Black-bellied Whistling DuckTraveling the Deep South in Spring
(North Carolina-South Carolina-Georgia-Alabama-Mississippi-Louisiana-Texas-New
Mexico-Oklahoma-Arkansas-Tennessee-and Home)
6 April to 4 May 2025
Traveling the South in early Spring is a treat. From early
April to early May I drive through fourteen states, bird-watching, naturizing,
and enjoying a holiday with my wife, Carol. My 10-year-old Nissan Xterra does
not let me down, no flat tires, no breakdowns, and no traffic stops. The only
place I feel my life may be in danger is while negotiating the highways that pass
through the larger cities of Texas.
While on my own I tent-camp, staying mainly in state parks (which provide excellent services at a good price).
After a lunch stop at Burger Boy in Wilson, NC, my first night is at the Chalk Banks unit of Lumber River State Park in North Carolina, in the piney woods. Featured birds: Brown-headed Nuthatch, Yellow-throated Warbler, Northern Parula, and Ovenbird. Spring had arrived here in southern NC.
On Day 2, I drive to Seabrook Island to give a talk to the local island bird club. I am hosted by Mary Wilde and her husband, Mark. Seabrook is gorgeous and its long white beach faces the famous Deveaux Bank, the late spring home to a large migrant assemblage of Whimbrels. Mary and I can gaze from the beach out to the Bank, just offshore, with its nesting Brown Pelicans. I glimpse a large flight of Whimbrels winging over the Bank’s beach.
Departing Seabrook Island, I stop at Angel Oak, a local landmark—an ancient and grand Southern Live Oak. It is worth a visit! Also, at Mark’s suggestion, I visited the lovely Caw Caw County Park and encounter several Prothonotary Warblers on one of the low country trails.
I spend 3 nights at Skidaway Island State Park, just south of Savannah, Georgia. Great camping and lots of birdable trails. Painted Bunting is vocal and common here. Sally Jessee (from Port Royal) and I bird the Savannah River National Wildlife Refuge and get caught in smoke generated by a controlled burn. Hooded Warbler is the birding highlight.
One early AM a Barred Owl that hoots overhead all night lands on the ground right in my camp (picking up an anole, I am guessing).
I then drive to Folkston, Georgia and drop off my car at the local mechanic’s shop for a roadworthiness checkup. To kill time, I head to the Okefenokee Restaurant for a greasy breakfast. The mechanic replaces my rear brake calipers, telling me they were ready to burn up. Otherwise he gives the car a thumb’s up. Glad I stopped there… Later in the morning I drive to Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and walk the cypress boardwalk and visit the piney woods where the Red-cockaded Woodpeckers nest. Bachman’s Sparrow is the highlight of the visit. No RCWs.
Mid-afternoon, I pick up Carol at Jacksonville Airport and we drive north to the Jekyll Island Club (on Jekyll Island). Two decades earlier we had had an enjoyable family stay here. Our three nights at the club are perfect. We love the historic district that surrounds the club—remnants of Gilded Age grandeur. Jekyll is perfect for walking and biking. We bicycle all over the island and keep our eye on the doings at the Augusta National Golf Club, rooting of course for Rory. We are about 2 hours south of Augusta, but are happy watching the wrap-up of tournament from our ancient hotel.
Our next stop is the marina at Hampton River, Sea Island, where we wait for the transport boat to take us to Little Saint Simon’s Island (LSSI), an ecotourism lodge owned by bird-lovers Wendy and Hank Paulson. Carol and I spend three nights here, biking the sandy roads and the magnificent, hard-packed beach. We spend a lot of time at Norm’s Pond, which features a wading bird rookery, and out on the broad beach—entirely undeveloped (prime breeding habitat for Wilson’s Plover).
Best birds of LSSI are Painted Bunting (haunting the feeder behind our lodging), Wood Stork, Wilson’s Plover, and Roseate Spoonbill. My only disappointment was failing to locate an Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake, which I had hoped to photograph. Other guests managed to see the snake on the days we did not…
After dropping Carol back at Jax to fly home, I drive due west and camped in Falling Waters State Park in the Florida Panhandle. Next day I drive to Davis Bayou Campground in Ocean Springs, MS, and am treated to lunch by my colleague (now retired) from the American Museum of Natural History, Mary LeCroy (and her daughter, Sara, a professional ichthyologist). Mary and I worked together on birds of New Guinea for many years and she has now retired near daughter Sara. We talk New Guinea…
The next morning I break camp and my next stop is Billy’s Boudin and Cracklin’ in Scott, Louisiana, where I take lunch. And then to Snow White Sanctuary in Vinton, LA. Here I share the landscape with free-ranging ducks, guinea fowl, chickens, turkeys, goats, horses, and more. I was unable to find a state park in western LA, hence my stay in this eclectic private RV park!
