SOUTH TEXAS, 29 October – 8 November 2017

[Green Jays]

I was invited by the San Antonio Audubon Society to speak at its annual dinner, held with the Bexar Audubon Society, downtown at the San Antonio Zoo. This gave me a perfect excuse to spend some time exploring South Texas. I would split my time between the San Antonio area and the lower Rio Grande.

[Desert Cottontail]

I spent five days hosted by Patsy and Tom Inglet, San Antonio birding experts and educators who travel the world to see birds. We birded and naturized at various sites in the vicinity of San Antonio.

[Black-throated Sparrow]

Our first field trip was to Enchanted Rock State Natural Area, near Fredericksburg in the Texas Hill Country. There we climbed the big granite batholith dome and chased birds in the arid brushlands. We observed Black-crested Titmouse, Greater Roadrunner, and Black-throated Sparrow, among others on the crisp cloudless morning that was blessed by the passing of a cold front.

[Least Grebes]

After a fortifying lunch in The Brewery, a restaurant on the main street of historic and picturesque Fredericksburg, we next visited Cibolo Nature Center and Farm in Boerne (just northwest of San Antonio) which features a mix of fields and streamside woodlands with some very old and grand Bald Cypress trees. There we found a mixed flock of songbirds that also included a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker.

[Golden-fronted Woodpecker male]

The next day (31 October) we traveled to Mitchell Lake Audubon Center, on the south side of San Antonio. This is a place where the Inglets do regular nature programs with students. Today was Halloween, and the staff were gaily dressed for the occasion. The lake itself hosted more than 350 American White Pelicans as well as hundreds of ducks of various species, shorebirds, herons, and many cormorants. Highlights for me included Least Grebe and Golden-fronted Woodpecker—two South Texas specialties.

[soaring White Pelicans]

Our third morning was spent at Choke Canyon State Park, in Three Rivers, Texas, about 90 minutes south of San Antonio. The Park features dry woodlands and a large reservoir, both of which we explored for birds, producing more Least Grebes, a Roseate Spoonbill, and two ibis species. Landbirds included Harris’s Hawk, Golden-fronted Woodpecker, Crested Caracara, Long-billed Thrasher, Couch’s Kingbird, and Green Jay. In the dry thorn woodland, we came upon a profusion of American Snout Butterflies—both foraging adults as well as hackberry trees festooned with the pupal cases from which these adult butterflies had emerged. This butterfly seemed to be undergoing a vast emergence and migration in South Texas at this time. I found them in great numbers in Choke Canyon, then later on the road south into the lower Rio Grande, and then along the Rio Grande itself. The American Snouts were a spectacle leading me south to a Land of Butterflies.

[35 American Snout Butterflies foraging at flowers]

On my fourth day with the Inglets, we birded the Friederich Wilderness Park in suburban San Antonio. This woodland of juniper, Live Oak, and elm, is breeding habitat for the endangered Golden-cheeked Warbler. These birds had already departed to their winter home in Central America. Instead we encountered resident songbirds familiar to the Mid-Atlantic (e.g., Northern Cardinal, Northern Mockingbird, and White-eyed Vireo).

[Crested Caracara feeding on dead Raccoon]

On Day 5, I said my goodbyes to the Inglets and drove south to Laredo. After stocking up on camping food at the local Walmart Supercenter, I turned southeast and followed the course of the Rio Grande downstream to Falcon Reservoir, a giant hydroelectric dam on the great river. Here I camped for three nights at Falcon State Park, just north of the border with Mexico. As I set up my tent in the thorn scrub, it was late afternoon but still hot, dry, and sunny. This is known as “The Valley.” Here the area is open and rural and has a strongly Mexican flavor. It was fascinating traveling the dusty side roads and speaking with proprietors operating tiny roadside stores that sold just about everything. Five of the six radio stations were Spanish-language. I had to keep reminding myself I was in the US.

[Looking across the Rio Grande into Mexico, from atop Roma Bluffs]

The best birding was close to the Rio Grande itself, which flowed strong up near Falcon thanks to the water released from Falcon Dam (formerly a famous birding site, but no longer accessible).

I visited the nearby Salineño Preserve. The Salineño site is only a couple of acres, but because it features feeders, thickets, water features, and proximity to the River, it is a hotspot during the late fall and winter. It is looked after by Merle Ihne, Lois Hughes, and Michael Emenaker, volunteer hosts for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, which manages the site, though the land itself is owned by the Valley Land Fund. In the late afternoon and again on the following morning, I sat in the shade with Lois, Merle, and Michael, and watched the feeders and bird baths draw in all sorts of birds. Most abundant were the Green Jays and Plain Chachalacas, both of which appeared in numbers.

The chicken-like Chachalacas (below) were quite noisy and boisterous, moving about in small flocks, and making  a ruckus from time to time. When they weren’t on the ground they were perched in the trees.

The Green Jays (one featured below) tended to come and go in twos and threes, feeding lustily on the seed and peanut butter. What a stunner!

The male Altamira Oriole (below) glowed in the sunlight. It was fairly shy.

Two woodpeckers, the smaller Ladder-backed (just below) and larger Golden-fronted, came and went through the day. They loved the peanut butter.

