Birding draws visitors to Alabama Gulf Coast

MOBILE, Ala. — Alabama has a wealth of resources in its skies, backyards and beaches: Birds.

In an eye-opening analysis, federal wildlife officials found that more money is spent on watching birds and other wildlife in Alabama than is spent on hunting.

Counting purchases on everything from vehicles for exploring to birdseed and binoculars for closer looks, $626 million was spent in 2001 on watching birds and other wildlife in Alabama — compared to about $601 million on hunting and $719 million on fishing, according to an economic analysis by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

"There are a lot of birders who are looking for new places to go," said Dwight Cooley, manager of the Wheeler Wildlife Refuge near Decatur. "They think nothing of driving six, seven, 10 hours to an area for good birding. Once they find an area, something special brings them back, like large numbers of waterfowl."

On the coast, Jereme Phillips, a wildlife biologist at Bon Secour Wildlife Refuge in coastal Baldwin County, said "hard-core" birders tend to know the best places to watch the migratory flights — and that means Alabama's coast.

"This is one of the most important stopover sites in the United States for tropical migratory birds," said Phillips.

This flight path extends into Mobile and out to Dauphin Island as the birds come and go across the Gulf of Mexico as seasons change.

The Bon Secour refuge on Fort Morgan Peninsula is on the Alabama Coastal Birding Trail and is in one of the giant circles for Audubon's annual Christmas bird count, which ended Jan. 5.

Shore birds like herons, pelicans, gulls and egrets are found along the waterfront stops of the trail this time of year, along with birds that Northerners are used to seeing in their backyards in the summer — cardinals, bluejays, robins and hummingbirds, according to Bebe Gauntt, public relations manager for the Alabama Gulf Coast Convention & Visitors Bureau. Ospreys arrive in late winter, and sea turtles nest here in the summer and hatch in the late summer and early fall.

In the spring, visitors can watch bird-banding sponsored by the North Alabama Hummer/Bird Study Group. The unusual event takes place in a wooded area at the Fort Morgan State Historic Site, a pre-Civil War fort on Pleasure Island near the towns of Gulf Shores and Orange Beach. The group sets up a banding station complete with fine nets to capture the birds and track their migration as a way of promoting environmental conservation. The birds are banded, weighed, examined for general health, and then released.