From western Louisiana I drive to San Antonio, Texas, to stay with my dear friends Patsy and Tom Inglet. They are world-round birders and major educational volunteers working on nature and environmental teaching in several local reserves. Patsy trains me to use the portable eBird listing app that I am now deploying wherever possible (thanks Patsy!).
On Day 17 I drive highway 90 through Uvalde, Brackettville, Sanderson, and Marathon. Thence south on 385 to Panther Junction and the Big Bend National Park visitor center. This is big-time desert country, with a vista to the towering Chisos Mountains. From Panther Junction my campground is 21 miles to the southeast and the upland Chisos Basin is 9 miles to the southwest.
I am camping at the Rio Grande Village Campgrounds, right on the Park’s southeastern boundary on the rather sad little Rio Grande River. No border wall here. The river in most places is less than a foot deep, and Mexican farmers cross into the campground regularly to retrieve their domestic animals (burros, mules, horses, etc.) that have wandered northward to feast on the lush green forage offered by the campground. They share the campground with the foraging groups of wild Javelinas, which appear at dusk.
I am in Big Bend for a week. Most days I drive from my hot, riverside campground up to the Chisos Basin, about 45 minutes and hike into the mountains to look for birds and other wildlife. I was very unlucky when booking my campground in October 2024. At that time the Chisos Basin campground was unavailable to me, because the plan was to close the campground for all of 2025 to refurbish it (along with the Chisos Lodge).
So I was shunted off to Rio Grande Village. But apparently later on in the year, the refurbishment plans were delayed to 2026, and the campground (at a considerably higher elevation and close to all the mountain trail heads) opened up to those applying online. I was never informed of this, and thus never was able to book the upland site, which is a much more comfortable place to be in mid-April.
Anyway, I did a lot of birding in the low country and the high country, so things worked out satisfactorily. To all readers, I strongly recommend the Chisos Basin campground, because it is at 5,400 feet elevation and thus is not quite so hot as the campground down on the river (1,850 feet elev).
Most naturalists visit Big Bend to climb into the Chisos Mountains in order to see the Colima Warbler, which arrives in early April each year from its wintering grounds in Mexico.
The Colima Warbler’s only regular breeding ground in the US is confined to the highland oak forests of the Chisos Mts. It is thus the least accessible breeding bird in the Lower 48 (the Bristle-thighed Curlew’s nesting ground in Alaska is certainly more inaccessible to birders).
On my second day in the Park, I hike the Pinnacles Trail up to Boot Spring. Once up in the highlands I begin searching for the Warbler. After several miles of trail walking, I bump into a pair a birders who have made contact with the bird. We are in a canyon with lush oak-pine forest distinct from the dominant dry juniper woodland that dominates the massif. The oaks are just pushing out fresh leaves and these have a dark pinky glow that stood out from the greenery of the conifers.
The ladies inform me that the warbler prefers to frequent the pink-leaved oaks. They point out the high-pitched song of the male, which I could just barely hear, since the calling bird is quite distant. I manage to glimpse a warbler moving about in the leaves of several oaks, but never get a great look at it. Then we lose contact with the bird’s vocalization. After about 20 minutes I move on toward Boot Spring, another 1.5 miles distance. The one-way distance for my hike this day is about 6 miles.
Forty minutes later I am at Boot Spring, a place famous for the Colima Warbler. A British bird-tour leader is with a small group of his birders. He sees my binoculars and says “I have just sent John up the Boot Canyon Trail where not long ago I spent time with a vocal male Colima.” I headed up the trail to the stone retaining wall he mentioned and there was John, looking up into the canopy.
Several pink-leaved oaks were there in the canyon bottom and within a few minutes I announced to John that I had a Colima in one of the oaks.
We watched as the bird came and went from the oaks. On some occasions we could hear its underwhelming song, reminiscent of a Wilson’s Warbler. John and I were both equipped with long lenses and every time the male reappeared in one of the oaks we shot as many images as possible of the fast-moving bird.
