TEXAS MONTHLY FEBRUARY 2025
Dear Fellow Texan, WELCOME
I couldn’t be prouder and more excited to bring you this special edition of Texas Monthly ’s February issue within the pages of Community Impact . One great Texas institution meets another. Community Impact and Texas Monthly have shared goals: to equip you with the news and perspectives that help you understand your state and your neighborhood and inspire you to engage with the people and places that surround you. Each month, we’ll provide you a kind of sampler of what Texas Monthly has to offer. Food, drink, travel, critters, and a taste of some of the award-winning storytelling Texas Monthly is known for. Enjoy the next few pages, thank you for welcoming us into your home, and please consider subscribing to Texas Monthly. —ROSS McCAMMON
EXCURSIONS Among the Craniacs North America’s tallest bird stalks Port Aransas once again. Its fans are back too. BY ROSE CAHALAN
I'M LEANING ON the rail of the Scat Cat, a red-and-white charter fishing boat in Aran- sas Bay, when two bottlenose dolphins leap majestically out of the water alongside our wake. The midday February sun gleams on their fins as the pair chases us. “Look!” I shout. A few of my sixty or so fellow passengers turn to watch, but this is only a warm-up for the real stars of the show: the whooping cranes. Today’s tour is part of the Whooping Crane Festival, an annual four-day winter celebra- tion of one of the continent’s rarest avian
species—and its tallest. About two thousand birders have descended on Port Aransas, a Gulf Coast town of around 2,900 residents on Mustang Island, for the twenty-seventh iteration, which is packed with more than fifty events, including birding tours and lectures by scientists. (This year’s festival happens February 20–23.) Before the arrival of European settlers, more than ten thousand of these birds soared across the continent, but habitat destruction and overhunting drove them to the brink. By
EDITOR IN CHIEF, TEXAS MONTHLY
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