DUNCANVILLE, TEXAS — Late-afternoon sun hit the juniper, where two tiny bodies flitted through shadows. Ruby-crowned Kinglets, the first of the year. A soft call had given them away; otherwise, I might not have seen them at all.

This place is changing. Slowly, subtly, but surely. The sun is still hot, but the breeze is cool. Sumacs are reddening, and winged elms are yellowing. Kinglets have returned.

When you’re always changing hemispheres, seasons can start to lose their grip on you. July no longer means summer; April no longer means spring. Even to say it sounds heretical. But it’s true.

The intersections of place and time and self are what matter now; no dimension can be ignored. To find or create those intersections is to search. What happens then is serendipity.

When a mayfly landed on my hand, I welcomed it. I marveled at its bulging eyes, its tattered wings, supple abdomen, remarkably long cerci. The fragile creature hadn’t long to live, or to put it another way, its intricately constructed body would soon succumb to chaos. And so I imagined some sort of mutual comfort in the encounter between its body and mine.

Had the little creature already delivered its eggs or its sperm somewhere safe? I hoped so.

I imagined a dying mayfly host joining chickadees and ragweed in autumn’s anthem: On a participé à l’évolution!

Autumn might be sadder/more beautiful if it weren’t so beautiful/sad.

DUNCANVILLE, TEXAS — Post-hurricane reports continue trickling out of the upper Texas coast. The Houston Chronicle has this county-by-county summary. The AP has an interactive map of Ike’s path across the coast. Google has published a KML image overlay using satellite data from the NOAA Remote Sensing Division. Satellite before-and-after shots are almost unrecognizable.

The Big Picture has shocking and distressing photos showing just how bad the damage is. Coffins floated out of the ground, oil and chemicals spilled and spread, and entire communities were razed.

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department reports extensive damage to several state parks:

Hurricane Ike delivered a powerful blow to Texas State Parks. Two coastal parks, Galveston and Sea Rim, sustained catastrophic damage. Structures and facilities at Sea Rim near Port Arthur appear to be a total loss. At Galveston Island, Ike caused heavy beach erosion and swept away the park headquarters building, restrooms, and shelters. [read more]

Twenty-three state parks are closed, including parks as far inland as Martin Creek and Caddo Lake, both of which I’ve birded often.

I can’t find any information about Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge, but given that communities on all sides of the refuge were flooded and devastated, the refuge undoubtedly suffered from flooding and possibly also wind damage.

Last night, Winnie Burkett, Houston Audubon’s sanctuary manager, posted the following message on the Texbirds email list:

I talked to the Houston Audubon High Island caretaker, Houston Sliger this evening and he reported that the woods are full of warblers and gnatcatchers. He said that all High Island residents are being told to leave as there will be no services for at least a month.

He commented that the Boy Scout Woods board walk out to the wastewater pond over look was heavily damaged by waves!!!! There are dead cows everywhere and live cows walking all over High Island. I guess we will not be birding in the woods this fall.

She has also posted preliminary reports from other Houston Audubon sanctuaries.

The needs are huge — from immediate water and shelter needs for survivors to ongoing environmental and economic recovery, which will take years. So what can you do?

Humanitarian aid. You can donate to the American Red Cross, Convoy of Hope, the Texas Disaster Relief Fund, and other worthy charities assisting Ike victims. (And remember that though I’m writing about Texas, Louisiana and other US states have suffered damage too, and Caribbean nations like Haiti and Cuba have sustained catastrophic property destruction and loss of life.)

Houston Audubon. You can donate to Houston Audubon to help rebuild their sanctuaries, some of which are among the best-known birding sites in all of Texas. Look for the “Donate” link near the top of their site. Donations can also be mailed to Houston Audubon, 440 Wilchester, Houston TX 77079. Work and clean-up days will be scheduled this fall to help repair the sanctuaries. Consider volunteering your time. I’ll post more information as it becomes available.

Texas Ornithological Society. I haven’t heard any reports on coastal TOS sanctuaries, but with sites directly in harm’s way (e.g., Sabine Woods), there is undoubtedly severe damage. Donations toward recovery may be sent to Texas Ornithological Society, 6338 N New Braunfels Ave, PMB # 189, San Antonio TX 78209.

I’ll be making my donations later today. I hope that others of you will take action as well, especially if you’ve had the pleasure of birding this remarkable part of the world.

If you have more information or know of other ways to help, please let me know. I’ll try to keep the information coming.

DUNCANVILLE, TEXAS — What’s left of Hurricane Ike has blown back out into the ocean that spawned it, but the devastation that it left behind is only now becoming apparent. Many communities along the Gulf Coast in Texas are badly crippled or totally destroyed by the storm.

Critical breeding grounds, wintering grounds, and migration stopover points for this hemisphere’s avifauna have sustained damage — but how much is not yet known. High Island, Bolivar Flats, Smith Point, Galveston Island, and other locations were hammered hard by the storm. Trees are damaged. Marshes are contaminated by pollutants. Erosion has changed the land.

