This blog has been neglected recently because the author has been birding in Texas. We flew to Houston to begin the trip, first birding stop the Attwater Prairie Chicken Festival at Sealy, west of Houston. We were on Padre Island for the next two days before moving down into the Rio Grande Valley. The idea has been to catch some of the regular wading birds, terns, and gulls along with migrant ducks and shorebirds as we work our way to places where we hope to encounter migrant songbirds. South Padre does have migrant hot spots, given good winds off the Gulf of Mexico. We've seen many Indigo Buntings and three Painted Buntings along with a small handful of warblers. Best of those sightings was a Worm-eating Warbler. We're up at 5:30 each day, returning for supper and bed at dusk. Postings here will be sporadic for the next few days as that schedule continues..

Here is one way you can help the migrant birds now working their way across the Gulf to Texas and Minnesota.

Birders' Exchange (BEX), which began as a small optics "recycling"program at the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences in 1990 has become the major conservation initiative of the American Birding Association. The BEX program has grown immensely and supplies optics, books, and other new and used donated equipment to researchers,educators, university students, and children~Qs programs throughout the Neotropics.

The BEX program now reaches a very different clientele than it did
in the days of its humble, grassroots beginning. BEX is helping to
support an increasing number of serious researchers, university
students, and conservationists, people who are conserving migratory
and endemic birds, protecting some of the most ecologically
important habitats, discovering new species to science, and teaching
children about the value of birds - one of the earth's most precious resources.
BEX recipients are people who have immense pride in their environment
and understand its value.

To further the BEX mission, and to keep it alive and well, we need
your help. BEX recipients need good quality optics, preferably rubber
armored and/or waterproof, and in excellent working condition. We
have no budget to repair optics, and non-waterproof or rubber armored
optics have a very short life span in the harsh, wet climates of the
tropics.

Financial donations are welcome; they allow BEX to purchase high-
quality optics at discounted prices - optics that are required for
meaningful conservation efforts.

Thank you for keeping the BEX program alive and growing, and be
proud that you are an integral part of a program that is supporting
bird and habitat conservation throughout the Neotropics.


Betty Petersen
American Birding Association
Birders' Exchange Director, Hanson, MA
bpetersen@aba.org
800-850-2473 X223
Shipping Address for BEX Donations:
ABA/BEX
1618 W. Colorado Ave.
Colorado Springs, CO 80904
Please visit our website:
www.aba.org/bex
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