Rio Grande Valley and Westward

February 7, 2026

We arrived at our campground in the Rio Grande Valley near Palmview, Texas on January 17. The Rio Grande Valley is used to describe anywhere from Brownsville, Texas to Rio Grande City, Texas. It spreads out along Interstate 2 for well over an hour. The highway is surrounded by box stores. As you get farther from the interstate you get subdivisions, lots of RV Parks, farm lands, warehouses for trucks arriving from Mexico and of course the Wall. We come for the birds and there are lots of them

Bentsen Rio Grande State Park was about 3 miles from our campground and we went there a lot. We hiked, biked and took the visitor tram. We saw lots of different birds including Plain Chachalacas, Hooded Orioles,  Altimara Orioles, Wild turkeys, Green Jays, Kiskadees, Northern Cardinals, Harris’s Hawk, and many more.

Hooded Orioles

Plain Chachalacas

Altimara Orioles

Wild turkeys

Green Jays

Kiskadee

Northern Cardinals

 Harris’s Hawk

The National Butterfly Center was about a mile farther. We go there primarily for the birds. They have a great feeder there. We saw an Audubon  Oriole, Bronze Cowbird (with a red eye), about 20 Cardinals at once, Olive Sparrow and Golden Fronted Woodpecker.  This is also quite a well known butterfly place and this was a very good year for butterflies. People were coming from all around the world. I never knew the Butterfly lovers keep life lists also.

Bronze Cowbird

Audubon  Oriole

Golden Fronted Woodpecker

Olive Sparrow

We also went twice to Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, walked about the refuge, and saw lots of American White Pelicans and orioles. We rode our bikes on the 7 mile loop around the refuge and went on their canopy walk. Another day we went on a guided 4 hour birding tour. We saw 61different bird species including lots of Green Kingfishers.

Green Kingfisher

White Pelican

Canopy Walk

Estero Llano Grande State Park was another fun place that we went where we saw Black Crowned Night Herons, Yellow Crowned Night Herons, a Common Pauraque, and Roseate Spoonbills. We saw 41 species here and also saw two alligators. 

Yellow Crowned Night Heron

Black Crowned Night Heron

Common Pauraque (Well Camoflauged)

Roseate Spoonbill

Another day we went to Edinburg Scenic Birding Area. We saw 41 species here also. The best was a female Crimson Collared Grosbeak which usually resides in N.E. Mexico and a Yellow Bellied Sapsucker.

Yellow Bellied Sapsucker

Our farthest excursion was to South Padre Island. We first went to the South Padre Island Birding Center, a very nice facility on the bay side of the island. We saw lots of birds including Black Bellied Whistling Ducks, a Marbled Godwit, Roseate Spoonbills and lots of herons and gulls. We also took a short walk on the beach. After lunch, we went to Sea Turtles, Inc., a very nice sea turtle rehabilitation center. In fact, they have the largest indoor turtle hospital in the U.S. They try to rehabilitate the turtles and return them to the ocean, but if they can’t rehabilitate them they live permanently at the facility. The center was quite concerned because freezing weather was in the forecast and turtles cannot regulate their body temperature and might need to be rescued and warmed up before returning them to the water. It was a very interesting day.

Roseate Spoonbills

Board Walk

Green Heron

Great Egret

Black Bellied Whistling Ducks

Snowy Egret

Recued Turtle

Sunday morning and Monday morning, the temperature got down below freezing, but we did not get any of the precipitation that they had farther north. It was still pretty cold for this area.

Tuesday, January 27, we moved west about 60 miles  and spent three nights at Falcon State Park on Falcon Lake on the Mexican border. The lake is very low. In fact there is a boat ramp that now goes to nowhere.

Falcon Lake Trail

Boat Launch to Nowhere...

Salineno Wildlife Preserve is one of the main reasons that we go to Falcon Lake. It is about 15 minutes from the state park and has a very nice bird feeding area and also a short trail along the Rio Grande River where you can also see birds. We saw both the Altimara  Oriole and the Audubon Oriole and lots of other birds. We went there twice. We also walked the trails around the state park, but did not see a lot of birds. I think because it was so dry.

Salineno Wildlife Preserve Bird Feeder

Rio Grande River Looking to Mexico

We spent two nights at Lake Casa Blanca State Park in Laredo, Texas. We drove around the park looking for birds and saw 24 species. We also took a hike. We drove a short ways to Texas A&M International University and looked for birds there also. We saw 12 bird species there including a Cactus Wren and lots of Pyrrhuloxia. There were also lots of deer and Javelinas grazing there way around campus.

Cactus Wren

Pyrrhuloxia

Tower at Texas A&M International University

Javelina

We left Laredo and continued west with just miles and miles of nothing in this part of Texas. We spent the night at Seminole Canyon State Park and Historic Area. This park has very nice prehistoric pictographs. We arrived too late to take any of the tours to see them, but we saw them on a previous trip. We did visit the museum at the visitor and learned about the early inhabitants of the area, the coming of the Europeans and the building of the railroad in the area.

Maker of Peace Statue

Seminole River Canyon

Replica of Prehistoric Pictographs in the Visitors Center

We continue west to Davis Mountain State Park - more to come.

San Antonio and the Gulf Coast

 01/20/2026

We spent 5 nights in San Antonio and had the opportunity to do and see a lot of things in the area. Our campground backed up to the Salado Creek Greenway South and twice we rode our bikes on this very nice trail.

