Texas Day Six

Our last full day in Texas took us north, and then back east to South Padre Island.

We started the day at Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge, home to the largest population of Ocelots in the United States. Not surprisingly, we didn't see any, but we still had a good time exploring this enormous refuge.

The drive there was pretty slow, and we didn't enter the refuge until the sun was well up. The definite highlight of the drive was a dead feral pig in the middle of the road that had attracted a pair of Crested Caracaras. Not long after, an Eastern Meadowlark singing on a telephone wire provided a very nice new bird for our life lists.

Crested Caracaras are strange looking tropical falcons that specialize in scavenging.

Once we arrived at the visitor's center and had paid our fee, we wandered over to the feeders to watch Bronzed Cowbirds, Green Jays, and a Wild Turkey join the Chachalaca crowd. There was also a pair of White-throated Sparrows, both white and tan striped, which was nice for westerners like us. A stroll around the grounds via the Kiskadee Trail brought us to a nice mixed flock of migrants that included colorful highlights like a male Painted Bunting, multiple Indigo Buntings, Orioles, and our first Yellow Warbler for the trip. An Altamira Oriole allowed us to get close to it, but I wasn't able to get a picture. Alas!

We decided to start our exploration of the refuge's roads with at rip to Alligator Pond, where a pair of Masked Ducks had been sighted. Masked Ducks are a stiff-tailed tropical duck that only rarely occurs in the United States, so we were hoping they were still sticking around. A short drive and a short stroll later, there they were! They didn't perform any amazing tricks, but they did sit and allow long examination in our scope (too far for pictures, unfortunately), even preening under their wings and exposing their distinctive white wing patches.

We were joined pretty much right away by some other birders, and together we admired the ducks on the pond, as well as a Sora that scurried around on the bank right under our noses! This was by far our best view of a Sora, ever, and we drank in the views of the generally hard-to-view rail. A few migrants popped by for a drink, and one of the other birders pointed out an alligator's head and snout sticking out at us.

An Alligator eyes us from Alligator Pond.

It's funny how all the Alligators we saw were in ponds named after them. Actually, the nature preserves in South Texas generally show little if any creativity when thinking of names. And Alligators aren't the only creativity-draining organisms, as we couldn't seem to find any trails that weren't named after Green Jays or Great Kiskadees, either.

After returning to our car, we decided to take a turn around the park's long auto-tour. This takes you through flooded fields, thorn forest, and right to the banks of Laguna Atascosa, where we hoped to see some Piping Plovers. No luck on the Piping Plovers, but we did enjoy more of the usual south Texas species, and even spied a beautiful Aplomado Falcon. The Falcon cooperatively perched on a yucca (or yucca-like plant) for minutes on end, and we had long and fairly satisfying scope views from a pretty great distance. Aplomado Falcons in Texas are part of a reintroduction program, and so are not considered "countable" by the arcane rules of the American Birding Association due to the population's tentative survival and its unnatural provenance.

After we finished the loop, we headed straight back to South Padre Island to see what the afternoon's migration may have dropped by. The result was many of the same species as the previous day, but with a few notable additions, and this time we brought our camera! Not that we got many of them on film...

As we crossed into the gardens, one of the first birds we saw was a male Audubon's Yellow-rumped Warbler, a very familiar bird from back home. That was very pleasant. Soon, though, we were admiring our first Palm Warbler and our first Blackpoll Warbler.

Our first Palm Warbler surveys its domain.

Out on the boardwalk, we again enjoyed the assemblage of waders and shorebirds, but this time we were very surprised to see a flock of about 50 birds land in a nearby isolated mangrove. Checking in our binoculars, we were pleased to find that they were Dickcissels, a rather strange cardinal-like bird that spends its winters in South America in large numbers. In fact, just that morning Libby had mentioned that she was hoping to see a Dickcissel! Talk about realized desires.

After enjoying the colorful migrants in the lots, we moved south and scoped a big flock of terns and gulls assembled near the bridge to the mainland. Among the flock we picked out a single Franklin's Gull, a long-distance migrant that passes through Texas every year on their way north, and a few of the terns proved to be our first Sandwich Terns.

That night we dined at a Mexican seafood restaurant in Port Isabel where we were serenaded by a folk singer strumming and singing tunes from Bob Dylan. Our after dinner entertainment was removing ticks, of course.

