This is Bird Note.

It's been raining hard for hours, but at last, the mid-April sky begins to clear.

We can almost see the Gulf of Mexico from where we're standing,

a quarter mile from the Texas coast at the edge of a stand of oak trees.

The rain has finally stopped, but now something else descends from the sky.

Birds, hundreds, thousands of birds, rose-breasted gross beaks, orchard orioles, painted buntings, warblers, flock after flock, they alight in trees and shrubs, sparkling indigo buntings, perch alongside velvety scarlet tanagers.

We are experiencing what birders call a fallout, one of the great spectacles of bird migration.

The legions of birds dropping from the sky have flown non-stop across the Gulf, covering 600 miles in about 15 hours.

Exhausted and hungry from bucking the storm, they land at last in tree-filled sanctuaries near the town of High Island, Texas.

The birds will refuel

and then fly north to breeding grounds across the continent.

Isn't it lucky for the birds

that people have conserved habitat

for these famished and weary travelers?

For Bird Note, I'm Mary McCann.