- ANNOUNCER: The Texas Parks and Wildlife Television Series is supported in part by Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation -- conserving the wild things and wild places of Texas, thanks to members across the state.

Additional funding provided by the Toyota Tundra.

Your local Toyota dealers are proud to support outdoor recreation and conservation in Texas.

Adventure: it's what we share.

- NARRATOR: Coming up on Texas Parks and Wildlife... - We lose up to one billion birds a year in the United States alone-- just from collisions.

- There is a variety of activities that you can do here at Goose Island State Park.

- Definitely a puzzle.

Getting all those pieces together on the table to make a picture.

[theme music] ♪ ♪ - NARRATOR: Texas Parks and Wildlife, a television series for all outdoors.

- RADIO ANNOUNCER: Good morning, Dallas.

We have a warm spring day in store, clouds clearing by noontime.

It's 74 degrees, at six o'clock.

- BEN JONES: Quick huddle-up, just, real fast.

1, 2, 3.

[camera clicks] - NARRATOR: Each spring and fall, before sunrise, a group of volunteers flocks to a Dallas parking lot.

- Just be really careful as we're crossing the roads.

We'll divide the route in half, and then we'll meet in the center.

[car horn honks] - NARRATOR: They're here to survey downtown buildings- - Well, if we find any stunned birds, we've got some canisters.

- NARRATOR: But their interest is birds.

- BEN: Sound good?

- VOLUNTEERS: Sounds good, yeah!

- Okay, let's do it.

[energetic music] It'll be just a lot of walking for a while.

[laughs] - NARRATOR: These volunteers are gathering valuable data, about the impacts of city lights and buildings, on migrating birds.

[energetic music] - BEN: Anything?

[traffic roars] Blue jay?

Okay, we've got a blue jay chick.

Thankfully, this isn't a collision issue.

That's just a little fledgling that's come out of the nest, and I saw its mom right back here.

So, we'll let it be, and she'll keep feeding it there on the ground.

We're headed out on a bird collision survey through downtown Dallas, looking to see if we find any birds that have hit buildings, that have been drawn down by artificial light.

We're gonna document those birds, and put 'em into a database for science.

[dramatic music] This is an important conservation issue.

We lose up to one billion birds a year, in the United States alone, just from collisions, so we have to take action on it.

Many bird species are in dramatic decline because of loss of habitat and other issues, and so to take action on this issue is really important to save these birds.

So it's great to have a good crew out here every morning that's trying to help out, get the city darker, and then document the collisions that we're finding, so we know what's going on out there, and we can do something about it.

A lot of times the strike zone will have planters, you know?

[dramatic music] It's difficult to find a bird in something like this, but if they're brightly colored, you know, sometimes we can see 'em.

So, we're two buildings down, and zero collisions, so far that we've documented.

It's the only bird walk where you don't want to find any birds.

We get a lot of banana peels, door stops, dog poo.

With eyes like this, we can make anything into a bird.

- The other day, my youngest son looks down, there was a hummingbird laying at the bottom of the fence.

He said, "What about this one?"

[chuckles] Sometimes kids have the best eyes.

[laughs] [hummingbird chirps] A lot of people don't realize that there are birds migrating at night.

It's a big migration zone for birds passing, both in the spring and the fall.

If you think about before all these lights, you have birds probably navigating by the constellations and the moon.

Birds at night just can't help themselves but come down into the city, and then they get confused by all the glass.

[dramatic music] They see these trees reflected in the buildings, especially mirrored glass, and fly into the glass thinking that they're landing in a tree.

And, unfortunately they're doing it 35 miles an hour, so it's not a gentle strike, usually.

- BEN: Yeah, what do you think?

- So, it looks like we have a Nashville warbler.

We have the yellow on the breast and then its size gives it away that it's a warbler.

And then, we have an olive green on the back wings and on its back.

And so, Alfonso and I are gonna bag it.

- At least we're finding and documenting the collision, and we're gonna be able to use that data to help make additional change in the city, and prevent collisions.

- On to look for more.

- It may seem like it's just one bird, but it all adds up.

So, this is a brown thrasher, one of the larger birds that we find aside from the waterfowl.

This one's been here a little bit longer.

It's an area we don't always come down to search, along the skywalk.

And, if you think about the loss of one bird, you've lost that bird, and then every bird it would've produced that year, and the following year, and its offspring.

- MIRANDA: There's another.

- TIM: Older bird, but it looks, like, maybe, a blue grosbeak.

- MIRANDA: Yeah.

- BEN: Blue grosbeak.

- TIM: Some of the songbirds might have five nests here, and six young in each nest, and that adds up to like 340-some birds, just from the loss of that one bird.