Here are the new birds for the day:
1. Masked Duck
2. Franklin's Gull
3. Sandwich Tern
4. Palm Warbler
5. Blackpoll Warbler
6. Dickcissel
7. Eastern Meadowlark
Aplomado Falcon (cool to see)

Saturday hosted our highest diversity of species for a day - we had 112 total. That's not bad considering we weren't making an effort to see a high number of species. Pictures for the day can be found here: Texas Day Six.

Texas Day Five

Our first dawn in Brownsville found us scanning telephone wires for crows (none seen, unfortunately) as we made our way to Sabal Palm Audubon Center -- basically the southernmost tip of Texas.

Sabal Palm was the place I was anticipating visiting most eagerly on the trip. Not only does it attract great birds, but its relict Sabal Palm forest has a decidedly tropical character. As you walk the trail, you can gaze up at filtered sunlight streaming through the fronds above and illuminating the tall straight trunks wrapped in vines. It's pretty awesome, and right up there with Santa Ana NWR as the coolest forest we viewed on our trip.

I assume the classic birding pose. Posed, of course. There's no bird above me.

This was our windiest morning of the trip, which definitely affected bird activity. Still, we saw some neat species. Many of the resident specialties came into the feeders, including one that's actually rare this far south in the Rio Grande Valley - an Audubon's Oriole. On the trails, we found our first Black-and-White Warbler and Blue-headed Vireo ever, while also enjoying a spattering of other common migrants.

As the morning wore on, we meandered back to the car to plan the rest of the day. At the time, we were mulling two options. First, we could take a road to Boca Chica beach and look for shorebirds and grassland specialties along the way. Option two was that we could drive out to South Padre Island where almost all of the same birds were possible, plus South Padre Island is known as a famous migrant trap.

The promise of eastern warblers being too hard to resist, we headed for the island. From the freeway, we were able to see our first ever (and, it turned out, only ever so far) White-tailed Hawk perched on a fence. Incidentally, we didn't see a single Red-tailed Hawk the whole trip! Quite a change from California freeways, where they are so common.

We couldn't make it to South Padre Island without a stop at the local lighthouse, however. Port Isabella's light is right off the freeway before you hit the causeway to the island, so it's a natural place to stop for lunch. We took our mid-day repast at its picnic tables and watched Tropical Kingbirds chase each other around on the neighboring telephone wires. And, of course, Libby took some nice lighthouse pictures!

Looking up at the lighthouse.

Incidentally, Port Isabel seemed like a very nice town. I definitely preferred its seaside character to South Padre Island's Vegas-like tower hotels and cut-rate T-shirt shops.

After we finished eating and using "the facilities" (a need that birders constantly must consider) we drove across the biggest bridge in Texas and headed north to the Convention Center. When we pulled in, the parking attendant gruffly redirected us to a neighboring sandy beach for parking. It turns out there was a big motorcycle convention beginning that afternoon, and the parking was all reserved for its attendees. No matter, a little extra walking was a small price to pay for the possibility of eastern migrants. Still, as we walked through the crowd of leather-clad bikers, we kept our expectations low. A local toting an impressively long camera lens had told us in the parking lot that migration was really slow today. Just a few Nashville Warblers and Tennessee Warblers. Oh, and a Palm Warbler. The Palm Warbler would be a new bird for us, but the others we'd seen before quite a bit on the trip.

It turns out a slow day at South Padre Island is nothing to sneer at, leaving us only that much more in awe of a fast one. Just that afternoon, between the Convention Center and the similarly vegetated Sheepshead Lot further south, we had three new warblers: a Chestnut-sided male (Libby's favorite warbler for the trip!), Northern Waterthrush, and Louisiana Waterthrush. We somehow missed the Palm Warbler that day. Plus, the trees were thick with our first Baltimore and Orchard Orioles - in every possible spring plumage - and bringing us to three new Oriole species for the day! Not only that, but Rose-breasted Grosbeaks added their striking colors to the fray, and a subtley plumaged Veery hopped along next to our first Eastern Wood-Pewee. It was fantastic birding, with great views of every species.

A first spring male Orchard Oriole eating an orange in South Padre Island.

Not only are the little woody lots nice, but there's also a great boardwalk that takes you out through some high tidal flats to a strip of mangroves. I was pretty excited to see mangroves for the first time in my life, and even better, there were awesome birds to be seen out there, too. Clapper Rails showed well, something they never seem to do locally for us. We also saw our first definite Mottled Ducks, a very cute group of Wilson's Plover scurrying about on the mud flats, and our first American Golden-plover. And to top it all off, as we were getting ready to leave, two Yellow-crowned Night Herons came swooping into the Mangroves.

