For The Birds, Join our Fight  

Smith Point Hawk Watch

It’s time! The Smith Point Hawk Watch starts August 15 ^th and runs through November 30 ^th.

Bob is coming back again! The tower will be staffed from 8:00 – 4:00 each day.

This year because of Covid-19 we have to make some special rules. We want everyone to be able to enjoy the raptors while also keeping everyone safe so please respect these rules and don’t force Bob or our volunteers to have to be the covid police!

First, only a small portion of the upper deck will be open to visitors and we must limit that number to five people max. Second, all visitors on any level of the tower MUST wear a face covering that covers both their nose and mouth and is secured at both top and bottom. Third, volunteers who fill in for Bob on Tuesdays may close off the entire upper deck while they are there. Please respect their boundaries to keep them safe. Fourth, please employ social distancing as much as possible while on the tower. We love our visitors and we don’t want anything to happen to them while enjoying the raptor show!

Keep in mind that for years there was no tower at Smith Point and people simply watched from the parking lot. It’s a good idea to employ that strategy this year. Bob will do his best to yell out good birds as they pass over so everyone can enjoy. This year we are trying out Dunkadoo which is an electronic reporting mechanism. We can’t report directly from the tower because there’s no wifi there but Bob will report the birds at the end of each day and they should show up on hawkcount.org and the Dunkadoo site that same day! We will still maintain the blog as well.

This year has been especially hard for fundraising. If you would like to support the hawk watch monetarily you can call our office and leave a message for Tricia (she is there on Thursdays) or make a donation on our website. Thank you for your loyal support!

Welcome to our new Grant Writer!

This month, GCBO welcomes Nicole Ekstrom as our grant writer after Denise Kaplan retired last month. We are so glad to have Nicole join our team!

Mrs. Ekstrom is a native of Port Isabel, TX. She left the Rio Grande Valley for approximately fifteen years and recently returned in 2015 to start a family. She received a Bachelors in Science in marine science from Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi in 2004 and a Masters in Marine Resource Management from Texas A&M University Galveston in 2006.

Mrs. Ekstrom has fifteen years of experience with grant writing and management, habitat restoration, non-profit management, and designing environmental education programs.

Welcome aboard, Nicole!

Oystercatcher Miracle Chicks and More

The miracle chicks (Photo by Alan Wilde)

FR’s chick (Photo by Susan Heath).

We finished up another season of oystercatcher monitoring in early July. Despite Covid-19 restrictions we were able to continue monitoring the birds but not as often as usual. There are always a few good tales to tell by the end of the season and this year is no exception. The first big news is that three pairs fledged three chicks. That is unprecedented in my 10 years of experience. It is unusual for even one pair to fledge three chicks! Also after many years of trying and failing, our old friend FR(ed) fledged two chicks! We are very happy for him. Finally, J6 & UF pulled off a miracle. They nest on a tiny island near Tiki Island and every year their nest gets overwashed because the island is so low. This year they nested early enough when the tides are lower that I thought they had a chance and sure enough their nest made it to hatching. About two weeks later we had a very high tide though and when we returned, the adults and chicks were gone. We did not see the adults again until six weeks later when Alan was out kayaking and saw UF back on the island with two fledged chicks! How did that happen? As near as we can figure, the adults managed to get the chicks to swim ¼ mile to the backside of a larger island where we can’t go with the boat. Since we don’t check there we didn’t see them while they finished raising their chicks. Simply amazing what these birds do to keep their chicks safe! Twenty-two chicks fledged for a yearly productivity of .58 which is better than average so yay! We have a new oystercatcher t-shirt for sale (designed by our own Celeste Silling) and you can get yours today on our website! The fabric is lightweight and perfect for our hot summers.

Thanks for participating in Virtual Bird Bash!

