Gulf Shores 2019

The Gulf of Mexico coast gets a lot of deserved credit for being a good place to bird.

I spent a couple of days in Gulf Shores, Alabama, and while not birding intensely I can certainly say it is a far cry from the hills of east Tennessee. A full day’s drive from these hills and I had a numb rear end to show for it, too!

The gulf shores of Alabama, Mississippi, and the panhandle of Florida are good places to visit and to bird. Like most parts of the world it helps to get away from the crowds and into the back country. Gulf Shores, Alabama, is east of Mobile Bay between there and the Florida panhandle. Dauphin Island which is in Mobile Bay is world famous and accessible from Gulf Shores via the ferry at Fort Morgan. We’ve birded around the bay a couple of times before. There is a state park in the middle of the bay along the interstate that was a pleasant surprise.

Mostly, this time because I was there for a family reunion, I didn’t check out Bon Secour Refuge (other than a short walk or two) or Weeks Bay or any of the rivers. Mostly we stumbled across Great Blue heron and flights of Brown pelican and lots of chipping stuff common to Tennessee. From previous trips, some interesting country is the head of the Mobile Bay. It is your typical backwater-low-water-few roads, kind of place.

Take your sun hat and sun shirt and sun screen.
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Spring has finally settled in the southeastern mountains. Bird migrations have been coming on. The Unaka Auto Trail yielded some results. The rhododendren is in bloom, I understand, on Roan Mountain. The festival is about a month away and the traffic gets awful. Human migration is just around the corner. We call them "tourists."

We've had the spring count with lots of success: fifty-four observers in eleven parties tallied 154 species. The average has been 149 in the last thirty years. I believe this is the seventy-six consecutive spring count.

We have the Carter and Unicoi county summer counts next on the list. I have no results yet from nightjar surveys of last week.

The best time to visit is during the week, of course. The five upper counties have reliable birding spots (check e-birds), the lakes are full, breeding and nesting might be about done which will put both parents out of the house. 
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