Golden grasslands, ruddy mountains, pale limestone canyons – the West Texas earth is by no means monotonous. But the desert palette is a muted one, and when we see a flash of vivid color here, it grabs our attention.
That’s especially true of the color red. In spring, we see it in the scarlet blooms of ocotillos and hedgehog cacti. But in summer, an attentive West Texan can glimpse it on the wing, as a host of red birds sing and nest in our region.
Cecilia Riley is a West Texas ornithologist.
“To me, it's just amazing that they can travel from here to Columbia and back for multiple years in a row,” she said. “It's a lot.”
As Riley notes, many of our region’s colorful summer songbirds arrive from exotic places. But others are more familiar.
The northern cardinal is probably America’s most beloved bird species, and it thrives in the wooded East. But cardinals can also be spotted around springs and streams in the Trans-Pecos. And they’re flourishing in West Texas yards and gardens, where they can find food and water.
“We create lots more opportunities for them,” Riley said, “so their populations are really expanding in our area. There's really no stopping them. But it is a beautiful bird.”
And the northern cardinal has a hard-core desert cousin: the pyrrhuloxia. Known as “bleeding heart cardinals,” pyrrhuloxias are mostly brownish gray, but they have red crests, wings and breasts. They live year-round in the harshest locales, like dry washes in Big Bend National Park.
Then there are two songbirds that bring a tropical flare to West Texas. Summer tanagers share the red color of northern cardinals, but they’re sleeker birds. In wooded foothills and cottonwood galleries, they swoop and sally for insects, especially bees and wasps.
From Central and South America, summer tanagers return each spring to reclaim prime habitat, often nesting in oak trees.
Another tropical songbird, the hepatic tanager, has a different nesting preference: the Ponderosa pines of our region’s “sky island” mountains. From Mexico and Central America, these 8-inch-long avians make an epic journey to the Chisos, Davis and Guadalupe mountains.
But these gorgeous red birds are increasingly hard-pressed to find what they need here.
“We've lost so many of the trees in their Ponderosa habitat due to the drought, the lack of fire, bark beetles, all of the above,” Riley said. “Their habitat is declining here, and so are hepatic tanagers.”
If you’re escaping the heat this summer in the Rio Grande or another desert oasis, there’s one gaudy bird to look out for. Vermillion flycatchers are less than 6 inches long, and their backs and wings are black. But the male’s head and breast are a brilliant red. They often live near water, and the males court females with an aerial show.
“They have an incredible display that goes up really high in the air,’ Riley said, “and they puff up their bodies and look like a great big red puff ball in the sky and then dive and swoop down towards the females. They're really fun.”
There’s a last rosy-hued bird to look for, one that might be taken for granted. House finches are common year-round residents here. They love birdseed and water features, and they’re flourishing alongside humans.
“I'm glad we can make life easy for some birds,” Riley said, “because they do bring so much joy to our lives and they're very, very important in terms of keeping insect populations in control.”
Summer in West Texas means heat and, hopefully, rain. In the avian realm, it’s also a season of color.
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