[rhythmic music] - It's pretty sad in the moment.

You just kind of have to tell yourself that you're doing this to collect data, and, you know, get these buildings to turn off their lights at night, and prevent more collisions from happening.

- TIM: Anything in the 10 building study, the data goes to the Cornell, but all of the birds go to A&M, so they're all getting used instead of discarded.

- RESEARCHER: Right?

- GARY: Mm-hm.

- RESEARCHER: Okay.

- So, once those legs are out and you have it peeled down, just a little bit... - Mm-hm.

- you can go ahead and do that.

We're in the biodiversity research and teaching collection.

We have collections of birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians, and fishes.

We've got, approaching 1.2 million specimens, collectively.

Specifically to birds, we're about to hit 30,000 specimens.

I would say that the bulk of our material comes in from salvage programs.

- When specimens arrive here from the Lights Out Program, they're frozen with their data, and we put 'em into baskets according to where they came from, and, kind of, prioritize processing them into specimens for our collection.

- GARY: Most recently, with the Lights Out program, we've started to get hundreds and hundreds of birds after each migratory period, so a couple hundred in the fall and a couple hundred in the spring.

- These are warbler specimens.

Most of them came from a major fallout event in 2017 in Galveston, and 400 or so hit a building in the middle of the night because the building's lights were on.

That kind of started our awareness program in Texas.

It made national news.

From there, kind of, our volunteer efforts across the state started with awareness of lights off at night, you know, when migration is happening, specifically.

- These are our 12 most common window strike species, that we get from Lights Out, and it spans more than just the songbirds.

[dramatic music] - I am working on a yellow-breasted chat.

It's a salvage bird that hit a building in Dallas.

When the birds come here, we can then use them for all sorts of different research projects.

- GARY: People will often ask for loans of tissue material, to do genetic research.

- We can pull from here for them to do DNA analysis on those specimens.

- Some people are interested in disease ecology and they've asked for tissues to look at zoonotic diseases.

We teach labs here in the collections, so it's not just research, it's also teaching, and trying to develop that next generation of ecologists and conservation biologists.

- HEATHER: And, that's one of the big Lights Out birds.

- GARY: We try to maximize each specimen.

We wanna make sure that they're used.

- MIRANDA: Wow, that's a fresh one.

- BEN: Where was he?

- This one was across the street over here, the big glass there by that building.

An ovenbird.

They're in the warbler family.

- BEN: Large warbler.

- TIM: This species is just known to strike glass a lot.

Somebody came up with the term super collider.

- We're trying to help prevent these kind of collisions and hopefully with the data that we find here, with the birds that we're able to find, we're able to bring more awareness.

It's worth it, you know, at the end of the day, everybody who's here loves wildlife, and we're all doing this for a good cause, to be able to help these birds make it safely home.

Today we're gonna break 200 birds so far this season.

- MEI LING LIU: It just really breaks my heart, makes me sad.

We can do better.

[train whistle rings] - BEN: All right.

- TIM: It's becoming a bigger and bigger topic.

More people are starting to pay attention to it, and try to figure out what they can do to change glass, and also change lighting.

- BEN: Texas is a globally important bird area so when we take lights out action here it has an exponential effect across the country.

It's important to take action at home as well and our community has really rallied around this to help save birds.

- As you can see, it's been, unfortunately, a busy season.

Freezer is pretty full.

Five, six, seven deceased birds and one stunned bird, which we'll take and release.

We get quite a few each season that are stunned or injured that we can release back into the wild.

The best part is being able to save what birds we can.

It's very rewarding when you can just remove them away from the glass and let them go off on their own and do their thing again.

[bird chirps and sings] [seagulls squawk] [waves lapping] - That's a fishy!

Hi, fishy, how you doing?

[upbeat music] - EDWIN: There is a variety of activities that you can do here at Goose Island State Park.

We have a 1600-foot pier.

Now, if fishing isn't your thing, you can always go hiking on one of our trails.

You can go visit Big Tree.

We do have camping.

We also have interpretive programs that we offer here at Goose Island State Park, which vary from year to year and from season to season.

- RANGER: Got a couple of little birds up here.

- SARA: We've got marshes and estuaries.

We've got marine life.

We've got forests and coastal prairie.

We've got live oaks and the red bays in our wooded areas.

It's definitely a good mix.

[heron honking and chirping] - The birds are wonders that they could fly that far and get here and know where the shower was.

[laughing] Maybe he was here last year and remembered.

- There are lots of birds.

The best time to see them is going to be in the spring.

There's a great migration.

It kind of funnels to the tip of South Texas.

So, you could see upwards of 300 different species of birds during that time.

