texas, the Gulf Coast, and southern
Florida.
The bird is strongly associated with the presence
of pine and pine-hardwood forests during the
breeding and winter seasons. Breeding territories are
established from late winter in the south to spring
farther north. In East Texas, the best time for viewing
the pine warbler is in the spring and summer.
The warbler is just one of the more than 600
different species of birds in the Lone Star State, more
than any other state in the union, More than 75
percent of these different species have been spotted
along the Texas coastline.

5