By the time we'd gotten our fill of migration, we were pretty tired. If it hadn't been for the most satisfying root beer floats of our lives mid-afternoon at an A&W, we would have been out for the count. Given the root-beery refreshment, however, we were good for one more adventure before we called it a night.

Next stop: parrots! South Texas hosts two established exotic species in large numbers: Green Parakeets and Red-crowned Parrots. Both are native to Mexico only a hundred or so miles south of the border, and thrive in American border urban centers throughout the valley. We have Red-crowned Parrots here in L.A., so we focused on the Green Parakeets. Our destination was a well known roosting site at the University of Texas, Brownsville where the Parakeets proved ridiculously easy to find. Pull into the parking lot in the evening, get of your car, and enjoy the commotion! We were even able to see them coming in and out of their nest holes at a nearby resaca. Plus, we saw some Red-crowned Parrots mixed in with the flock, so we had another bird for the trip!

We finished the day off at Whataburger, and then went home to remove a bunch of ticks we picked up somehow. This was one of our best days! Pictures can be found here: Texas Day Five.

Lifers for the day:
1. Mottled Duck
2. Yellow-crowned Night Heron
3. White-tailed Hawk
4. American Golden-Plover
5. Wilson's Plover
6. Green Parakeet
7. Blue-headed Vireo
8. Veery
9. Chestnut-sided Warbler
10. Black-and-White Warbler
11. Northern Waterthrush
12. Louisiana Waterthrush
13. Rose-breasted Grosbeak
14. Orchard Oriole
15. Audubon's Oriole
16. Baltimore Oriole

On the fourth day of Texas...

My true love gave to me... 90 degree weather and high humidity?

Thursday was a busy day for us, so this post will be pretty long. We drove over 150 miles from Zapata to Brownsville, with multiple stops along the way, had eight lifers and 84 species total for the day. You can skip straight to the pictures here: Texas Day Four.

To get a good start, we were up and out of the hotel room nice and early on Thursday, checking out of a bustling lobby packed with heavy machine operators packing away a warm Tex-Mex breakfast of pancakes and chorrizo. In no time at all we were zipping down the dark and mostly empty two-land highway to our first stop - a good thirty plus minutes away. The goal was to get there early because the guide book said that early morning was the best time to be there for the birds we were seeking.

Our destination was a little town called Salineño, a rustic village off Highway 83 right along the Rio Grande's banks. Its mostly gravel roads converge on a town square crowned with a small Roman Catholic parish. Once you're past the church, the main road softens to hard packed dirt and dips down a hill to the very banks of the river. From a dirt boat ramp you can stand and watch the ripply current flow past. This was a wonderful place, we realized, as we climbed out of our car into a soft subtropical morning. The lapping dark water met close-cropped grass and short bushes under light-green trees on our bank, and dense vegetation on the Mexican side.

Libby admires Mexico.

It's not just beautiful, but famous for the relatively good chances that it gives you to see two birds whose ranges really only brush the United States - Red-billed Pigeons and Muscovy Ducks. Red-billed Pigeons are dark tropical pigeons that perch mostly unseen in the crowns of trees to feed on fruit. Muscovy Ducks are a large and widespread neo-tropical species of duck that has been domesticated (the only source of domestic ducks outside of mallards) and is common in that form in parks throughout the United States. The only place where they exist in their wild form north of the border, however, is on this narrow stretch of the Rio Grande south of the Falcon Dam. The best part of the wild birds is that they're way more beautiful than their hideous domestic off-spring. They're a deep and usually uniform glossy black with less red in the facial skin than their domestic children, and startling white bright wing patches.

A few minutes after we exited our car, another birder pulled up and got out. He came over, and as we watched the river and chatted, we discovered he was a prolific birder who had seen more than 700 birds in North America, but still had not seen Muscovy Ducks. In fact, he had been to this very spot before more than a dozen times and never seen them. That was a little discouraging, to say the least.

In talking about different places he had been, he mentioned spending last winter in Escondido, California, and chasing a Dusky-capped Flycatcher up in L.A. County! So, it turned out he'd seen the Dusky-capped Flycatcher in Creek Park, and we'd even exchanged a few e-mails back then. The birding world is pretty small. At the present moment, he was working on a "big month," an attempt to see as many birds as possible in one calendar month of the year. Having seen about 350 birds so far in April, he had made the trip down to Salineño for a chance at the ducks.

