Video/Podcast: How the Bird City designation helps protect our fine feathered friends

By Colin Killian, Public Communications Director

In this week’s episode of the “What’s Up, College Station?” podcast, Marketing Coordinator Grace Hallowell and Recreation Supervisor Laurie Brown discuss the recent Bird City Texas designation, the bird blinds at Lick Creek Park, the Lights Out program during peak migration times, and other programs and activities at the Lick Creek Nature Center.

The “What’s Up, College Station?” podcast is available weekly via Podbean, iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple, and Amazon/Audible. Please subscribe, rate, and recommend!

If you have a suggestion for a future topic or interview, email me at ckillian@cstx.gov. 

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TRANSCRIPT

Grace Hallowell:

What’s Up, College Station? I’m Grace Hallowell, and today I’m joined by Laurie Brown, the recreation supervisor at our Gary Halter Nature Center. The City of College Station recently received a Bird City designation, so to kick things off, let’s kind of talk about what this designation means.

Laurie Brown:

So, Bird City Texas is a city conservation designation sponsored in part by Texas Parks and Wildlife and also Audubon Texas, which are two programs that kind of oversee the Bird City initiative, which we are one of fewer than 15 cities to receive Bird City Texas, and if we look at all the cities in Texas, there’s 1,200.

The program is 77 conservation action items, which we have to do 27 successfully to become a Bird City, which is exciting.

I think it’s taken us about two years to get going with all of the different things that have to be done for that. One of the biggest things … I think the biggest categories for these that are really important to look at are community science and research. They’re among habitat protection and improvements, reducing or eliminating threats to birds and wildlife, education and conservation actions, events and programming.

Not to forget the last one, but also very important is sustainability, so things like bike trail connectivity, how we utilize our parks, and even things as seemingly as simple as single-use plastic production.

Grace Hallowell:

Yes, and recently we added the bird blinds in Lick Creek Park, which were those part of the designation for a Bird City?

Laurie Brown:

It is, and so that’s why we said our Bird City dream started many, many, many, many years ago, decades ago. So things along with a community that worked within the Parks Board department, our local Audubon group, Rio Brazos Audubon Society, Master Naturalist, and many others have just been excited about having some birding facilities at Lick Creek Park, which is one of the gems in our city.

So for those of you who might not be as familiar, Lick Creek is a little over 523 acre park. It’s home to over 125 species of birds, amongst over 2,400 species of other wildlife and native plants, and probably many, many more. We’re just cataloging and working on those things, so yeah.

Grace Hallowell:

Yeah, so what sort of conservation efforts have gone into, I know we mentioned a couple, but to get this designation for us?

Laurie Brown:

So, I think that it’s a great number of many things. The one thing that was really pivotal that we were cited as a city as being something that we do incredibly well is our invasive plant species removal program. So when we look at invasive plants, those are things that harm our environment. I know many of these gardeners, for example, Bermuda grass inside your garden beds can be a bane. It makes a net and destroys the root systems amongst everything in there, along with plants like Privet, which kills everything underneath it.

So, we’ve had over 100 different invasive plant pools around the city amongst a wide variety of our conservation partners. I think that’s a huge piece is that when we started our Bird City journey about two years ago, we’re like, okay, we’re going to get together, build a group of people and do this. We started with 16 folks that were from Brazos Valley Master Naturalist, Post Oak chapter of the Native Plant Society of Texas, Rio Brazos Audubon, Parks Board, water department, and many others, and we got together and started this dream. We’re well over 60 people now.

So that community of conservation people coming together, it’s something the community really wants and desires, and so we’re seeing this action that we thought would be impossible is there’s people that really want to help out, and room for everybody to be honest.

So I think that that’s one thing that we did really well was get those, and if anyone wants to see a list of those conservation partners and how they interact and what they do and their programmings and things too, they can see that on our Bird City website, which is exciting.

But other in-ground conservation things to really mention besides that is our Lights Out Program, which is turning your lights out during peak migration times and during migration times in general, between 11:00 and 6:00 AM to making sure that it’s better for birds and it’s better for people. We don’t need every light on.