In July, we hosted our first ever Virtual Bird Bash! This event combined many aspects from our other events and brought them online for folks to enjoy at home. Together, we learned about birds, ornithology, and birding. Viewers got involved by symbolically adopting birds, asking us questions, bidding in our auction, donating, and more. We were so happy with attendance (over 7,000 views!) and hope to bring you more virtual content soon! Thank you to all of our volunteers, viewers, and donors!

Welcome to Our New Board Member

We welcomed a new board member this month, Bradford Lirette.

Brad is a licensed Professional Engineer with 30+ years of leadership experience in an industrial setting. He's a father of three children who willingly travel for adventure. An active birder for 20 years, Brad is here to help us help the birds!

We're glad to have him on board!

New Educational Signs Installed at Headquarters

Thanks to a grant from the Cradle of Texas chapter of the Master Naturalists, we were able to print and install five new educational signs to our property!

The signs highlight our Bottom-land forests, Buffalo Bayou, Native Insects, Brazoria Palms, and the man-made Wetlands.

These signs were made especially for our property to highlight just a few of the things that make it special! We hope that everyone will take a moment to read them the next time they take a walk through our trails.

Thanks to the Texas Master Naturalists, Jackie Hicks who got the grant, and the volunteers who installed the signs!

Brazosport Museum's Dino Day

Brazosport Museum of Natural Sciences and Dinosaur George present Dino Day 2020!

Learn about your favorite bird relatives, the dinosaurs! Dinosaur George will be putting on quite the show for dinosaur fans young and old. You'll feel like you're back at the natural history museum!

To enjoy this virtual event, you must join the Facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/207380413833558/permalink/219346115970321/

Visit Our Online Nature Store

You can now buy GCBO apparel and merchandise on our website! Help us, help birds, and help yourself to some awesome merchandise!

Right now on the Online Nature Store, you can find hats, shirts, patches, and American Oystercatcher adoptions. Check them all out here: https://www.gcbo.org/connect/support-us/nature-store/

Due to Covid 19, Bird Banding has been canceled for the month of August. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Brew on the Bayou Postponed

Once again, we have had to postpone our Brew on the Bayou event in light of the COVID 19 situation. The safety of our volunteers, visitors, and staff is the most important thing to us, so we will continue to put that first! We hope to see everyone on March 27 for brews, birds, music, and friends!

We're working on fine tuning our email list so that you only get emails that matter to you. At the very bottom of each email there is an " update profile " or " unsubscribe " link you can click that will take you to a page where you can make your selections. We now have specific lists for things like volunteer news, special announcements, events, bird of the month, and more. Please take a moment to update your preferences if you haven't already. Thank you!

You can help support GCBO's mission in several important ways!

Save a Tree and some $!

We are trying to go as paperless as we can to save some trees and quite a bit on printing and mailing costs. We would love if you would let us email you instead of snail mailing a hard copy of any correspondence, including your future copies of the Gulf Crossings. Please email or call Tricia to say: “ Hey, GCBO, please start emailing me things! Here is my email…”    Thanks!    

DONATE NOW on our website to support our conservation programs.

BECOME A MEMBER   and receive our twice a year newsletter and a 10% discount in our nature store.

Make an in-kind donation to support our sanctuary needs.

GCBO is a registered charity through Kroger's Community Rewards Program. This means that you can register your Kroger Plus Card online and select GCBO as the organization of your choice. Every time you use your Kroger Plus Card, Kroger will donate a portion back to GCBO! This is an easy way to support GCBO while you shop - your donations help us continue to protect birds and birding habitat around the Gulf Coast and beyond. To register your Plus Card, click here . Our charity number is #DN782.



Support GCBO When You Shop on Amazon!

Do you shop on Amazon? Did you know you can do that same shopping on Amazon Smile and support GCBO with every purchase?

Just go to the Amazon Smile website and select GCBO as your charity of choice and then shop, shop, shop!

GCBO will receive a donation for every purchase you make. Thanks so much!

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Telephone:  979-480-0999  |  Email Us