Llano Estacado Audubon Society

 

Welcome to the Llano Estacado Audubon Society (LEAS) web site.
We are a chapter of the National Audubon Society
located in the South Plains of west Texas.

The Llano Estacado Audubon Society’s mission is to conserve and restore natural ecosystems – 
focusing on birds, other wildlife and habitat – 
for the benefit of human heritage and the earth’s biological diversity.

 

Links to text files have been converted to Adobe pdf files.  If you do not have the Acrobat Reader on your computer, you can download a free version from this website and follow Steps 1, 2 and 3.

LEAS, centered in Lubbock, has a very well-kept birding secret:  we have 296 regularly-occurring (non-accidental/hypothetical) species intxcounties.gif (1392635 bytes) our territory!  Adding accidental and hypothetical birds brings our species tally to 432.  To put this in context, the bird list for the entire state of Texas is 621.  

Llano Estacado Audubon Society, incorporated in 1977, encompasses the following 15 counties:  Bailey, Cochran, Crosby, Dickens, Floyd, Garza, Hale, Hockley, Kent, Lamb, Lubbock, Lynn, Motley, Terry and Yoakum (click map to the right to see where Lubbock is located).  These counties cover 12,713 square miles with elevations ranging from 800 feet in Kent County to >4,400 feet in Bailey County.

Positioned within the Central Flyway and encompassing diverse habitats (including canyons, farmlands, grasslands, thousands of playa wetlands, rangelands, reservoirs, riparian areas, saline lakes, and urban areas), the LEAS territory is vital for birds, especially neotropical migrants and wetland birds.  Llano Estacado translates to "Staked Plains," a name given by the Spanish explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado in 1540.  

 

Lubbock Area CBC Summary 2006

It was a great year for CBCs in the area. The weather, for the most part smiled on us, birds were nicely scattered about each count circle, and every team on every count was able to make some valuable contributions - to the LEAS data base and to Citizen Science. Everybody seemed to have fun; always a good thing.

The Lubbock County CBC held its own with a near-record 131 species tallied by Brandon Best, Yukun Chen, Greta Gorsuch, Charles Grair, Jill Haukos, Ed Hellman, Will Hellman, Anthony Hewetson, Aveline Hewetson, Phillip Kite, Lori Madry, Morgan Madry, Marla Riddlespurger, Patrick Skinner, Leanna Smith, Cliff Stogner, Jo-Szu (Ross) Tsai, and William Wenthe.

The Muleshoe Wildlife Refuge CBC ended up with 90 species; a record species list tallied by Harold Beierman, Brandon Best, Jim Crites, Charles Grair, Anthony Hewetson, Aveline Hewetson, Herbert Hinckley, Phillip Kite, and Aaron Kite.

The White River Lake CBC exceeded all expectations, given the nasty weather the day before and difficult access the day of, and racked up 112 species. The intrepid birders: Brandon Best, D.D. Currie, Anthony Hewetson, Aveline Hewetson, Phillip Kite, Rich Kostecke, Rob Lee, Dell Little, and Cliff Stogner.

The results are summarized below. Please take the time to read them and to appreciate the hard work and strong fellowship that these results represent. Also, as it is never to early to start plugging away, please consider participating in the 2007 CBCs - now less than a year away!

Anthony Hewetson; CBC compiler
 

To view the species summary, click here:  2006 CBC Summary

December 2006 Texas Southern High Plains Birding Highlights

Lubbock received a whopping 1.71 inches of rain during December, bringing us to only 3.11 inches below average annual totals of 18.65 inches. Water was findable throughout the month and waterfowl numbers were good, shorebirds remained in surprisingly good number, and songbirds, one way or the other, continued to surprise.


     -- Anthony Hewetson, Field Notes Compiler

Click here for the rest of this report and other rare bird sightings.

 

 

 

 

Donations to our Audubon Chapter

Our organization is 100% volunteer.  Funding is from individual donations, newsletter subscriptions, National Audubon Society, gifts and memorials.  Furthermore, LEAS is a 501(c)3 tax-exempt organization -- any contributions are tax-deductible.

Would you like to make a donation to LEAS?  You can donate at our bi-monthly meetings or checks by mail are most appreciated.  If you like, you may specify that your donation go toward a particular project.  Typical projects usually fall under the categories of conservation, education, newsletter production, LEAS Nature Trail (maintenance & upkeep), and program speakers.  If unspecified, donations will go toward projects at the discretion of the LEAS Board of Directors.   Checks can be made out to Llano Estacado Audubon Society, and mailed to LEAS, PO Box 6066, Lubbock, TX 79493-6066.

 

 

There are links at the bottom of this page.  If you cannot view them below the search box, then the website has not loaded properly.  Follow the "2006 Bird Alert" link to find previous CBC and migratory count data, as well as previous RBA pages.

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Updated 19 April 2007.  Web design/maintenance.