[whooping cranes honking] And in the winter, we are home to the whooping crane, which is an endangered species.

They'll fly from Canada and winter down here.

- RANGER: This is where we saw two or three rose-breasted grosbeaks a couple days ago.

- EDWIN: We have birding programs and tours.

- RANGER: Here he is over here.

There he goes.

- BIRDWATCHER: There he goes, he just got something.

- RANGER: Louisiana waterthrush.

- EDWIN: You don't have to have any experience.

Our park rangers will lead you on these programs.

- RANGER: It's not an exercise, it's more of a gentle walk through the woods.

[birds chirping] - SARA: Goose Island State Park is surrounded by three bays.

We have Aransas Bay, St. Charles Bay, and Copano Bay.

We have a kayak launch from Goose Island.

We have a kayak program where you can come kayak with a ranger or with one of our wonderful volunteers.

[water bubbling] - EDWIN: You can see different oyster reefs.

You can see the national wildlife refuge, which borders our park.

Just a variety of the geographical regions within the coastal bend area.

- GUIDE: This is St. Charles Bay back this direction.

- EDWIN: You can fish pretty much anywhere that you're able go out to the shoreline.

- ANGLER: It's a black drum.

- It's a monster!

But I think we will have sausages for dinner, he's too big.

[woman laughing] - EDWIN: A lot of people like to fish off the bulkhead.

- KID: Got one!

Crab!

- EDWIN: Our overnight campers that stay at the bayfront area, they will just fish out of their campsite.

[line casting] A lot of our day users, they will utilize the fishing pier.

- ANGLER: This is a catfish you can eat.

- WOMAN: Oh, nice.

- ANGLER: Gafftop, this is like a sail.

- EDWIN: You can do a little bit of fishing with your family, make some memories.

- Smile!

- SARA: The fishing pier is just over 1,600 feet.

It's a very large pier.

You can catch redfish, speckled trout, flounder, black drum.

- ANGLER: Big old, big ugly!

Forty-one-inch drum.

- KID: Oh, my gosh!

- SARA: The peak seasons for those are going to be July through October.

- Kid: It's a ugly!

[water splashing] [upbeat music] - MAN: It's a nice morning.

- WOMAN: It is iconic, huh?

- EDWIN: Big Tree is the crown jewel of the Lamar Peninsula and Goose Island State Park.

- SARA: The Big Tree has been around many years.

It's very common to get your picture taken with it.

It's a great way to get the generations of families through here.

- Whoo!

Yeah!

- EDWIN: Year after year we have people coming out to Goose Island State Park and they really make these great memories with their families.

[water lapping] [upbeat music] - Hey, I am Davis Turner of Huckleberry.

Out of Austin, Texas, where we like to focus on Gulf Coast seafood.

The recipe we are working on right now is barbecue blue crab.

It is by far one of my favorite dishes to eat.

We were fortunate enough today to have these beautiful blue crabs that we got just this morning.

Once you grab a crab outta the trap, it's gonna be best to go ahead and put it on ice.

It's gonna make them a little bit more dormant.

So we're gonna start off just steaming a simple crab.

You're gonna be looking for a pinkish to vibrant red color.

Once you see that, we know that these crabs are ready.

All right, our crabs have been in the water for a few minutes.

Just let 'em air cool, they're only gonna take a few minutes, and then they're gonna be manageable.

Crabs are cooling.

Let's make a barbecue sauce.

This is not gonna be your typical barbecue sauce that you're thinking of.

It's gonna be more of a Cajun Creole style sauce.

So this we're gonna start with is three cups of shrimp stock.

Dump that right in.

We're gonna have one cup of our Worcestershire sauce.

Mix that together.

We have a couple halved lemons.

Throw those just right into the pan.

In the meantime, we're gonna jump back onto our crabs.

Underneath the backside, you're gonna see a little flap that's laying right here.

With this, we're gonna take our knife, peel it right back, snap that off.

From here, we're able to go and just peel back the top shell.

Next thing, we wanna just go ahead, cut off the front gills, and then from here, cut 'em in half, and we're halfway there.

Okay.

Our sauce has now reduced by half.

Our next thing is to go ahead and remove all the lemons that we threw in here.

That leaves us just to put our crabs into the sauce.

Slowly start coating those crabs all in the sauce.

What we're gonna end up finishing this off with now is about an ounce and a half, two ounces of heavy cream.

Just let that all mix together.

And then we're gonna finish that off with about two tablespoons of butter.

The butter's really gonna help thicken everything back together, make it again very creamy, very smooth sauce.

Everything's looking nice, neat, thick.

It's time to start plating.

