page_title: Padre Island
section_title: Birds
hierarchical_section_title: Padre Island / Wildlife / Birds
caption_attribution_description: Photos and maps related to Padre Island. Padre Island National Seashore - Kemps Ridley Sea Turtle
context_page_description: Padre Island is the largest of the Texas barrier islands and the world's longest barrier island. The island is located along Texas's southern coast of the Gulf of Mexico and is noted for its white sandy beaches. Meaning father in Spanish, it was named after Father José Nicolás Ballí, who owned the island and served as a missionary priest and collector of finances for all the churches in the Rio Grande Valley. He also founded the first mission in present-day Cameron County.
  Padre Island is the second-largest island by area in the contiguous United States, after Long Island in New York on the Atlantic Coast. It is about 113 miles long and 1.8 miles wide, stretching from the city of Corpus Christi, in the north, to the resort community of South Padre Island in the south. The island is oriented north-south, bordered by the Gulf of Mexico on the east and Laguna Madre on the west. The island's northern end connects to Mustang Island by roadway. The southern end of the island is separated from Brazos Island by the Brazos Santiago Pass.
  The town of South Padre Island is located on its southern end, but the island as a whole is sparsely populated.
context_section_description: Flocks of migratory birds arrive at the island during either early spring or fall and winter, with thousands of birds spending the winter there or migrating through the area. During the summer the most common birds are shore and marshbirds as well as some raptors and songbirds.
  The most common birds on the Gulf beach during the year are the willet, sanderling, black skimmer, great blue heron, double-crested cormorant, cattle egret, grey plover, laughing gull, brown pelican, reddish egret, and five species of terns, including the least tern, Caspian tern, black tern, Sandwich tern, and royal tern. The two periodically appearing birds nesting on the park's shores are the least tern and piping plover.
caption: Kemp's ridley sea turtle
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