That also works into our DarkSky ordinance. We’re working as a city and as a community that as old lights go out, we’re replacing them with DarkSky-friendly lights and power-friendly lights. I know in some of our new park designs, we’re looking at adding in motion sensitive lights instead of having lights on constantly, so there’s some exciting movements there as well.

But I think that the other most exciting thing are things that we’ve been working on that have been our … we’ve planted over 150 trees with the community and volunteers in local parks. So that’s Tarrow, Bee Creek, Lick Creek, many others and are looking to do that, continuing those programs into the future. People love that conservation direct connection, and there’s nothing more wonderful than planting a native Texas tree that’s going to be great for birds, monarch butterflies, bats, and all the other great wildlife that we have here, and then being able to do that.

We also did in December a 1500 native tree giveaway, which was crazy and amazing and wonderful, but it’s all native plants that are going into our local community and helping out the wildlife here, so I think that was one of those places we stood really strong in our application when looking at those.

So, there’s lots of great events that people connect to and pop into. I think that’s a point where we can talk a little bit, if you haven’t picked one of these up, I know that there’s going to be future segments about these, but this is our recreation guide. There’s lots of sections about great events, but all of our Lick Creek events are in here, so our World Migratory Bird Day, which is May 10th is in here.

Monarch March, which is another favorite, which has a giant plant sale is in here. So great stuff in there, but for all of you people I think that may not know about all the great resources that we have on here, this is a copy of our native plant guide. It’s downloadable, you can print it. It’s got all kinds of beautiful colored pictures of all the native plants you can go buy and what they look like, how to plant them and what they bring to your yard.

Grace Hallowell:

That’s something that for me, I am a Northerner, I’ve talked about this on the show before, but I am a Texan now, but I’m still learning what native plants are around here and are available here that are good to plant, ’cause my plant knowledge is very different.

Laurie Brown:

Right. Yeah, and I think that’s one of those things that it gives people an easy list to be able to look at, and particularly what grows great here in the Brazos Valley, which is exciting, ’cause there’s Texas natives. Texas is diverse as the world, oh my goodness, so something may do wonderful in San Antonio, El Paso and just die from the rain here so it’s looking at and figuring out what goes great here. This has been vetted by the president of the Master Naturalist, so it’s a wonderful list, and it’s printable or free and downloadable off our Bird City website.

The other exciting thing is there is that we have a Bird City checklist that you can download that if you’re wanting to interact in parks and go birding, and if you’re new to birding and you want your birding checklist, here it is.

You give us feedback, we’re looking for all that type of thing on what you like, what you feel as a community, what people feel like they need, and those can all be found on our website there.

Grace Hallowell:

Yes, at cstx.gov/birdcity, it’s all there, it’s all listed. If people have questions, they can check it out on the website or they can even stop in to the Nature Center.

I know you guys love visitors and showing people around. It’s a really great facility out there if you haven’t been.

Laurie Brown:

It’s great. Come check out some binoculars. You don’t have to have your own, we’ve got tons, so come check out some binoculars, get some free seeds, and have a great time in nature.

Grace Hallowell:

Yes, and listen to the birds. I know we were talking before the show started, I miss hearing birds in the morning, ’cause I’m in a newer development that doesn’t have many mature trees, so sometimes I like just going out to Lick Creek and sitting there and listening to all of the sounds.

Laurie Brown:

It’s beautiful. I know the warblers are coming in and the Purple Martins are coming in pretty soon, so there’s some exciting birds that we have at the park. Talking about how diverse and how wonderful College Station is, and particularly Lick Creek Park is home to two species that are rare. So we look at the Swainson’s Warbler, which has a beautiful call, so worth the Google, and also the Kentucky Warbler, which looks like a little yellow fireball.

I mean, it’s so beautiful when you look at these two birds, and they call our park home amongst beautiful, colorful tropical birds like the Painted Bunting and Indigo Buntings and others that are just amazing as we look forward to those things. But yeah, yeah.

Grace Hallowell:

Yes, well, thank you so much for all of this information today, Laurie, and thanks for joining me.

Laurie Brown:

Oh, and thank you, Grace. I just want to throw another thank you to all of our conservation partners from the Conservation Advisory Group, because they really have pushed together to really make this long-time dream of the city a reality.

Grace Hallowell:

Yes, we couldn’t have done it without their help.

Laurie Brown:

Absolutely.

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