I'll just take a moment to add that serious birders become very persistent in their attempts to see a desired species. Obviously Leo, the birder at Salineño, had been persistent in his pursuit of Muscovy Ducks, but another birder we met over the weekend with almost 700 North American birds on his list spent twelve hours one day while we were in Texas waiting for a "mega-rare" Crimson-collared Grosbeak to show up at a little Audubon sanctuary down the valley. The persistence usually pays off, as both Leo and this other birder got their birds, but it's illustrative of the dedication people pay this somewhat unusual hobby.

Anyway, the river was pretty active that morning. A Green Kingfisher darted around in the low shrubs on the near shore, a pair of Osprey floated above looking for fish, a big Ringed Kingfisher made sallies at fish from trees on the Mexican shore, and we saw an immense and beautiful flock of Cattle Egrets come rowing downriver. The egrets' white plumage was practically luminous in the morning gloom.

And then, finally, I glanced upstream and saw a big black duck with white patches on its wings crossing the river! Leo got on it, and was jubilant, but Libby didn't have time to see it before it flew out of sight. We waited a few minutes, and then two more came flying downstream above the trees on the far shore! Hurrah! Libby and I exchanged high fives (that's how we roll when we see a new bird) and were giddy with glee.

Our hands were still tingling from the high fives when a small flock of heavy dark pigeons came rushing in directly overhead about 20' above us and disappeared upstream. Red-billed Pigeons! This time we had high fives all around the three of us. Our grins were from ear to ear and we exulted in our good fortune. We would have been content with those poor views, but we saw both species again later on as we worked the area's trails, including a great view of a Muscovy Duck flying upstream just a few dozen feet off shore from us. A Canadian birder dropped in around that time, looking for Hook-billed Kites, and he got good looks at the birds, too, though he didn't find Hook-billed Kites in the time we were there. I guess it was a good day at Salineño.

After that, we spent some time walking the trails in the area and found our first ever Eastern Screech-Owl (a distinctive Mexican race that may be its own species) peeking out of a nest box. We also looked hard for Audubon's Orioles, whose small American range excludes the Valley south of Salineño, but we couldn't find anything but Altamiras. We revisited later in the day and found a male Varied Bunting right along the river bank in some bushes, and a flock of migrant warblers in the trees along the river. Varied Buntings are really beautiful little birds, less gaudy than a Painted Bunting, and adorned in a subtle plum-like combination of blue, purple and red.

After getting our fill of Pigeons and Ducks, we headed back upstream to Falcon Dam State Park to see if we could see some fun desert birds, especially Scaled Quail. It was getting hot by that time and the low vegetation of the area didn't provide much relief, so we did most of our birding by car. We did flush a large flock of gray quail, which were undoubtedly the Scaled Quail we were looking for, but we didn't get a good look at them and couldn't refind them in the scrub. We also saw Pyrrhuloxia, Crested Caracaras, Black Vultures, and Curve-billed Thrashers, which are all fun birds that aren't as common in the lower parts of the Valley. Our one lifer here was Northern Bobwhite, not a bird I associate with desert, but a very handsome quail none-the-less.

Also, we found a turtle!

I don't know what kind of turtle this is.

Soon we were on the road again. We made a quick roadside stop for our first definite Cave Swallows swarming around a bridge before unsuccessfully dropping by a small settlement called Chapeño. The feeders there were once famous for offering the possibility of seeing the only U.S. population of Brown Jays, but unfortunately it appeared to be inaccessible due to heavy construction going on down by the river. I think they may have been working on the border fence. Then we stopped once more at Salineño before heading to Roma for lunch. Roma's an old little border town that's sort of run down, but there are some bluffs there you can view the river from. We ate lunch in the local World Birding Center's backyard courtyard while watching Ruby-throated Hummingbirds and Hooded Orioles come to the feeders.

After that we still had quite a few miles to go. We were heading to Estero Llano Grande State Park - near McAllen, the town where we had stayed the first two nights. It has extensive pools and wetlands, and at the time some Fulvous Whistling-Ducks that I thought would be fun to see. Sure enough, when we got there we talked to an employee in the visitor's center who directed us to not only the ducks, but to a day roosting Common Parauqe! Pauraques are a tropical nightjar that we would have otherwise have had to search for at night, but this way, we just had to pop out our eyes thoroughly scanning leaf litter in a small area for about half an hour before we found it. It's incredibly camouflaged, but we would have doubtlessly have found it more quickly if we had merely walked to the other side of the bush to which we were directed.

