OUR MISSION: The Mission of the Fort Worth Audubon Society is to promote awareness, appreciation and understanding of birds and other wildlife while preserving and protecting their natural habitat.

FORT WORTH AUDUBON SOCIETY GENERAL MEETINGS

Monthly General Meetings are held September through May on the second Thursday of each month. The meetings are free and open to all who wish to attend.

Meeting time: Program starts at 7:00PM. Refreshments and socializing are available starting at 6:30 PM.

Meeting Location: Two ways to join the monthly meetings: In Person and on-line on Zoom

In Person:
UNT Health & Science Center
RES Bldg., Room 100
3500 Camp Bowie Blvd., Fort Worth.
    Click here for School Map.

Virtual (streaming) via Zoom: Click on the Orange button below. The meeting room will be opened at about 6:30PM.

The next General Meeting will be on Thursday, March 14, 2024. Note: the speaker will be streamed on Zoom and we will still meet at our usual ‘live’ meeting location. (see details on the left side of this page for watching the live stream.) The program will be: Birdcast: Perspectives on Migration Monitoring in the Era of Big Data AI, presented by Dr. Andrew Farnsworth, Visiting Scientist in the Center for Avian Population Studies at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Dr. Andrew Farnsworth, photo curtesy of BirdCast.info/about

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Click to Join Ft Worth Audubon Society & pay Membership Dues

Field Trips and Local Monthly Birding Walks

Tom Haase is our Field Trip Chairperson for the 2023-2024 Season. Do you have a suggestion for a local or Overnight destination birding trip? Let Tom know. Use the Contact Us section and Tom will get in touch with you.

April 22, 2024 thru April 26, 2024: San Antonio, TX, and the Coastal Bend of Texas. READ MORE HERE

Join Ted Drozdowski and his team in the 2024 Great Texas Birding Classic. Ted has chosen a spot at the eastern end of Cells 5 & 7, a splendid location for both waterfowl, raptors and woodland species. Last year we recorded over 90 species! Registration Deadline is April 1. See the details in our Events Calendar.

Local Monthly Bird Walks

Click on the Trip titles that are underlined for more details about each trip.

Local Quarterly
Bird Walks

These walks are held at various times during the year. Go to the Events Calendar to see the dates or click on the Field Trip List button below.
Trinity Bird Walk / Clearfork Trinity River in Fort Worth.

Parr Park in Grapevine.

General Meetings

Past meetings are being added to our YouTube Channel. Click on the button to watch previous meetings. We apologize for our snafu in September. We will work on getting the meeting streamed live.

The next General Meeting is on March 14, 2024. The program is described above and in our Events Calendar. Please remember several of our former meetings are posted on YouTube channel. Click Here to visit our channel.

Ft. Worth Audubon Grants Process

Each year, the Fort Worth Audubon Society awards grants to organizations that support our mission of promoting awareness, appreciation and understanding of birds and other wildlife while preserving their natural habitat. Find more detailed information on our Grants Page. Download and complete the FWAS Grants Form Application for 2023-2024.

Injured Bird?

Have you found a wounded or orphaned bird or other animal? Please visit our Birding Resources page for contact information

Local Hot Spots

Tarrant County occupies nearly 900 square miles in the northeast central region of TX. It is blessed by a wide variety of habitats and geographical zones including: eastern and western cross-timbers, grand prairie, Blackland Prairie, and post oak savannah. Observers have recorded over 370 species of birds in Tarrant County (about 63% of all species documented for Texas.) Our members have many favorite birding locations which are shown on a Google map layer. Click here to view the map.

News for Birders

FW ISD Elementary students to choose which of these 6 bird species should be the Official Bird of the city.
Fort Worth ISD Elementary School Students to pick Official Bird of the City

Acreage opened to public on
Lake Benbrook shoreline

Last Fall, The U.S. Army Corp of Engineers updated the 1972 Master Plan for lands surrounding Lake Benbrook. The new Master Plan designates more than 1,100 acres as Environmentally Sensitive Areas for preservation. There is a very good article about the new designation on the GreenSourceDFW website. FWAS member Suzanne Tuttle will be leading a new Prairie Walk four times a year to the Sid Richardson Tract on the southeast shoreline of the lake (just east of Mustag Park.)

EarthShare Texas is having an Instagram Challenge

The 2023 Challenge is over. Visit the website listed below to see a list of winners. Want to participate in 2024? Share your sustainable and eco-friendly lifestyle, tips, choices, volunteering, cool DIY projects and post on a social media website. Make sure to use the hashtag #MyEarthMyTexas starting April 1st and ending April 22.
Follow @earthsharetexas for all the updates and useful tips! To be eligible for prizes, register your handle for free
at www.earthshare-texas.org/my-earth-my-texas

Fall 2023 Lights Out Fort Worth has begun. The Survey Dates will be from September 11 to December 1. You can make a difference by volunteering to join a survey. Click here to download the Volunteer’s Form.

TCA’s Lights Out Fort Worth team (LOFW) successfully completed its first season of bird-window collision surveys in downtown Fort Worth for Spring, 2023.
The spring surveys were conducted over a 9-week period, resulting in a total of 124 recorded birds that encompassed 32 individual species and 20 families. Click on the Full Report button to read the full report.