Getting an unobstructed photograph of the entire bird is difficult. I shoot more than 200 images of the bird and come home with but a handful of proper photographs of the male. I also encounter a beautiful California Sister butterfly, also new to me.
The hike home back along the Pinnacles Trail is tiring. Dragging myself back to the Basin parking lot takes a major effort. I am without water the last 40 minutes of the hike and the sun and dry heat are brutal.
Rather than driving back to camp, I head straight to the Basin Lodge Restaurant and restore myself with several Arnold Palmers and a burger. On several occasions in my trip the restaurant serves as a wonderful respite from the rigors of the mountain walking.
The next day I remain down on the Rio Grande and bird by bicycle around the campground, which is very productive. I add Lesser Nighthawk to my life list. I find an American Golden-Plover right on the shore of the river. A Phainopepla sings above my campsite. The afternoon sun raises the local temperature to above 95F. Going to bed at night requires entering a broiling tent.
That night, a Western Screech-Owl comes and sings in the Mesquite Tree right over my tent. I spotlight it. Another lifer.
On my third day in the Park I return to Boot Spring, this time via the Laguna Madre Meadows Trail. I get to the spring around 11am and hunker down at a tiny waterhole to shoot visiting birds. I had hopes of photographing a Colima Warbler down at the water. A male Hermit Warbler passes by but does not drop down to the water. This gorgeous individual is another lifer for me.
It turns out I am at the inferior waterhole and it is not until afternoon that I discover my error. I set up at the better waterhole, up the ravine, and I get nice shots of Audubon’s Warbler but today brings no Colima Warbler my way. I neither see nor hear the species. I do encounter a Mexican Whip-poor-will in the canyon and I flush it several times and get it to vocalize. Another lifer. After another great dinner at the Basin restaurant, I drive home after dark, seeing a Black-tailed Jackrabbit, Desert Cottontail, Coyote, and several Lesser Nighthawks. Common Poorwill eludes me.
Next day I work the lower trails of the Chisos Basin. It is quite chill in the early AM. The highlight is encountering a male Varied Bunting twice in the Honey Mesquite scrub below the Lodge parking lot at the trail head for the various hikes. I fail to get decent images of the bird, a major frustration.
This afternoon back at the Rio Grande Village campground the temperature reaches 106F (it is 20 degrees cooler up in the Basin). I spend a lot of time in the laundromat where an air conditioner makes the room livable. This cloudless weather is a killer.
Departing the Park early in the AM, I arrive in Marathon on a Sunday in time for breakfast at the V6 Coffee Bar. Nice! This day I drive west and north, passing by El Paso and entering New Mexico. My post-Big Ben desire is to spend quality time with Pinyon Jay and Lesser Prairie-Chicken, two nemesis birds that have long eluded me.
I pass through a series if dust-storms in New Mexico and the dust follows me as I head from sun-baked Alamogordo up to Cloudcroft, sitting at 8,600 feet elevation atop the conifer-clad Sacramento Mountains. Cloudcroft is clearly a major tourist attraction—a cute little town far from the heat of the desert. But dust blown from White Sands desert below has obscured the sun and sky this day. I am told this is a regular occurrence.
I camp at Sleepy Grass Campsite in Lincoln National Forest. The west wind blows fiercely and I set my tent in a place somewhat protected from this onslaught… I am impresseded by the rich montane conifer forest here with pines, Douglas-firs, and spruces. Huge forest with a very humid aspect. Gorgeous. I drive the Sunspot Highway in search of Pinyon Jays but am too high and too damp. I need to find stands of the diminutive Pinyon Pines.
The next day I drive down to the strange community of Timberone, where the jay has been reported, but no luck. Pretty country and lower elevation. I see herds of Elk on the drive down and flush a Golden Eagle on a carcass by the roadside.
I translocate to the town of Sacramento, NM, at around 5,000 feet in dry country to the southeast of where I stayed the night before. It is dominated by Ponderosa Pine and juniper. Here I camp in a Christian-retreat RV campground (I am the only one here this night) and am entertained by a nesting Red-shafted Flicker and Pygmy Nuthatches. No Pinyon Jays…
Next day I drive to the town of Pinyon, NM, and lots of dry juniper and Pinyon Pine country but none of my target bird. I do add Woodhouse’s Scrub-Jay and Chihuahuan Meadowlarko my life list.