A Texas Tortoise slowly crossed the clearing.

The Great Kiskadee (below) made his presence known by his array of loud and diagnostic vocalizations. Like most tyrant flycatchers, this big guy is aggressive and demonstrative.

Finally, the Curve-billed Thrashed shyly worked the edges along with the Olive Sparrow—the morning bringing an adult feeding a youngster of the season (below).

The best bird of my campsite back at Falcon State Park was the nightbird known as the Common  Pauraque—it is the southwestern version of the Chuck-wills-widow.

The very best thing about Falcon State Park, where I camped, was its Butterfly Garden, which was packed, wall-to-wall, with butterflies. This tiny fenced space was alive with Queens (looking like a small dark Monarch), sulphurs of various species, whites, fritillaries, crescents, skippers, and more.

[Queen butterfly]

In this tiny garden there were probably five hundred or more butterflies, all moving about in a frenzy of color and motion. They were admired periodically by small clots of butterfly fanciers, who were visiting from their annual butterfly festival that was being held down the road in Mission, Texas.

I picked out a strange butterfly hanging upside down on a feeder in the shade and photographed it. I showed the image to an expert who was present (Bryan Reynolds, from Oklahoma), and he instantly identified it as a Blomfild’s Beauty (below), a Mexican specialty, rarely recorded in the US, and then only mainly along the Rio Grande. Beginners luck!

After three nights at Falcon, I moved my camp to Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park, in Mission, Texas, about ninety minutes to the southeast, down Route 83. This main road just north of the Rio Grande is, in many places, choked with stores and malls and traffic.

[White-tipped Dove]

The 800-acre Bentsen-Rio Grand Valley State Park, another World Birding Center site (and the network’s headquarters) sits just north of the Rio Grande and just south of the semi-urban sprawl of Mission, Texas. This is a far cry from the very rural and desert-like Falcon Dam area. The natural habitat around Mission, Texas, is much more tropical and damp, with tall Sabal Palms and more substantial broadleaved trees (such as Spiny Hackberry and Cedar Elm), forming a subtropical woodland. Most of the original natural habitat down here was long ago converted for row crops or citrus orchards, which are now being converted to tightly-packed retirement homes for “Winter Texans” coming from the cold and rainy north.

[two Ringed Kingfishers posturing and vocalizing]

For me, the highlight of Bentsen were two kingfishers—Green and Ringed. The first is tiny and quiet and low-flying, and the second is oversized and noisy and high-flying. Both hung out at the Kingfisher Overlook in Bentsen. It was there I also saw a Gray Hawk soaring overhead.

[Green Kingfisher]

I had the tiny “primitive” campsite at Bentsen all to myself. Here I was able to watch the night overtake the parkland. I watched a Javelina (Collared Peccary) foraging at the edge of the road. I slept in my tent without the rain fly, and could listen to the night sounds. A Great Horned Owl hooted from a distant perch. Eastern Screech Owls whinnied. Pauraques sang out. I could look up through the screening and see the stars and the Milky Way shining. What a way to camp!

[Gulf Fritillary]

The day after I arrived at Bentsen, I visited the National Butterfly Center, a couple of miles east of Bentsen, right on the River. Its large campus included tended gardens, water features, and a strip of  hackberry woods. It was a paradise for butterflies, and also good for birds. The highlight for me was a Malachite—another beautiful butterfly with a Mexican (and south Florida) distribution. Others told me about morning sightings of a Zone-tailed Hawk and an Audubon’s Oriole.

[Malachite]

The next morning I visited Quinta Mazatlan World Birding Center, an historic estate, and its 15–acre garden in the suburbs of McAllen. It is lushly planted and a great landbird refuge, surrounded by city. Here I found the Buff-bellied Hummingbird, feeding on the red flowers of the Turk’s Cap, and the Clay-colored Thrush (just below), feeding on the small yellow fruit of an unknown canopy tree along with a Summer Tanager. There were also migrant wood warblers in the dark thickets—Nashville, Orange-crowned, Black-and-white, and Wilson’s Warbler.

My final morning, I stopped off at the 40-acre Edinburg Scenic Wetlands, another World Birding Center site, sandwiched between several city water impoundments in Edinburg, Texas. Here were more gardens, woodland thickets, and open water. The most active birds were the Ringed Kingfishers, cackling and racing about across the water. Also flocks of sleek Neotropic Cormorants sailed back and forth. The southern impoundment boasted a half-dozen duck species, Least Sandpipers, and several herons. While I was there, two vanloads of eager birders from the annual Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival in Harlingen, Texas, were being led around the reserve, hunting down lifers. This was Day One of their festival, and they were just revving up. But I was now headed north to San Antonio to catch a flight back home to chilly Bethesda, Maryland.

[Black Phoebe]

On the drive north I counted a half-dozen Crested Caracaras and an equal number of Harris’s Hawks. That reminded me of the avian riches of South Texas. I had left Edinburg with the temperature approaching 90F. When I arrived at San Antonio airport, it was about 50F. Cold Front! I was heading back into the rigors of autumn.

 [Harris's Hawk]