Saved by a Bird - Texas Birding (Part 1)

3/22/2025 - 3/30/2025

I was a teenager last I was in the Rio Grande Valley. I was there with my brother and grandfather on a birding trip over Christmas break. Some four decades later, I do not recall a lot of the details of the trip; mostly that it was our first time away from home for Christmas. We saw a lot on that trip. Like every trip, it left holes in my bird list. Black-crested Titmouse was a particularly annoying one. Birds like Golden-cheeked Warbler and Black-capped Vireo always silently taunted me, as well. So, Jeff and I picked a week to try and close some gaps in our list. Because of some work constraints, we settled on the last full week in March. This is cutting it as about as close as it can be cut for the arrival of some our birds. We would make the best of it.

By plan, this trip would take us from San Antonio down to the Rio Grande Valley; finishing with an overnight drive back to San Antonio for a flight home. We would bird the area around Junction and then hit the state parks in the McAllen area. We had one morning planned for shooting at South Padre Island, and a full day of shooting at Laguna Seca Ranch. We would finish with a morning and evening tour at Santa Margarita Ranch. This was the plan. Of course, nothing ever quite goes to plan. We built our schedule with a free day in the RGV assuming that something exotic would show up. It kind of did....

This leads into the question that is probably on a few people's minds. Did we get the Amur Stonechat? No. We never had an opportunity. The bird's presence was disclosed shortly before we headed to Texas. Getting signed up for the bird or getting a ride in a car that was signed up was not even possible. We ran into a lot of people who had seen it. We were asked about it a lot. It just was not a possibility for us. We posted asking for a ride to see the bird. We got no response.

This post will cover our time in the San Antonio area, down to McAllen, and up to Houston. Yep, Houston. Like I said, things hardly ever go to plan.

3/23 (Sunday) -

We arrived in San Antonio late on the 22nd and drove out to Junction, Texas. I cannot tell you how many Turkey Vultures we saw while in this area. We saw more vultures than any other species of bird up here. If you think you are in Junction but do not see one of these, you are probably not in Junction.

This small town is located an hour outside of San Antonio and is right next to South Llano River SP. Based on research, the park looked like our best bet for finding Golden-cheeked Warbler and Black-capped Vireo. Coincidentally, a rare (for the area) Rufous-backed Robin was making a regular appearance there. This was the part of the trip that had us the most nervous. The absolute beginning date for early arrivals for the vireo were the 23rd. We would be hitting the park on the 23rd. The park features a number of birding blinds. These are setup with feeding stations maintained by volunteers. They are not setup for photography, but you can shoot from them if you can get the one spot without glass in front of it. An overcast day will be ideal; as they are not properly oriented for lighting, either. Still, they are nice to have. Looking at eBird reports, etc., it looked like our target birds were regular visitors to the blinds. This is not the case. Your best bet for the warbler is to the Agarita blind and keep walking past it to the Mid-Canyon trail primitive campground. Along the way, listen for a bird that sounds a lot like a Black-throated Green Warbler after you get into the junipers. This bird was easy. We were walking down the trail, and I heard some warbler chip notes. We looked up, and the bird was above us. We saw somewhere around 6 during our hike on this trail.

We had a number of other birds along the trail. Notably were Ash-throated Flycatcher and a number of Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers. Bewick's Wren with their very unwren-like song kept us on our toes. There were a good number of Blue-gray Gnatcatcher everywhere. Black-and-white Warbler sang its see-saw song from a number of places. Large flocks of Chipping Sparrows seemed to blanket every opening. Skulking through the brush was a large number of White-eyed Vireo, Ruby-crowned Kinglets, and even one of their look-alike cousins - a Hutton's Vireo. Common Raven and Wild Turkey rounded out the more common birds of the trail. Pictures were tough to come by.