Can you find the Pauraque?

We also found the Fulvous Whistling-Ducks, and had our best look at wild Mallards for the trip. The "Mexican" Mallards found in southern Texas lack the green heads of their northern relatives, and resemble the southeastern Mottled Duck. We tried our best to turn them into Mottled Ducks, a bird we hadn't yet seen, but we failed miserably.

Our day wasn't quite over, yet, though! It was still only about five or six in the evening, and we headed straight for Brownsville to find a hotel. That turned out to be nearly an hour between the long drive and figuring out which motel to stay at, and we were really hungry by the time we ate dinner. We settled on a Denny's we could walk to from our hotel for convenience, and had the sort of food you'd expect from a Denny's.

The neat thing about our hotel was that it was right on a little resaca that hosted Laughing Gulls, domestic Muscovy Ducks, Black-bellied Whistling Ducks, and at night, a secretive nocturnal mammal that I think was probably a Nutria.

List of new birds for the day (we'll do a comprehensive and annotated checklist for all the birds later):

1. Fulvous Whistling-Duck
2. Muscovy Duck
3. Northern Bobwhite
4. Red-billed Pigeon
5. Eastern Screech-Owl
6. Common Pauraque
7. Cave Swallow
8. Varied Bunting

A Texas Wednesday

For our third day in Texas, we went to the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge. This refuge is termed the jewel of the refuge system for its colorful, varied and sub-tropical character. It consists of a large tract of uncut riparian forest along the Rio Grande whose tall trees are draped with long dangling streams of Spanish moss, as well as thorn scrub and still fresh water pools dotted with waterfowl.

We started early in the morning, and wandered the trails to a tall tree tower, where we watched the sun rise over a beautiful emerald canopy below us.

Libby contemplates the sunrise from the Tree Tower.

From the tower, we looked down on singing Long-billed Thrashers and Cardinals, while Kingbirds hawked insects from tall branches in the warm sunlight. It was a nice moment, made nicer by our first lifer of the day winging by above us - a single adult White Ibis on its way north from somewhere in Mexico to somewhere in the United States, above mankind's artificial borders.

After descending, we hiked a trail that took us down to the river to see what was stirring and to peek across the border. That was a great idea because we soon happened upon our first ever Olive Sparrow, a somewhat skulky inhabitant of the underbrush in the lower valley. That was especially rewarding because we had heard them singing the day before from just feet away without being able to see them. Soon we reached the river, and peaking through the thick brush we saw not only Mexico, but our first Green Kingfisher scooting across the river to perch on another bush. This was a bird that Libby's even dreamed about seeing, literally, so we were thrilled!

Me, the river, and Mexico

Other life birds fell quickly as we winded our way back to the visitor's center, with Least Grebes, Stilt Sandpipers, and even another Painted Bunting in some brush along the trail. When we got back to the Visitor's Center, we asked if they had any tips on where to find a Clay-colored Thrush, as it was one of the common Lower Rio Grande Valley specialities we'd yet to find. The friendly lady at the desk had just the place. She took us outside to a group of feeders, and pointed to a grapefruit stuck on a tree. Just sit and wait, she said, it will come to that one grapefruit there. Twenty minutes later, that's just what it did!

Clay-colored Thrush at its favorite grapefruit.

We spent some time relaxing at the active feeders talking to other birders before heading out to bird another trail to see what we could find. It was a great idea because pretty soon we found our first big flock of migrant warblers. It hosted lots of beautiful little jewels including our first ever Tennessee Warblers, Yellow-throated Warbler and Black-throated Green Warbler.

In the mid-afternoon, we reluctantly left this place, one of the best we visited in Texas, to drive west to Zapata, where we would spend the night. It was about a two hour drive, and pretty uninteresting. Libby got to sleep some of the way, and I passed the hours using our iPod to listen to music and some Chesterton. We arrived around 6:00 in the evening, checked into our motel, and headed to a local Church's chicken fast food joint.

It's only worth mentioning dinner because the place was terrifyingly dirty and poorly run, and the visit was only redeemed because we met a nice Candian trucker who thought we might have been Australian, but that in any case, we definnitely weren't from around those parts. True enough! Another highlight of Zapata, which was a peculiar roadside small town, was that it had a 7st Street. Yes, you read that right.

