Posting has been slow lately obviously. One reason is we just returned from several days on a birding adventure a few hours south of here—near the southern tip of Texas in the Rio Grande Valley. In three days, we saw seventy-some species (not counting most gulls or shorebirds), nearly twenty of which were life birds for us.
Yes, somehow we managed to live the last seven-plus years in south central Texas without yet visiting the birding mecca of the Rio Grande Valley.
There is so much to see in the Valley, and we only covered a very small portion of it—toward the eastern end. We spent a day at Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge near the coast and the better part of another day at Brownsville's Audubon Sabal Palm Sanctuary, one of the last remnants of the extensive palm forests that once lined the Rio Grande near its mouth. We'll have to devote more trips to see other birding hot spots, such as the particularly famous Bentsen-Rio Grande State Park, which is several dozen miles west of where we were.
One bird we saw that wasn't a life bird was the blazingly colorful Green Jay. We managed to get a couple fleeting glances of some on one trip to Choke Canyon State Park a couple years ago. But in the Valley, they are impossible to miss.
A jay!?! Of course. I should have seen it at once. What a spectacular bird.
Posted by: Pamela | April 12, 2006 at 10:55 AM
i luv jays. there so pretty and colorful. you must of been really excited 2 c thim.
Posted by: kd | April 14, 2006 at 07:52 AM
Bella bella!
Posted by: Jaded Thea | June 23, 2006 at 05:52 AM