Weslaco Nature Sites team up to win State Title

Taking the challenge paid off for a team of five birders who set out to find various birds in South Texas. Wayne Bartholomew, Jim Booker, Dan Jones, Martin Hagne, and JD Cortez were all members of a birding team representing Weslaco’s three nature sites: the Valley Nature Center, Frontera Audubon, and Estero Llano Grande State Park. They competed in the 24 hour long Great Texas Birding Classic competition on May 3.   

The Great Texas Birding Classic (GTBC), sponsored by the Gulf Coast Bird Observatory and Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, is a friendly, but serious birding conservation tournament. It is held each year during April - May to coincide with the spectacular spring bird migration in Texas.

During the tournament, teams vie to see who can spot and record the most bird species in a given time period. The catch is that all the team members have to see or hear the bird enough to ID it.

“We started at 2:30 am and ended around 7:30 pm, traveling exactly 52 miles,” says Martin Hagne. “We birded only in Cameron County and found 176 species. Along the way we also found a Gray Fox in a tree and a Speckled Race, which is a rare snake.”

The team, aka ‘The Weslaco Chamber Slice of Good Lifers’, was awarded 1^st Place in the Energy Saver: Coast Wide Division, recording 3.34 species per mile. The team was also given the privilege of choosing a conservation project to gift a $10,000 Grand Prize. The Frontera Audubon Society in Weslaco was chosen and received the funds to support wetlands rehabilitation in the park.

The team was sponsored by the Weslaco Area Chamber of Commerce. For more information, contact the Valley Nature Center at (956) 969-2475.