Dauphin Island Audubon Bird Sanctuary

The Gulf crossing takes everything a songbird has. Five hundred miles of open water, no rest, no margin for error — and then, if the wind holds, Dauphin Island rises out of the haze. For 420 of Alabama's 445 documented bird species, this barrier island is first landfall after the trans-Gulf flight from South America and Central America. During spring migration, when weather conspires and exhausted fliers drop into the pines all at once, the phenomenon is called a fallout — the canopy fills with warblers, tanagers, thrushes, orioles, indigo buntings, birds so spent they land at eye level and don't care that you're standing there.

The sanctuary itself covers 164 acres on the island's eastern end, established in 1961 when the state transferred the land to the Dauphin Island Park and Beach Board with the explicit purpose of protecting the twice-annual crush of migrants and butterflies. In 1967 it joined the national system of Audubon wildlife sanctuaries by formal agreement. The topography here holds what migrants need: a freshwater lake, swamp, pine forest, dunes. Three miles of trail work through all of it — the trail system was designated a National Recreation Trail in 2012.

Timing matters. Spring brings marbled godwit and red knot. The brackish wetlands draw long-legged herons. Autumn sees warblers and wrens in the vegetated zones. Winter belongs to the endangered piping plover, along with other sandpipers, plovers, turnstones. The island was designated an Important Bird Area for exactly this reason — it is often the first land birds encounter after the Gulf crossing, and they use it.

Go in late April or early May, ideally the morning after a cold front has stalled northbound migrants over open water. Bring binoculars. The fallout, when it happens, is not subtle.