Membership Meeting
Thursday April 16, 2026 7:00 p.m.
Garden Center, Tyrrell Park, Beaumont
A Charisma of Owls
Lynn Barber
Do owls fascinate you? Do you wonder what makes an owl an owl.—why they’re so different from other birds, why they appear in myths and stories around the world, and why they’re often seen as wiser? A Charisma of Owls explorers these questions through detailed information and paintings of all North American owls, with an overview of owls worldwide.
Author and birder Lynn Barber shares her own experiences of searching for owls across the U.S., along with tips to help you find owls yourself. This book is for anyone curious about these charismatic birds and eager to learn more about their lives, habitats and cultural significance.
Lynn E. Barber is a lifelong birder. She was born in Wisconsin where she now lives with her husband after living in Oregon, North Carolina, Texas , South Dakota and Alaska. Her birding adventures include doing birding big years across the US and Canada (2008), and in Texas (2005), South Dakota (2011), Alaska (2016) and Wisconsin (2022). She has a BA (Zoology) and MS and PhD (microbiology) degrees from UW Madison and was a microbiology professor at Oregon State University and North Carolina State University. In 1985 she received a JD degree from Duke University Law School and worked as a patent attorney until retiring on 2021. She has published four books about birds and her birding adventures, which include some of her bird paintings and photographs.
Lynn is offering to bring some of her books with her. She has written several books. If you want to purchase them before she leaves Wisconsin, she can sign them ahead of time. Here is the link if you are interested. She will have some extra books also.
We plan to have the doors open at 6:00 p.m. The meeting will start at 7:00 p.m.
Saturday April 18, 2026
Field trip to Sabine Woods.
This trip will look for Neotropical migrants at the height of spring migration. We will assemble at Sabine Woods at 7:30 a.m. In most years, the GTAS group has divided into two or more parties to keep the number of birders with each leader as small as possible. (You should be able to find a group if you are unable to be there quite that early, but there are likely to be other organized groups in the Woods.
We have portable toilets available at the entrance during spring migration, but even with an increased number, there may not be as much capacity on April weekends as would be ideal!
This trip involves relatively easy walking on the trails at Sabine Woods to look for migrant songbirds, although another option is to sit at one of the six water features (three of them new) and wait for the birds to come to you. The trails may be muddy and slippery if it has rained in the prior day or two. Armadillos and feral pigs have been very active, so there will be holes to avoid! There is a $10 sanctuary pass donation at Sabine Woods for those who are not members of Golden Triangle Audubon or TOS.
Saturday May 9 2026
Spring Migration Count
On International Migratory Bird Day, we undertake an all-Jefferson-County Bird Count. We have been doing these counts since 1995 The second Saturday in May is now designated International (or World) Migratory Bird Day and also by eBird/Cornel Lab of Ornithology as Global Big Day. However, most birders likely consider that that date at the very end of spring migration through the Texas coast, and that most of the birds are much further north. However, radar monitoring of bird movements indicates that there are still large numbers of birds passing across the Texas coast well into May, although the weather events – north winds and rain showers -- that cause birds to descent into the first trees or significant bushes that they see on crossing the shoreline are much less common in early May. So, in occasional years, our migration count records a good variety of migrants while in other years we end up focusing on the breeding species of our area.
The count attempts to cover as much of Jefferson County as is reasonably possible. We will welcome birders at the inter-mediate level and higher, especially if you are able to count in the early morning from dawn through about 11:00 a.m. You do not need to commit to the whole day.If you have special access to any areas within the county, we would appreciate your help! We can assign that area to you, and if necessary, can arrange for someone to help you. Contact John Whittle (gtaudubon@aol.com or 409-722-4193) for further details or offers to help.
We will try to cover as much of Jefferson County as we can