We're just gonna start removing all the crabs out.

When you're doing this, you may have lost a few crab claws, maybe a little bit of meat.

Just grab the meat, throw it right back in there as well.

But once we have everything plated, we're gonna continue just to reduce our sauce just so it's a little bit thicker.

And inside of that, you'll see all of the thickness.

Everything's coming together.

Now it's gonna be kind of like a gravy thickness that you have.

Just pour right over all your crabs.

We're gonna top it with a little bit of green onions.

And then with that, we have our Gulf Coast barbecue crab.

[paper rustling] [light music] - KIM: When you're looking at it on paper and you're looking at it on the schematic design pages and it's like, "Oh, that's cool."

[windmill squeaking] And then you get out here and you go, "Oh wow, this is big."

- NARRATOR: Deep in the Texas Hill Country, about an hour northwest of San Antonio, this untouched sliver of wilderness is in the process of being protected forever.

- We are at Albert and Bessie Kronkosky State Natural Area.

- NARRATOR: ABK, as it's known, will be the first new Texas State Natural Area since 2005.

- The goal, I think, of state parks is to open a new state park every couple of years.

- NARRATOR: Protecting that nature took a big step in the last legislative session when Texas voters created a billion dollar trust making this park and many more possible.

- This is an exciting time here at Parks and Wildlife.

[upbeat music] - NARRATOR: Kim Shelton is a huge part of the big picture.

She's not the person you'll see at the park gate, but one of the people who made the gate and every aspect of this park happen.

- KIM: Infrastructure means it's the division in Texas Parks and Wildlife that manages all the construction.

Getting our facilities going and keeping them going.

- We're gonna need roads, we're gonna need water, we're gonna need electricity, we're gonna need the buildings, we're gonna need the office space.

We're gonna need the trail system.

The list just goes on and on and on.

- NARRATOR: Park Superintendent James Rice is another part of the picture, working side by side with Kim to make it all come together.

- KIM: Definitely a puzzle and it's getting all those pieces together on the table to make a picture.

[upbeat music] [light music] - NARRATOR: Kim understands TPWD's interests because, along with her husband Roger, a state park safety officer, they have spent the majority of their lives in a state park.

- I've lived in a state park since I was 18-years-old when I first got married.

The first place we live was Varner-Hogg State Park, and then we moved to Bastrop State Park.

We were there for almost 25 years at Bastrop State Park, raised our family there, had a conversation with my kids recently.

And, you know, they were just like, "It was the best childhood."

[windmill squeaking] - NARRATOR: Kim and James hope the next generation feels the same about the state parks they are helping create today.

- And now it's happening.

You can actually see and visualize where people are gonna be coming from Dallas, from Oklahoma, from Delaware, all over.

They're gonna be coming here and they are going to be exposed to the fruits of the labor that everybody has put into this place.

- I think what's special about my job is, even though it's just paperwork, even though it's contracts, your thoughts, your ideas, your skill sets become a place, you know, that everybody can come to.

I can bring my grandkids here and say, "I had a small part of this."

That's what I like about my job.

[light music] [upbeat music] - NARRATOR: To celebrate 40 years of our television series, we are taking a trip back in time to look at some of our earliest episodes.

♪ ♪ - NARRATOR: How did they make this rock art?

What did they use for paints and brushes?

Just look around you, take the leaf from this yucca plant and scrape away the waxy coating to expose fibers underneath, and you have a paintbrush.

Take the pigment from this rock and grind it down into a fine powder.

Then mix it with the juice from the root of a plant, and you're ready to paint.

- If we want the paint to stay on so that if it gets wet that it doesn't come off, we need a binder.

So what we need is pigment, binder, and vehicle.

Now a binder is some sort of glue that will adhere the paint onto the surface that you're gonna paint.

Basically the oils, the sap, the egg white, these are all binders.

They act as glue to adhere the paint onto the rock.

- NARRATOR: It's really amazing to think you can paint a rock wall and have it exist for thousands of years, but that is indeed the case.

- All these are natural pigments that if you left them laying on the ground, they would retain their color for an eternity.

And if you put 'em on the rock, it's gonna stain the rock rust color, and it'll last for an eternity.

[wind blowing] [wind blowing] [wind blowing] [wind blowing] [wind blowing] [wind blowing] [wind blowing] [wind blowing] [wind blowing] [wind blowing] [wind blowing] [wind blowing] [icicles dripping] This series is supported in part by Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation -- conserving the wild things and wild places of Texas, thanks to members across the state.

Additional funding provided by the Toyota Tundra.

Your local Toyota dealers are proud to support outdoor recreation and conservation in Texas.

Adventure: it's what we share.