After that we made our only effort for a little sparrow-like bird called a White-collared Seedeater. We visited a park next to the public library in town with a pond with a lot of reeds in it that had hosted them a week earlier. Unfortunately, though, we didn't find them. We did find a House Finch - our only representative of that species for the entire week!

We ended the day with 75 species, including 14 lifers. View a collection of pictures here: Texas Day Three. The lifers were:

1. White Ibis
2. Olive Sparrow
3. Black-crested Titmouse: a fun and energetic pair of birds.
4. Green Kingfisher: hurrah! Great views at Pintail Lake.
5. Least Grebe: cute
6. Stilt Sandpiper
7. Clay-colored Thrush
8. Chimney Swift
9. Solitary Sandpiper
10. White-eyed Vireo: amazing bird
11. Black-throated Green Warbler: eye-popping!
12. Tennessee Warbler: super common
13. Yellow-throated Warbler: maybe my favorite warbler of the trip - very beautiful
14. Crested Caracara

Travelogue: Fast Food

Intrigued by the unique name and ubiquitous presence of the Whataburger chain here in Texas, Libby and I decided to favor it with our business this evening for dinner. Approaching the counter, a young woman, probably in high school or recently graduated from it, asked us for our orders. Libby asked for a Whataburger. With cheese? Yes, please. No problems, we're like old pros. After her, I asked for a number five. The conversation that followed is recorded below as accurately as I can remember it:

Young woman: All the way?

Me: What?

The young woman's face clouds - she's bewildered. I decide to come to the rescue.

Me: I'm sorry, I don't know what that means.

Young woman (relieved but still confused): Do you want everything on it?

Me: Oh, yes, sure. I'm sorry, but this is our first time in a Whataburger.

Young woman: (incredulous) Really?

Me: Yeah, we're from California and we don't have them there.

Young woman: (energetic and excited) Really? You're from California? That's awesome! I want to go there.

Me: Yes, it's very nice.

Then she gave us our receipt and we filled our drinks and sat down.

Texas Day 2

Well, our second day here in Texas was all that we could realistically have expected it to be, and maybe a little bit more. We saw 16 new birds - the most we've seen in one day's time for a really long time. Not only that, but many of the birds that we saw were birds that we've wanted to see ever since we first cracked open Libby's National Geographic Guide back in our last year of college. Back then, wonderful and beautiful birds like Great Kiskadee, Green Jays and, most of all, Painted Buntings, were the sort of birds you were just amazed existed because of their outlandish colors and patterns.

They do exist, and now we've seen them. All three of the above birds in one day, plus many more, and each a highlight deserving its own post. Of course, I won't go into the kind of detail, but I'll just sort of outline our day, and then list the new birds.

It was actually a little frustrating in the morning because we got a bit of a late start, and then realized upon arriving at our destination that we had forgotten to buy insect repellent. So, off we went to hunt some down, driving down long straight roads and wasting a good half-hour of prime birding time. It's good we got it, though, because the mosquitoes were present, and they were large, and they were voracious. So, interestingly enough, were ticks, apparently, as I picked one up from somewhere. How I managed to do that without going off-trail I have no idea.

Anyway, our main destination for the day was the Bentsen Rio Grande Valley State Park, and it's a great birding destination here in the lower valley. It has the great majority of the lower valley specialty birds, even Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl and Hook-billed Kite, both of which are rather difficult to find and so we were not surprised to miss them. In general, the place is a fairly large park heavily vegetated by a variety of hardwood trees, most of them fairly short, and filled in with lots of tall grass that's currently dead. It's a brown place right now, but the birds it has fill in the color. Green Jays were common, and Altimira Oriole was impossible to miss. We even saw one of the park's unique Altamira x Auduon's Oriole hybirds. Great Kiskadees called from many tree tops, and the resacas (old oxbows of previous Rio Grande courses) hosted our first Ringed Kingfishers. There's a tram to take you around the roads, and it was nice, peaceful and not too crowded with birders.

It was plenty hot and very bright, muggy and sunny. The roads don't really wind under the canopy of the trees, most of which are not very tall, so you're pretty exposed to the sun the whole time. There was a relieving breeze, though, which we very much enjoyed every time it moved through. Even the visitor's center was quite good for birding, providing us with several lifers, including Painted Bunting! and Buff-breasted Hummingbird. Also, it had our first Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, which was quite nice.

