Thirty Years Ago, Austin Set Aside Thousands of Acres to Save Endangered Birds. Did It Work?

Fifteen minutes after heading out onto a shrub-covered hillside at Barton Creek Habitat Preserve, in West Austin, a small group of biologists hears what it came for: the rapid twitter of a black-capped vireo, a rare yellow-and-black bird that looks as if it’s wearing tiny white spectacles. They follow the sound, and once they’ve roughly determined its location, David Morgan, a Travis County climate-resilience specialist, sets up a net in a gap between the greenery. He plays a recording of a male vireo, hoping to attract another male keen on protecting his territory. Soon enough, the bird he’s after swoops into the net. Morgan gently extracts it from the mesh, cups it in his hand, and snaps brightly colored bands around its toothpick-size ankles before…

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