On our first full day in San Antonio, we went to the San Antonio Botanical Gardens. It is a a beautiful garden with several large conservatory buildings. They also highlighted different plants in different areas of Texas in different areas of the garden. Another interesting thing was that the decorations for their Christmas “Illuminate” show were still in place. Although they were not lit up, it was still fun seeing them all.

After lunch at a very good nearby Mexican restaurant, we went to the Japanese Tea Garden. It is built in an abandoned quarry and has waterfalls, koi ponds, stone bridges and an open air stone pavilion. It is quite nice, but neither of us could figure out why they think it looks like a Japanese Garden.

On Monday, we rode our bikes on the Mission Trail which is part of the River Walk along the San Antonio River. We rode our bikes between 3 of the missions: Mission San Juan, Mission San Jose, and Mission Espada. We visited the visitor center at Mission San Juan and learned all about life at the mission for the native people and how in some ways it helped the natives, but in other ways it totally uprooted their culture. We toured the missions and saw the inside of the churches which are very beautiful and still in use. The missions varied very much in size.  The bike trail itself was very nice and went through many parks and had had several  art pieces. After our bike ride we drove to Mission Concepcion.  I should mention that the Alamo was also originally a mission also.

Mission Espada

Mission San Juan

Mission San Jose

Mission San Jose

Mission San Jose

Mission Espada

Trail Artwork

Mission Concepcion

On Tuesday, we took a city bus which stops right in front of the campground into downtown. Our first stop was the Alamo. We walked around the Alamo, went inside the mission and watched a short movie about what happened there in the battle with Mexico.

Next we walked over to the River Walk. This part of the river walk is totally developed and completely different from where we rode our bikes.We walked awhile along the river and then took a very nice 30 minute cruise on the river. The pilot told us many interesting facts about the river and the San Antonio area. We also had a nice lunch at a Mexican restaurant  and had a table right along the river.  Another interesting thing we saw were “river cleaners”, barges that go along the river and suck up debris!

river cleaner barge

On our final day in San Antonio, we went to the Mitchell Lake Audubon Center on the south side of town. We rode on their motor nature trails and walked around one of their basins. We saw 22 bird species, but Texas is in quite a drought and lots of ponds and marshes are pretty dry so the birding is not quite as good as it should be.

On Thursday, January 8, we left San Antonio and traveled east to Goose Island State Park across the bay from Rockport, Texas. We have been here several times and love the place. The birding is usually great and the state park offers several birding tours. This area is known for being the winter home of Whooping Cranes. Once almost extinct, their numbers are now up. Almost 570 whooping cranes now winter here. As soon as we set up camp, we drove over to the area where we usually see the cranes and were very happy to see several.

Crane Adult and Colt

On Friday, we took the Big Tree birding tour and saw 42 different bird species including a greater Kiskadee, a Ruddy Turnstone, several Roseate Spoonbills, Sandhill Cranes, 32 Whooping Cranes, 4 types of gulls to name just a few. In the afternoon, we took another tour which told us lots of information about the history of the area.

Red Tail Hawk

White Ibis

Saturday, turned very cold and windy. We took a ride over to Port Aransas, Texas to see the Leonabelle Turnbull Birding Center. We couldn’t believe our eyes when the first bird we saw was a Flamingo. Flamingos aren’t supposed to be in Texas. There it was, just hanging out with lots of white pelicans! We were so excited. We also saw Avocet, Black-necked Stilts, Green-winged Teals, Long-billed Dowitchers, Greater Yellowlegs, a galanule and more. We were surprised to see so many birds because of the wind. We also drove to the beach to see the Gulf of Mexico and ate at our favorite Mexican restaurant in Port Aransas.

An Avocet and Black Backed Stilts

Green-winged Teal

Long-billed Dowitchers

The Gulf Beach at Port Aransas

When we got back to our campground, the tide was out a lot and we were pleased to see lots of Whooping Cranes and Sandhill Cranes in shallow water and Roseate Spoonbills in the field. They were really close.

Sunday, we went to Aransas National Wildlife Refuge a little ways north of Goose Island. We took several hikes, saw about a dozen different bird species, three alligators, several javelinas, one racoon and a lot of deer. It was a pleasant day,

Both Tuesday and Wednesday we took birding tours at the park. The tour on Tuesday was of “shore birds” and we saw @40 species. Some of the best were Ruddy Turn-stones, Oyster Catchers, Dowagers, Curlews and a Roadrunner. On Wednesday, we took a walk with someone from the International Crane Foundation and spent our time looking at the Whooping Cranes. Our last tour Wednesday was a “Woodland Birds” tour and we saw @19 birds. We also had fun riding our bikes around the park and walking out to the end of the 1,620 foot long fishing pier. We very much enjoyed our week at Goose Island.

Road Runner

We left Goose Island State Park on Wednesday the 15th and went to Kingsville, Texas. Thursday morning we took a four hour birding tour at King Ranch, the largest ranch in the United States. At 825,000 acres it is larger than the state of Rhode Island. Our tour was fabulous.Our guide was very knowledgeable  and we saw 61 different bird species. Some of our favorites were Northern Bobwhite, Least Grebe, Golden Fronted Woodpecker, Audubon Oriole,White Tailed Hawk and tons of Crested Cara Caras. It was a great morning..

Crested Cara Cara

White Tailed Hawk

Harris Hawk

Golden Fronted Woodpecker

Audubon's Oriole

Northern Bobwhite Quail

King Ranch Cattle

Now we have moved on to the Mc Allen area in the Rio Gande Valley.