https://dauphinislandalabama.net/

Willow Tree Cottage, 1302 Chaumont Avenue, Dauphin Island, AL (2026)

08/31/2026

Tonight

08/28/2026

Cottage is the perfect birdwatching spot.

Every spring, billions of songbirds leave the Yucatan at dusk and fly north over open water. For most of them the first land they touch is Dauphin Island. 🐦

That is a 600 mile crossing with nowhere to stop. They launch on a southerly tailwind, and if the weather holds they come over the coast high and keep going inland.

When the weather does not hold, you get a fallout.

A cold front swings the wind around to the north and puts rain in front of it while the birds are still over water. Now they are flying into a headwind, soaked, and running out of everything. They come down into the first habitat they can reach, and on Dauphin Island people describe it as birds literally falling from the sky.

What lands is almost unbelievable. Scarlet tanagers. Indigo buntings. Orchard orioles. Warblers in a dozen colors. Birds so spent they will sit on a branch at arm's length and not move.

More than two billion birds cross the Gulf region every year, mostly March through May. Over 300 species can turn up on the island in a single spring. Of the 445 bird species ever officially documented in Alabama, 420 of them have been recorded on Dauphin Island. That is 95 percent of the state list on one barrier island. 🌿

The American Bird Conservancy classifies it as a Globally Important Bird Area, and it has been voted America's Birdiest City three years running.

The Audubon Bird Sanctuary covers 164 acres of freshwater lake, swamp, pine forest and dune, with three miles of trail. The land came from Alabama Conservation in 1961, the Audubon partnership followed in 1967, and the trail system was designated a National Recreation Trail in 2012.

First arrivals are already showing by mid February. By April the floodgates open.