What we did not see was a Black-capped Vireo. According to the park ranger, they can be found in the same area. We had backup locations for this bird, but it would have been nice to get the pressure off early. By the time we figured out what we were doing at this park and had hiked the trail, it was pushing the middle of the day. The overcast skies were clearing, and it was not going to be ideal for birding or photography much longer. Not wanting to waste time, we decided to go sit in the Lora blind and hope the Rufous-backed Robin came by. This is a bird we both have from Arizona, but we did not want to pass up the opportunity to see one again. While waiting, a guy struck up a conversation with me and asked if we had seen the Black-capped Vireo that was being seen at the Juniper blind. I said that we had been there in the morning without luck and that the reports of one from that blind were from a few days ago. He clarified that he had talked to a guy that had seen it this morning. So... back to the Juniper blind. Honestly, it felt like a wild goose chase. We got over to the parking lot, and then I realized I had left my binocs in the car. Back to the car and then on the way again. We step onto the sidewalk, and a bird flies in front of us and into the back side of a bush. It just looked right. A few seconds later, we had our vireo. The bird was quiet and bouncing around frantically. I had a split-second open shot at the bird but was half a second late on pressing the button. I settled for what amounts to a "doc shot", at best.

Pressure off, but unsatisfied, we retreated to the hotel to plan our afternoon and get some food. Lum's BBQ is a great option. Thanks to Jeff's wife for the recommendation. The Anthony Bourdain quote on the wall had me ecstatic for a minute. I thought I was finally visiting a place he had been. Sadly, they just appear to be fans of his, too. Back to birding. It was time to enact the backup plan. An hour away is Kerr WMA. The place closes at 4 PM, but just a mile before there is Bobcat Rd. This was our backup.

We got to the area around 4 PM. As soon as we pulled onto the road and rolled the windows down, we could hear Golden-cheeked Warblers singing. We slowly drove the road. Our impression was that the vireos would be in the denser juniper areas and focused on them. We had a number of birds along the road. Most notable was a beautiful, pale Grasshopper Sparrow that I would have loved a shot of. No joy. The birds in the area were extremely shy. We drove to the end of the road and doubled back. As we approached the area with the Grasshopper Sparrow, I stopped to look for it again. Singing out in the scrubby brush was a Black-capped Vireo. We parked the car and carefully walked out into the scrub to look for it. It was comfortably nestled down in the thickest bush out there. Some pishing drew it to the edge but no further.

On the way out, we found 3 Golden-cheeked Warbler chasing each other around in the trees.

We still had a couple hours of daylight left and drove back to South Llano River SP to sit out the afternoon hours hoping for the robin to show. Again, no joy. The nice thing is that we had found two (three for me, because I needed Black-crested Titmouse) of our target birds, and it was only our first day. We had allotted a full two-and-a-half days here. We were doing good.

3/24 (Monday) -

The plan for the following day was to find that robin. We knew we needed to get there early to secure a spot to shoot from. We did not want to just see the robin - we wanted photos. We drove in just before sunrise and secured our daypass. Then it was back to the blind to wait. The bird had been coming in by 8:30. We had discussed waiting until 9:00. We waited and shot, and time flew by. Suddenly, it was 9:30. Neither of us said anything and just kept waiting and shooting. There are quite a few birds that visit the feeders here. The water feature helps draw the birds, but it is solar powered and was not running yet. Still, we had a good number of birds.

The fountain eventually kicked on when the sun got high enough above the horizon to hit the back side of the fountain. Lighting was going to get ugly pretty quickly. Just as I was thinking we are were going to miss this bird, it flew in. Honestly, it looked spectacular. It is not an overly colorful bird, but there is something about it that is dramatic. I am glad we stayed.

It was a bit too early to call it a morning, and we spent some time going over to the Juniper blind again and then hitting the Agrita blind. In between, we had a few good birds. Just outside the Lora blind, a Greater Roadrunner was hopping around in the top of a tree. While driving past the Purple Martin feeder, a Vermillion Flycatcher popped up nearby. Nothing new at either of the blinds, but we grabbed a few more shots before calling it a morning.

We also had four Sage Thrasher sitting in the top of a tree near the Juniper blind. Oddly, eBird did not flag one as uncommon, but adding four required an explanation.

With our targets knocked out, we decided to spend the middle of the day on the road. It is a five hour drive from Junction to McAllen. We checked out of the hotel and started the long drive. We had discussed plans the night before and decided that our best bet was to get a hotel in McAllen and then base out of there for a few nights. We were one night ahead of schedule, since we left Junction early. Being ahead of schedule would buy us a little more freedom if something came up. The evening plans were to hit Estero Llano Grande SP to look for Common Pauraque and Clay-colored Thrush. After that, we would hit an area in town for Green Parakeet.

