Neo-tropical bird and bayou preservationists are working together to create stop-over Habitat Gardens along main flyways to attract our winged friends -- and the insects they eat -- to Gulf Texas.

Just as Habitat for Humanity is making a difference in the lives of people who need food and shelter, preservationists with the Nature Conservancy, Audubon Society, Bayou Preservation Association, interested corporations, and individuals who live along the Gulf Coast are making a difference for birds whose migration routes converge at the Gulf Coast flyway landfall -- the first place after thousands of miles in the air that migratory songbirds which winter in South America can get some R & R and replenish their food stores before taking off on their next thousand-mile annual jaunt. "It's vital that we protect the gulf habitats for the birds, but we have to do it without fencing people out," says Ray Johnson, director of the Gulf Coast Bird Observatory Network (GCBON). Loss of habitat for canopy-foraging birds has been complicated by population fragmentation: some birds are territorial and can't breed withou ta territory or outside of their breeding population, so they produce fewer chicks and suffer from increased predation (including cowbirds).

These are concepts that Landscape Architect Bill Bradshaw, of Bradshaw Landscape, Houston, Texas, who designed the canopy trees, understory trees, herbaceous plants, and grasses and wildflowers for a wildlife sanctuary sponsored by AMOCO, one of the GCBON partners, has taken to heart. Not only does the plant palette provide shelter and food sources, but only non-polluting insect control is used to establish and maintain the environment without harm to the birds or water supply.

Water in the landscape, of course, is the other half of the avifauna habitat equation and is one of the reasons that the Bayou Preservation Association, of which Bradshaw is a member, works so closely with the Nature Conservancy and Houston Audubon Society on the Gulf Coast on habitat creation projects. After Houston Audubon Society's Kathy Pyne convinced Kirby Marine Transportation Corporation to designate 22 acres of underutilized land created by intracoastal canal dredging along the barge terminals of Bolivar Penninsula to be used for neo-tropical and local bird habitat, Bradshaw was once again selected to do the design: "Linear ponds that would respond to evaporation were installed for shore birds, along with deeper ponds for migratory birds. Trees, shrubs and wildflowers were selected and installed to provide the requisite, sustainable seed and insect menu," explained Bradshaw.

Nor has Bradshaw limited his habitat creation efforts to wildlands and wilderness interface areas. It is rare when an owner or designer can take a mandate from local government and turn the development cost of that requirement into an amenity that will provide a profit, but the landscape design at Vanderbilt Square Apartments provides both the detention and retention ponds mandated by local government plus the canopy cover and forage habitat for neo-tropical birds and flowering shrubs for butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds. "In designing the landscape for Vanderbilt Apartments, we first had to convince the paying, two-legged client that he was not the only client. Once this was done, we were able to complement our strategy of providing habitat for our flying and four-legged clients as well."

Radar slide: Houston Weather Service Station radar image of exodus of birds winging it from the Columbia River Bottoms on May 10, 1992. © Sidney A. Gauthreaux, College of Sciences, Department of Biological Sciences, Clemson University.

Lady with the owl: Kathy Pyne, who has been instrumental in getting Gulf Coast bird habitat restored, is pictured here with a local beneficiary of the transglobal preservation efforts: an injured barn owl. Once birds are in the Kirby Corporation habitat area, local bird organizations help sick or injured individuals before they continue their flight.