Back into desert, I turn my sights on Lesser Prairie-Chicken. eBird points me in the general direction of these birds, but does not provide point records (because the species is endangered).
I drive to Bledsoe, Texas, in the western sector of the Panhandle, but can find nobody who knows about the bird. I relocate westward to Tatum, New Mexico, which appears more promising. I find a wildlife officer hanging out in the shade next to the town RV park and she calls a colleague and gives me specific directions for hunting for the bird tomorrow predawn. That night I dine at Tiny’s Burger Barn.
I drive to Roosevelt County Road 33, south of Pep, NM, to my target prairie, arriving before dawn. I work the tiny gravel road for 2.5 hours. Neither see nor hear chickens. This has happened to me before… but I do spend quality time with more Chihuahuan Meadowlarks, Cassin’s Sparrows, and many flocks of Lark Buntings on the move; also a band of Pronghorn, many Black-tailed Prairie-Dogs, and several Burrowing Owls. It is fine watching the sun rise over the prairie, but where are the chickens?
From Pep, NM, I drive to Canyon, TX (near Amarillo), get lunch in town, and then head to Oklahoma, where I camp at Fort Cobb State Park. I am now officially on my way home to Bethesda. From my tent pre-dawn next AM I hear 4 Great Horned Owls, 2 Barred Owls, 1 Chuck-wills-widow, and a pack of Coyotes. Excellent night-sounds! East of Fort Cobb, while crossing a highway bridge, I am amazed by a huge flock of Cliff Swallows—more the 500. It is the largest swallow flock I have ever seen. That said, I later read that Cliff Swallow colonies can be ten times this large. I would love to see such a colony.
What I am also surprised by is the lush green landscape here in western OK. It looks like the countryside northwest of Washington, DC. There must have been a lot of rain the last few months in this region. Further east, as I approach the Mississippi, I find a lot of spring flooding…
From Oklahoma I drive to Conway, Arkansas, to camp at Woolly Hollow State Park. Here I am greeted by a night full of intense thunderstorms. I get little sleep. Checking the radar on my iPhone, I see that a huge supercell is headed my way in the early AM, and I spend the whole morning driving eastward at speed, trying to escape this supercell. It is still on my tail when I cross the bridge at Memphis. Driving north in TN, I hole up in the Shelby Forest General Store just next to Meeman-Shelby State Park, where I hope to camp for the night. I have lunch at the store and the very friendly folks there assure me that the Park has shut down all its campsites, with plans to upgrade them all this summer.
I visit the Park visitor center and they confirm the
closure, pointing me elsewhere in Tennessee, which is littered with state
parks. I am sad to have to move on, as Meeman-Shelby is a wonderful hardwood
forest that this time of the year is usually filled with migrant songbirds
moving northward up the Mississippi (the park sits on the eastern bank of the
great river). I hear two Tennessee Warblers singing from the treetops in the
woods next to the visitor center.
I end up at Natchez Trace State Park, right off Interstate 40 near Wildersville, TN. The entire day has been rainy but there is a break in the clouds and I set up for the night without difficulty. Wood Thrushes sing from every direction. Also Acadian Flycatcher and Worm-eating Warbler.
Next day, six hours east of Natchez Trace I reach my last
campsite of the fieldtrip—Warriors Path State Park, in Kingsport, TN. I walk
the shoreline trail here and add Black-and-white Warbler and Orchard Oriole to
my trip list, which tops out at 215.
Take home point—state parks are great spots to camp and to birdwatch. There are hundreds of them across the US. They provide hot showers and picnic tables, which make camping a pleasure. I recommend them without reservation. But best to visit them on the weekdays. Weekends they become a bit crazy.
More recommendations: I would recommend exploring the Sacramento Mountains of New Mexico—they seem to be an overlooked treat. Big Bend has fantastic scenery and great hiking, but its high elevation montane forests are under-watered and lack the humidity of the uplands of the Chiricahua Mountains of SE AZ, for instance. It seems to me that the breeding habitat for the Colima Warbler is withering away and being reduced by fire. I don’t like the prospects for this breeding colony in TX.
I drove 5,677 miles on this trip. That’s more than twice the
distance between DC and SFO.
Great trip Bruce! I love following your journeys and goals for the day. Vicariously I see the birds. Many thanks. And your new book is terrific.
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