It was still broiling hot out when we arrived in McAllen and got checked into a hotel. I voted to wait for the heat to die down. Jeff was a little more anxious; so, we headed back out. It was the right call. To look at eBird, you would think that Common Pauraque litter the park. Indeed, they might, but I am not sure we would have found one. We arrived just as the park ranger was getting ready to leave. He kindly told us where we could find the "most photographed pauraque" in Texas, and we headed off. He explained the location in detail and even showed us a picture of the plant it would be next to. We found the plant. We did not find the bird. We searched, we debated, ... I despaired. Next thing we know, the ranger drives up to the end of the road and lets another photographer out. He walks over and asks if we have had any luck. He then spent all of five minutes looking for the bird before spotting it. It took me another five minutes to spot it while being given careful instructions. This birds brings a whole new meaning to the word cryptic. Brush was piled up along the edge of the path; so, you could not get totally low to shoot the bird. Anything higher was through a tangled weave of branches and leaves. I tried a shot like that and got identifiable shots. There was a small window slightly above the pile sticks that allowed a shot of the front half of the bird. You take what you can get.

We walked back to the visitors' center and then headed to a blind marked on the map. This was where we hoped to spot a Clay-colored Thrush. There was another birder there, and she told us we had just missed one; along with a nice flock of warblers. We sat there and endured a few mosquito bites while hoping something would come back. We got a consolation White-tipped Dove.

We walked the park a bit and was shown a roosting Eastern (McCall's) Sreech-Owl. The thrush were silent, though. We checked one other area where Hooded Oriole were coming in to drink at a water drip, but all we had was an Orange-crowned Warbler. Running low on daylight, we headed to our final destination of the day. At a busy intersection in a seemingly random part of town, there is an area where a large number of Green Parakeet come to roost. We pulled into the parking lot of an HEB grocery and had our bird.

This wrapped the day and put me at five lifers for the trip. We were way ahead of schedule and feeling pretty good. What we did not have was a lot of photos... or a Clay-colored Thrush. I had the feeling this bird was going to be easier to find in the morning and offered to push plans for the following morning out a day. We had the time, and Jeff needed the thrush. Instead, he pushed to stick to plan. The plan was to spend a morning shooting at South Padre Island. My friend, Jamie, had shared her favorite place to shoot, and I was looking forward to shooting some waders. It would also give us an opportunity to check for a few other birds in the area.

3/25 (Tuesday) -

We pulled into the spot about 20 minutes before sunrise. I had seen shots from here taken by Jamie, and they were beautiful low-angle shots of waders in water. What we had was extreme low tide with puddles. We spent a while driving the flats and trying to figure things out. Eventually, we just parked the car, grabbed our cameras, and made it up. The shore line was quite a ways out, but there were no birds out there. Instead, they were showing up in ones and twos at the various puddles. It was not the shots I was looking for, but they worked out. A bit more water would have been nice. Many shots showed nice reflections that were cut-off. Regardless, I was happy with a lot of the photos from here.

I am not sure where to start; so, let's start at the beginning. Our first bird to shoot was a Tricolored Heron.

We had a number of these birds throughout the morning. In fact, surprisingly, Tricolored Heron was our most active dancer of the morning.

Maybe not the most successful hunter of the morning, though.

Most successful might go to the Reddish Egret.

We had several this morning, but they were all a bit sedate.

Not that they were not posing, but there was not the wild movement and posing that I thought we would see.

A Roseate Spoonbill made a brief appearance. The bird landed, looked at us, walked around us, and flew off.

Similarly, we had one Little Blue Heron. This bird at least stayed and fished for a minute before leaving.

We did not have as many shorebirds as we had hoped. Sanderling, by far, were the most common this morning. Greater Yellowlegs and Black-necked Stilt also frequented the puddles.

The highlight shorebird was probably the Black-bellied Plover my brother spotted.