Loss of human life appears to have been mercifully low under the circumstances, but many families have lost their homes and livelihoods. These are the people and economies that have welcomed and benefited from many thousands of birders who came to visit the patch of the world that they share with so many wonderful birds.

Most of them are displaced tonight. A few are still trying to hold on, a decision which to an outsider seems unbelievably foolish — but who can place himself in their shoes? A Galveston County judge has called for the removal of remaining Bolivar Peninsula residents, against their wishes if necessary.

“Health conditions on [Galveston] island are deteriorating,” reports the Galveston County Daily News today. Water is contaminated, mosquito populations have exploded, power is out, flood waters remain in some places, and search and rescue operations are ongoing.

The bridge connecting most of the Bolivar Peninsula to the mainland (at Rollover Pass) has been severely damaged, and some reports say that the ferry landing on the other end of the peninsula has also been damaged. For pictures, see Crystal Beach.

Nerves are fraying as people struggle to cope with the the disaster. Galveston’s officials have ordered a media blackout.

We don’t know the full extent of the damage yet, but it’s clear that the entire ecosystem has suffered a blow. Veteran Texas birder Ted Eubanks posted a call for support on the Texbirds email list tonight, and fellow bird blogger John Mariani also calls for assistance.

This week’s events are tragic, and we must all do what we can to help human victims and the coastal ecosystem recover. That means money and time, not just talk. I’ll post more details as they become available to me.

I can’t help but think back to the days when the entire North American continent was an ever-changing mosaic of habitats and landscapes. Fires, floods, and storms continually changed the land, opening up new opportunities for life even as old patterns and associations were destroyed.

But now that we have pressed and squeezed and strained the land so badly, one natural disaster can be catastrophic in a way that it hardly could have been before. Not only are millions of people and the industries that sustain them pushed right to the very edge, but we’ve cleared so many trees and drained so many marshes that damage even to small geographical areas can have devastating consequences for entire species, which now have nowhere else to turn.

I fear that unless we have enough courage and willpower to change our priorities — even our whole way of life — the consequences of these events will wax worse as we become ever more demanding.

GREENE CO., MO. — August is a slow, hot month. Thank goodness for sandpipers and other shorebirds, which start trickling south by July, and for the big waders, which have a delightful habit of wandering around after they’ve finished breeding down south.

I’ve been birding Texas and now Missouri since returning from the South Pacific, and shorebirds and waders have been the story this month for sure. (I should point out that North Americans use the term “shorebirds” to refer to sandpipers, plovers, avocets, stilts, and their kin and the term “waders” for herons, egrets, storks, ibises, and spoonbills. Most other English speakers seem to use the term “waders” for what we call “shorebirds.” Just so we’re clear.)

I got good birds including Upland Sandpiper, Snowy Plover, and Baird’s Sandpiper on a visit to the Village Creek Drying Beds in Fort Worth, and I found over 150 Wood Storks, 20 Roseate Spoonbills, and hundreds of White Ibises and other waders at a location south of Dallas.

My friend Jason Pike and I found two Wood Storks in Rusk County, Texas, last weekend, and I found a Tricolored Heron and Neotropic Cormorants at Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge on Thursday. The big story in Texas, of course, was the Jabiru in the Valley, but that was about 500 miles too far for me to travel.

Yesterday, Charley Burwick and I birded the Aldrich area around Stockton Lake here in Missouri, and we got dozens of Black Terns plus Western, Semipalmated, Stilt, and Least Sandpipers and Semipalmated Plovers. We missed the Least Terns that Greg Swick and Marvin DeJong had seen the day before though.

Try as we might, we couldn’t find Buff-breasted Sandpipers on the flats or in the fields. Next time!

It’s good to be back in North America.

TEMPE, AUSTRALIA — “No. Nope, no. No. Sorry about that.” No penguins for you!

It was the information booth at Manly, and I’d asked if there was any way to see the Little Penguins that breed along the shoreline. She wouldn’t divulge any information.

Now, don’t get me wrong — I’m all for protecting threatened wildlife, and that was probably her job. But the woman’s refusal even to discuss the issue with me communicated one message loud and clear: You are an outsider, and outsiders don’t belong.

As if I needed a reminder.

I try not to spill much angst in this blog, but it’s been building up. However glamorous my globetrotting lifestyle may sound (and may, in fact, be), it leaves me a perpetual outsider — a visitor who doesn’t belong and doesn’t get to stay.

I am skipping over the world like a stone skips across the surface of a river.

Every time I touch down, something amazing is waiting for me. I didn’t get to see any penguins, but I watched Black-browed Albatrosses and Australasian Gannets soaring over a magnificent sea. Spectacular — the stuff of poetry and dreams.

But then the water molecules send me spinning back up into space, not sure whether to look forward or backward, wishing I could stay but curious about that next bounce too.

So to all of you who treat me like a friend or even family — or would if you ever had a chance — thank you. And don’t worry about me; I’ll probably feel better in the morning. But in the morning, I’m changing continents again.