Austin, Texas Birding and Nature Festival: Apr 09—13, 2008

Experience three full days in the beautiful Texas Hill Country, enjoying birds, wildflowers, and a spectacular bat flight; visit with many VENT leaders and attend evening programs.

April is a beautiful time of year in Central Texas—the wildflowers are at their peak, and the bats and breeding birds are back and on territory, including the famous Golden-cheeked Warbler and Black-capped Vireo. We have long wanted to share our home territory with folks who have traveled on VENT tours. In 2008 we hope you will join us in Austin, one of the nation's most vibrant and exciting cities. We have planned a wonderful event complete with great field trips and evening programs, and a superb team of leaders.

On our daily field trips we will see a tremendous selection of waterbirds and landbirds. We will make a special effort to show everyone our two special birds, the Golden-cheeked Warbler and the Black-capped Vireo. Our outings will be bird and natural history outings encompassing the full range of creatures and plants in this biologically rich area. We will see a great variety of wildflowers including our state flower, the bluebonnet—a lupine, and the lovely winecup—a deep burgundy-colored mallow.

One evening we will board a boat on Town Lake, adjacent to our hotel, to watch over one million Mexican free-tailed bats emerge from their roosts under the Congress Avenue Bridge. Participants who wish to come a day early might want to visit the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center or the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum.

We have chosen the lovely Hyatt Town Lake Hotel as the headquarters for our celebration. It is located on Town Lake and next to the hike-and-bike trail that runs along the lake. From the hotel you can enjoy a beautiful view of downtown Austin. For those who would like to do so, there will be an opportunity to drop by the VENT office, which is only two miles from the Hyatt. Our office is in its own building in a natural setting adjacent to the greenbelt.

All field trips will be made up of 14 persons traveling in two vans with two leaders, and there will be only 14 participants at any location. Each day you will be with a different set of VENT leaders.

For those who would like to spend more time in Texas, this celebration can be combined with our Spring in South Texas tour, March 29-April 9, our King Ranch & Whooping Cranes tour, April 5-9, or our High Island tour, April 13-17.

A VENT celebration differs from a regular VENT tour in having a larger group of VENT leaders, thus giving participants the opportunity to be in the field with different leaders over the course of the event, and also in having evening social hours and evening programs. We hope you will sign up soon. We expect a sellout for this marvelous event.

All field trips operate under easy conditions with light walking only; warm, but not hot, weather is expected, with thunderstorms possible.