Distantly, we had a large colony of Black Skimmer sitting along the shore. Mixed in with the flock were some Sandwich and Royal Terns. Hiding among them was a single Forster's Tern. At one point, the group took to the air and slowly glided by. A little while later, a large flock of White Ibis did the same thing.

All in all, it was a fun morning, and we shot for several hours.

We were wet and sandy by the time we finished for the morning. We were smart enough to bring a set of clean clothes and some rags to wipe things down with. Still, I am sure the rental company was not happy with the sand we tracked into the car. We drove out South Padre Island and up the inner coast to Laguna Atascosa. We checked a few areas and added Ruddy Turnstone, Snowy Egret, and American Oystercatcher to the day's list. But our main goal was to get up to an spot where Aplomado Falcon were being seen.

We drove up and found the pull-off. There was a nice couple there with a camper-van. They were from Canada and were enjoying their dream trip of visiting the Rio Grande Valley. This was their second attempt at locating the falcons. They had Merlin running, and it was saying there was a Peregrine Falcon calling nearby. All Jeff and I could hear was something that sounded like a young bird chirping. I was scanning some trees across the road when the "chirping" suddenly got more intense. Next thing I know, Jeff yells, "above us". I look up to see some high-flying falcon-like birds flying away. It was not what I would call a "countable look". We turn around and see the couple is staring at the cell tower across the road. We had already scoured this thing a few times, but, sure enough, there was a third bird perched on the tower. As a Chihuahuan Raven flew by, the bird took out to harass it but quickly returned to the tower. I took a doc shot.

We were knocking down targets pretty quickly. We still needed that Clay-colored Thrush. It and the Morelet's Seedeater were our next "problem" birds. For now, we were going to concentrate on the thrush. With that in mind, we headed back to the hotel to find some food and wait out a little more of the day. Rumor was, there was an Elf Owl being seeing at Bentsen-Rio Grande State Park. Conveniently, this was also the place we had lined up for looking for the thrush, next.

We got to the park around 4 PM. It was hot, and we were confused. You could not get into the park. You see, they are building the wall (yes, that wall) north of the park. Turns out, the entire park is cut-off. You have to park in a lot outside the park, walk to the visitors' center, and then walk into the park from there. It just took a few minutes to wrap our heads around it. We got in and verified the location of the owl with the rangers. We checked around the center for thrush but came up empty. We had Inca Dove.

The thrush was starting to look like our nemesis bird of the trip. We walked into the park and down to the bird blind to find it has been closed due to issues with javelina. There was nothing happening at the kingfisher overlook, either. Basically, just us turkeys and not much else.

Back up the road, we got to the building just through the entrance. There were some water drips or something here attracting a few birds. I took the world's worst Hooded Oriole photo, but it is the best one that I have. Inca Dove, Ladder-backed Woodpecker, and a flock of Plain Chachalaca were the notable birds here.

We walked back through the gate and started poking around for the Elf Owl roost. All we knew was that it was before the gate and in a telephone pole. There were a number of poles in the area. The bird was not coming out until after dark, and we had a couple hours left. We just did not want to wait until dark to look for the spot. I am slowly walking around the poles when Jeff walks over with his phone. He has a pic from eBird on it for reference. We both point to the same pole, look up, and Jeff says, "is it looking at us?" It was. It apparently the owl was trying to figure out why would could not figure out where it was.

He looked a bit tired and grumpy. He stayed there long enough for me to wave a mother with her young boy over. I had heard the boy talking about birds earlier and though he might enjoy a look at the owl. The owl let him look for a minute and then popped back out of view. Happy that we did not have to wait here until dark, we headed back to the visitors' center to look for the thrush again. We waited and watched but came up empty. We found our only Buff-bellied Hummingbird visiting a feeder near a wet area Jeff had spotted. The ground was wet from an air conditioning unit that was dripping onto it. He said it looked like the javelina were coming in to wallow in it. Sure enough, as we walked over to look at it, several javelina started coming in. Carmen always wonders why I get nervous around these animals. I think this pic will explain that.

On our way out, a Cooper's Hawk landed in a nearby tree.

