Birding at Pleasure Island

Drive over the soaring MLK Bridge for scenic views and water birds

Share Pleasure Island with shorebirds, ducks, gulls and terns. This man-made island is good for a day of fun. A waterside boardwalk begins from a parking lot near the Pleasure Island Commission.

Look for neotropic cormorants; canvasback; bufflehead; red-breasted mergansers; northern shovelers; blue and green-winged teal; gadwall; pintail, wigeon; ruddy ducks; and American pipits along roads. In winter look for loons, usually near Levee Road; American Avocets and spotted sandpiper.

Adventures begin with a drive over the soaring Martin Luther King bridge. Enjoy a boardwalk stroll and views of sailboats at Pleasure Island Marina, by the Port Arthur Yacht Club. While on the island, get a load of Big Arthur, the massive crane that unloads ships at Port of Port Arthur, try some disc golf, cast a line from the gazebo on the pier and enjoy a picnic. Extensive areas of marsh border island impoundments; mud flats.

Fun stuff:

• Make sure to visit the new bird blind near the base of the golf ball water tower!
• The Pleasure Island Bridge Half Marathon in fall gets hundreds of runners spanning the bridge.
• This 18.5 mile long man-made body of land extends from the mouth of the Neches River on the northwest to the Sabine Causeway on the southeast and is surrounded by Sabine Lake and the Sabine Neches Intracoastal Waterway.
• The U. S. Corps of Engineers created Pleasure Island from deposits dredged while constructing the Port Arthur Canal, completed in 1899, and the Sabine Neches Intracoastal Waterway, completed in 1908. The Martin Luther King Jr. Bridge and the Sabine Causeway now connect Pleasure Island to Port Arthur and Louisiana.

Around Pleasure Island