Edinburg Scenic Wetlands
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Our fourth morning at the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival required us to be at the Harlingen Convention Center by 7 AM for the bus; we were glad it wasn’t earlier! There was an odd cloud or smoke plume that obscured the sunrise; tt was moving rapidly and seemed to have an origination point so I think it might have been smoke.
We headed to the town of Edinburg TX and their wetlands oasis – the Edinburg Scenic Wetlands & Birding Center - about 40 minutes on the bus.
I often revert to taking botanical pictures…and there were a lot of interesting plants ranging from dessert plants to lush riparian type plants. Click on the image in the mosaic below to see a larger image.
I even enjoyed some artsy pictures!
There were quite a few birds: Black-bellied Whistling ducks (and a mixture of hybrid domestic/wild ducks/geese)
Northern Shoveler
American Wigeon (and a Ruddy duck)
American Avocet
Herons: Great, Snowy, Green
Ladder-backed Woodpecker and Inca Doves
House Sparrow near the feeders
Crested Caracara
Neotropical cormorant
Curved-billed thrasher
There were turtles in a lot of places too – even crawling up the dam abutment! There were Texas spiny softshell turtles on a concrete pad near the boardwalk.
We weren’t still long enough to do much butterfly photography – but I did manage three!
The trip had been advertised as a place to see Kingfishers, but the banks where they had frequented had been cleaned up (i.e. bushy vegetation removed) and the Kingfishers had moved elsewhere.