Other than the Clay-colored Thrush, we were doing pretty well. Well enough that we were going to go off-schedule in the morning. Our original plans had called for us to hit Laredo first, after leaving San Antonio. I had thought we would have a chance to pick up Red-billed Pigeon and Morelet's Seedeater there. In discussing things, we both thought we had a good chance of seeing both species at Santa Margarita Ranch and scrapped the trip to Laredo. Fast forward a few months, and things had changed. A lot of area near Santa Margarita and Salineno Boat Ramp had experienced a recent fire. This was affecting the seedeater, in particular. We decided to head out toward Zapata to visit a tiny city park called Bravo Park.

3/26 (Wednesday) -

We pulled into Bravo park a bit before sunrise and were greeted by a sign warning us of the "poisonous" snakes. I told Jeff not to eat any of them. There was not much to the park. There is a reedy area with a path around it. There were lots of Great Kiskadee and Couch's Kingbird calling. No seedeater. We slowly walked the loop and had a good number of birds. I could hear something singing like a weird robin and eventually found our Clay-colored Thrush singing from a treetop behind a line of trees. No photo, but it was good to finally lay eyes on this bird. We had Orange-crowned, Black-and-white, and Yellow-rumped Warblers moving through the trees. Common Yellowthroat skulked in the reeds. Green Jay was moving in and out of the reeds. We quickly found ourselves back at the car. We had heard a wren, and I was trying to pish it out of the reeds for a photo. While doing this, I saw a bird pop up onto a weed out in the center of the wet area. Luckily, I got Jeff on it pretty quickly. The bird did not stay up for long. It sat there and looked at us then hopped back down. And, like that, our only view of a Morelet's Seedeater for this trip was over.

We left and headed back to the Salineno Boat Ramp. We did not expect to find seedeater here, but it would not hurt to check. No joy. We did have a nice variety of birds. We walked back and forth on a trail along the river. Jeff had a flyover Red-billed Pigeon that I missed. We later got good scope views (courtesy of a couple of birders) of a perched bird, but it was on the Mexico side of the river. I still needed my ABA bird. We had our first Audubon's and Altamira Oriole at the ramp. Up river, we had some Olive Sparrows and a Black-throated Green Warbler. While standing there, a Ringed Kingfisher flew in and landed on a snag. It did not stay long once it realized there were people nearby. Oddly, at least to me, we had a few Gull-billed Tern fly upriver. There were also some Caspian Terns. Lesser Scaup scooted by on the river, and a White-tailed Hawk soared over Mexico.

It was still early in the day when we headed back toward McAllen. We had been watching the weather for a few days. The forecast, for a while, had predicted rain for McAllen and all of the Rio Grande Valley for Thursday. Looking at the weather, we could see that we were now going to get some rain on Wednesday. We had discussed plans the night before and decided our best bet was to head north for Thursday. The forecast was only calling for an inch of rain, but it was supposed to rain all day. Houston would be dry, according to the forecast, and we had a target bird we could look for up there. We wanted to get out of town before it started raining on Wednesday, but we were already too late. The storms hit us on the interstate, and visibility went to zero. There were accidents everywhere, and someone's bumper even blew across the road in front of us after an accident several lanes over knocked it off. We got into the hotel, packed up, grabbed lunch and gas, and hit the road.

Rain dogged us all the way to Houston but finally let up. It was a six hour drive to get there. We were actually heading to Galveston. This is where we would see the bird that probably saved our trip. Without the Yellow-headed Caracara that was showing in Galveston, we probably would have stayed in McAllen and toughed it out with the "inch" of rain. That inch of rain turned into 24 inches of rain over the next 24 hours. By the time we got back in the Rio Grande Valley late Thursday afternoon, it was chaos in McAllen. I am getting a bit ahead of myself though. We still have a bird to chase down in Galveston.

We got into Galveston with an hour of daylight left. Our target was being seen, of all places, at a putt-putt golf place and behind a Best Western hotel. The bird was actually frequenting a small neighborhood in the area and had also been seen at some nearby ball diamonds, but the putt-putt place and hotel were the main spots. We checked both until dark. We got really excited when we found a light-colored immature Red-shouldered Hawk. Close, but no. Out of daylight and out of options, we grabbed a room at the Best Western where the bird was being seen. Who knows, maybe it will be there in the morning?

The hunt will continue in the next post!

Thanks for reading,

Mike