Rio Grande Valley and Texas Hill Country

We arrived in the Rio Grande Valley on January 17 and spent a week at a campground near Mission, Texas. We visited several different birding areas including Bentsen Rio Grande Valley State Park, Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, National Butterfly Center (we saw more birds than butterflies!), Estero Llano Grande State Park and the birding area in the back of our campground. 

National Butterfly Center

We took tram tours of some of the places and learned about the history of the parks and went to morning birding tours at Bentsen Rio Grande and the Santa Ana NWR.

Rio Grande River

Canopy walk at Santa Ana NWR

Pioneer cemetery at Santa Ana NWR

They have very knowledgable guides and we identified 50 different  species on one walk and 40 species on the other. The guides at both places have been doing this for over 20 years and know where to look for the different species. Some of our favorite birds were Green Jays, Great Kiskadees, Chucalucas, Golden Fronted Woodpeckers, Audubon Orioles, Altamira Orioles,  Hooded Orioles and lots more. We spent a lot of time at various bird feeding stations in the parks. We also ate some really good Texas BBQ one lunch! 

Cold Morning at the bird sancturary

Golden Fronted Wood Pecker

Green Jays

Javelina at the bird feeder

Wild Turkey

Great Kiskadee

After our stay at Mission, Texas, we moved about an hour and a half west to Falcon State Park which is on Falcon Lake (it is managed jointly by the United States and Mexico). We stayed there 3 nights and walked most of the trails in the park and visited all of the bird feeding stations. Both days we visited the Salineno Birding Center, a few miles east of the park right on the Rio Grande River. Some of our favorite birds here were a Green Tailed Junco, a Clay-Colored Sparrow and Bobwhites.

Screech Owl in a Owl Box

Altamira Orioles

Hooded Orioles

Falcon Lake Dam

From Falcon State Park we spent a long day driving north and west (against a headwind) to Fredericksburg in the Texas Hill Country where we spent 3 nights at the municipal campground. On our first day in Fredericksburg, we walked the nature trail in the park and spent the afternoon wine tasting. The area has lots of vineyards and we visited two of them: Augusta Vin Winery and Becker Winery. We sat out on their patios and had lovely views and nice wines. We were lucky enough to have a tour of the Becker Winery. What a huge place and the tour was very interesting.

Augusta Vin Winery

Augusta Vin Winery

Becker Winery

Becker Winery Aging Room

Becker Winery Premium Wine Aging 

Becker Winery

The next day, we drove about 30 miles north to Enchanted Rock State Natural Area. Enchanted Rock and several other rocks in the park are huge pink granite outcroppings and we took the 4.6 mile Loop trail which circumnavigated the rock. It was a lovely trail with great views until we got lost and added another 1.4 miles to our walk!  When we got back we were both sore and exhausted, but it is certainly a lovely area.

From Fredericksburg we moved an hour west to South Llano River State Park near Junction, Texas for 3 nights. We have been here twice before and really like the area. We hiked and biked many of the trails and spent lots of time visiting the bird feeding blinds seeing lot of birds at each including a Woodhouse Scrub Jay, the Black Chinned and White Chinned Sparrows. It was a very nice and relaxing stay.

South Llano River State Park

Bird Feeding Station

Northern Cardinal

Black Crowned Titmouse

Armadillo

Moving on west through Texas but more on that later…