After spending about eight hours there, we headed back to McAllen, and stopped by Quinta Mazatlan, an old estate in the city that has a lot of the same birds. We found a lifer there, too, (Carolina Wren) and enjoyed better looks at some of the other specialties. Over all, we had only 48 species for the day, but when one third of those are brand new, that's a lot!

I put up some pictures! Actually, several groups of pictures:

1) Day 1 in McAllen pictures (just a few from our afternoon walk)

2) Day 2 Pictures from Bentsen (my favorite from this set is the Long-billed Thrasher video - check it out!)

New bird list:

1. Great Kiskadee
2. Plain Chachalaca
3. Long-billed Thrasher
4. White-tipped Dove
5. Altamira Oriole
6. Green Jay
7. Northern Parula (our first migrant warbler for the trip)
8. Great-crested Flycatcher
9. Buff-bellied Hummingbird
10. Broad-winged Hawk (migrating by - morning trickle, but probably a little fewer 1,000 passed over Quinta Mazatlan in the afternoon)
11. Anhinga
12. Ringed Kingfisher (Libby picked this awesome bird out for us)
13. Painted Bunting (two seen very well at the visitor's center)
14. Groove-billed Ani (a small secretive group below the hawk watch platform)
15. Ruby-throated Hummingbird (males and probably females at the visitor's center)
16. Carolina Wren (a pair at Quinta Mazatlan)

Texas Day 1

Well, we're in McAllen, Texas, now. The flights weren't too long. It was about two and a half hours to Dallas-Fort Worth, and then one hour south to McAllen from there. Still, taking into account the time change, it took the whole day to get here.

Security at LAX was crazy. The line for the American Airlines terminals was probably a good half-mile long, and took a long time to get through. We gave ourselves plenty of time, but it was still annoying. On the first flight, we spent a lot of time familiarizing ourselves with the birds we'll see here in Texas, and had a pretty good time. It was pretty uneventful until the descent, when it got a little bumpy and both Libby and I got air-sick. No time to throw up though, becuase our next plane left half-an-hour after we landed. We just barely got in the back of the line at the last boarding call!

Of course, we were still feeling motion sick when we got there, so we weren't looking forward to getting back up in the air again. Thankfully, we did pretty well on the smooth flight south, and nobody had any trouble with their cookies.

After arriving in McAllen, we rented a car and found a motel (no trouble with either of those, despite not making reservations). Then we grabbed our binoculars and headed out into the nearby residential areas for a quick look-round.

One of the things that we really like about visiting a new area is experiencing not only the new birds, but the new mixture of birds. Even though the most common birds were House Sparrows, Great-tailed Grackles, and White-winged Doves - all birds with which we're well acquainted - the particular mixture was different than California or Arizona would have hosted. In coastal southern California, Great-tailed Grackles are localized residents near bodies of fresh water like lakes in urban parks. Here, they're the most common bird, flying in and out of every tree, long black tails streaming behind. Meanwhile, every weedy patch bursts with active House Sparrows, nary a House Finch to be found among them, unlike in southern California. And White-winged Doves coo syncopatedly from every developed oak, alongside the here less common Mourning Dove.

Meanwhile, the swallows spinning above us were Purple Martins, not Northern Rough-wings like they're apt to be in California. And Inca Doves were feeding right in the middle of a quiet residential street. Along with feral Rock Pigeons and a single Common Ground-dove, we had a good number of doves and pigeons today.

Probably the most outlandish "not in California" moment, though, was when we saw a flock of ducks whirr by overhead. But these flashy and ungainly forms weren't the Mallards we'd expect to see at home, but Black-bellied Whistling Ducks, a species we've only seen once in a small flock in Arizona. Representing another example of a species with which we're familiar in a new and suddenly more common niche.

Of course, we do enjoy the new birds that we see. Libby found our first lifer at the country club - a Golden-fronted Woodpecker! This is the southern counterpart to the more widespread Red-bellied Woodpecker, which we've never seen either, and really a fun and pretty bird. It perched in a fairly distant oak, but we were still able to admire its golden nape and fore-crown, as well as its dark barred back. We'll see many more of these, certainly.

Our second new bird was a Couch's Kingbird. It was perched high in a blooming Jacaranda, but its distinctive call revealed its identity. It looks a lot like a Tropical Kingbird, which we've seen in Arizona and California, but sounds quite different.

Tomorrow, we'll explore some of the local wildlife refuges! Adios!