2023 Grant Awards

Four $1,000 grants were awarded

  • Bednarz & Kaleta – UNT Dept of Biological Science – Survival of wintering Kestrels and annual movement ecology of Kestrels in north Texas
  • NPSOT – North Central Chapter of the Native Plant Society of TX (NPSOT) – White Settlement Monarch Waystation enhancement.
  • Compson & Daniels – UNT Dept of Biological Science – Reinvestigating the diets of Northern Cardinals, Carolina Chickadees, Painted Buntings and White-eyes Vireos using fecal DNA metabarcoding.
  • River Legacy Nature Center – Replacement of signage at the bird blind.

A new travel book about wildlife and nature destinations was recently made available. The book, Wild DFW: Explore the Amazing Nature Around Dallas – Fort Worth by Amy Martin offers a natural history, ecology, and geography of North Texas. FWAS has a featured role in the section on the Village Creek Drying Beds. For more information and where to buy, go to: https://wild-dfw.com.

Conservation at the Fort Worth Prairie Park

Fort Worth Audubon Society offers three $1,000 grant recipients each year.  One of the recipients, the Great Plains Restoration Council, has already put the money to good use and sent us a wonderful report full of great pictures.  Their project was grassland nesting bird habitat restoration through diversity and inclusion community engagement.

Photo journal Fort Worth Prairie Project – place pointer on photo for description of activity.
Use your mouse ‘wheel’ to scroll through photos.

Front entrance as of Aug. 2019

Front entrance to the Fort Worth Prairie Park south of East Dutch Branch Creek prior to start of prairie restoration work.

Removing removing overgrowth

Removing overgrowth of woody increaser vegetation like cedar elms and hackberries on the prairie.

Starting brush piles.

After photo

Ms. Marty Leonard, local philanthropist, business and community leader, conservationist and bird watcher, visits some of our youth and the prairie. With Nicholas, Dylan, and Carlos at the project site after brush clearing

Team members

Youth lunch discussion with adult advocates Vincent and Jarid (not pictured—he’s taking the pic.) From left, Dylan, Vincent, Brandon, Carlos, Nicholas, and Keaundre.

Restoration team joined by U.S. Congressman Marc Veasey

U.S. Congressman Marc Veasey speaking with some of the youth on a hike at a site where swale prairie merges up onto a prairie barrens shortgrass prairie ecosystem component of the endangered Fort Worth Prairie. Thank you Congressman Veasey for your caring about our Earth and young people’s future

Discovery of a Texas spiny lizard

Discovery of a Texas spiny lizard with his head stuck inside a shotgun shell. On land or at sea, plastic trash is a lethal danger to native wildlife and human health.

Texas spiny lizard rescued

He survived! Rescue of Texas spiny lizard from being trapped in the shotgun shell, via surgical removal with a manicure clippers that Johnny Muhammad from TCAP (Texas Coalition of Animal Protection) went and bought at Walmart.

Saved and released

Release of Texas spiny lizard back into the prairie

Work continues

Preparing to cut, separate and stack some more downed cedar elms and hackberries that had choked out the prairie.

Another wood pile needed.

Deciding on the 2nd pile location.

Managing the new wood pile

Youth planned the consolidation and compression of stacked tree limbs and branches, with Carlos (in photo gesturing) serving as Pile Manager to continually collapse the large volume into much less space.

Allelopathy on the prairie is where the native plant communities are killed out by tree and brush overgrowth.

Between these two piles is the main front swath that was cleared of trees, brush and plastics, and raked and prepared for seeding with custom-curated Fort Worth Prairie seed mix, courtesy of Native American Seed, Fort Worth Nature Center & Refuge, and Suzanne Tuttle and Michelle Villafranca.

Pausing for a photo before seeding.

A total of 7 formerly incarcerated youth, from our partner Tarrant County Advocate Program, worked on the site. They were paid $10 an hour, and taught the introductory lessons of Tier 1 of Ecological Health practices and principles, for which there is a certification. Notice we are using non-plastic bags, even for trash cleanup near the road. If we think about it, there is always a healthier, greener option these days.

A special seed

We purchased $600 worth of custom-curated, Texas-sourced native Fort Worth Prairie seed mix, plus received a donation of local collected Fort Worth Prairie seeds from the Fort Worth Nature Center & Refuge.

Pocket wetlands

A daylighted tiny prairie creek at the front. There are also a couple pocket wetlands on this trailhead swath that we cleaned up.

Ecological Health practices and principles

Yoga stretching on the Fort Worth Prairie: Stretching and releasing muscle tension at the end of a week of good, hard work. Ecological Health practices and principles teach physical, mental, emotional and spiritual well-being as part of hands-on ecological restoration and preservation.

Becoming part of something bigger:

Meditating on the prairie and learning tactical diaphragmatic breathing. Both meditation and diaphragmatic breathing can be used in any area of life, particularly during stress and/or consternation.

Supporting our youth and the prairie

Alice Barrientez (Apache/Comanche) from the American Indian Youth Council, who previously served as a "GPRC Mom" for participating youth in an earlier program years ago, came out to visit and re-engage

Bonus photo:

East Dutch Branch Creek — Fort Worth Prairie blue sky, sun, wind, grass and clean water. (And fish who don’t yet want their pics taken. ) We are grteful to Jarid Manos Founder Great Plains Restoration Council Thank you for the report and photos,

Member’s Photo Gallery – Use your mouse ‘wheel’ to scroll through photos.

Partners in our Mission

The Fort Worth Audubon Society shares the resources of several organizations whose mission is similar to ours. These resources provide information about birds and the habitats located in North Central Texas. Included are affilieate Audubon Society organizarions, rare bird alerts and Birds of North Central Texas. In addition, we consider the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, EarthShare of Texas and the Native Plant Society our partners. Website visitors can access our partner information by clicking “Birding Resources”.