COMMENT OF THE DAY: SHOPPING CENTER PARKING LOT OF THE APOCALYPSE “This is how I imagine the end of the world begins.” [Justin, commenting on For the Glory of Old Navy: Purple Martins’ Majesty Meets 59 Feeder Road Shopping Center Parking Lot]
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Tag: Birds
An enormous flock of Purple Martins has gathered in and around the parking lot of the Fountains Shopping Center facing the Southwest Freeway in Stafford, where they’ve taken up a noisy nighttime roost on nearby power lines and the allée of oak trees that leads through the concrete expanse to Rack Room Shoes and Old Navy. This is likely the same group that hung out in Sharpstown or the eastside KBR campus in previous years, on its way to Brazil; it appears to be the birds’ first window-shopping experience at Mattress Giant.
Some residents of Glen Cove St. have been encroaching on the Hogg Bird Sanctuary with their lawnmowers and destroying the birds’ habitat, complains an area resident. The sanctuary is nominally a part of Memorial Park, but is adjacent to Bayou Bend, the former Ima Hogg estate.
Abc13’s Miya Shay comments:
there are about a dozen homes whose own lawn shares a border line with the sanctuary. One of the women who actually lives there is complaining her some of her neighbors are mowing the grass, and putting up a hammock in what is technically city property. Instead of respecting land deeded by the Hogg Foundation, the neighbors are using the land as their own property.. for free.. forget the birds. As you can imagine, some folks are not so happy about it.. and demanding that the Parks department do a little more than just send angry letters and putting up “do not mow” signs….
Shay reports that City Council wants to get to the bottom of it . . . and maybe store some construction equipment in the sanctuary too!
- Birds vs. big houses: the sanctuary question [Houston Political Blog]
- Development takes toll on Houston bird sanctuaries [KHOU]
- Protecting the Sanctuary [abc13]