Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge

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We visited the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge on the third morning of the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival. The visitor center was not open (it was during the government shutdown), but the restrooms were. I knew the morning was going to include some hiking, so I brought along my trekking poles and they worked great – I got tired, but my back didn’t hurt!

There was a lot to see. The highlights in my photographs were:

Altamira oriole and a nest created by the species

Eastern Pondhawk (dragonfly)

A bee on the ground mimosa - Powderpuff (Mimosa strigillosa)

A preening Scissor-tailed Flycatcher and a preening Great Kiskadee

A Great Egret in the wind

 A Green Heron – very hard to find among the plants

A Ladder-backed Woodpecker

Of course there were lots of plants/landscapes to note as well. Somehow a leaf on the ground full of holes looked interesting to me as I rested midway through the hike. Turks cap grows wild at the refuge. There are a lot of legumes in the area…many with thorns! And there is enough moisture for Spanish moss to thrive.

And now for the rest…mostly bird pictures that are mainly for identification…many of the waterbirds were almost out of the range of my camera or there was vegetation between me and the birds. The largest insect was on an awning near the tower.

I used the Deet spray on my lower legs but got bites (mosquito) through my leggings above my knees and on my arms through my sunblock shirt sleeves! Fortunately, they did not itch too much (after I put baking soda water on them); so far, I am not feeling any ill-effects; next time I will be more careful and spray myself more thoroughly.

National Butterfly Center

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Our second morning at the Rio Grand Valley Birding Festival started with a walk around the National Butterfly Center in Mission TX. It was a pleasant morning for a walk round the place. My husband and I stopped by the last time we went to festival in 2017, but it was a rainy and cold day….so we didn’t go past the visitor center! This time it was a beautiful sunny day, and we enjoyed walking around the space behind the visitor center with our guides. At one time there was a lot of anxiety that the border wall would cut through the center…but evidently the land for the center was preserved and there is still a lot to see there.

I saw a lot more than I was able to photograph! It was an interesting walk. I started with some plants near the entrance.

Scissor-tailed Flycatcher

Spiny lizards

Neotropic Cormorants in flight

Northern Mockingbird

Green Jay (including an interaction with red-winged blackbird)

Bronzed Cowbird

Plain Chachalaca

Great-tailed grackle (including a picture that makes it easy to see the size difference between the grackle and the chachalaca)

White-winged Dove

Black-crested Titmouse

Inca Dove

Hummingbird

Queen butterflies

A rescued tortoise (not native…shell damaged by a fire)

Logs with beer, banana, brown sugar mix painted on daily) that attract insects

Olive sparrow (I saw several during the festival but these were the only photos!)

Nest of an Altamira/Audubon oriole hybrid

An adult and juvenile white ibis flying

By the end of the walk, I was ready for a rest on the bus while we headed to another birding hotspot.

The Inn at Chachalaca Bend

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Our main activity for the last day of the Rio Grande Valley Birding festival was breakfast (sumptuous) as the The Inn at Chachalaca Bend followed my a walk around the grounds looking at birds. We started near the Inn’s deck on the bank of La Resaca de las Antonias. We saw a Belted Kingfisher on the electrical wires crossing the Resaca almost immediately!

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A Great Blue Heron and Great Egret had a little conference in the distance.

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There was a broken tree trunk (or old telephone pole) near the water….a perch for an Altamira Oriole.

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Directly across from the Inn an Anhinga dropped down into the water to capture a fish then walked back up a palm that was slanting over the water.

Nearby on a snag, a Golden Fronted Woodpecker searched for breakfast.

There was a ruckus and then a larger bird flew toward us over the water and sat on the electrical wire nearest us: a Ringed Kingfisher.

There was Great Kiskadee on the wire further away

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And a Black-crowned Night-Heron in the vegetation across from where were standing.

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The kiskadee flew away and we notice a kite (probably white tailed…but hard to tell for sure).

We left the Resaca to hike around some open field areas. We saw an American Kestrel looking at the meadow.

As we headed back almost to the edge of the path through a forested area, we looked up and saw masses of migrating American White Pelicans! There were several groups…maybe as many as 1,000 birds.

The path branched off to the edge of the Resaca again and we saw a Snowy Egret (note the yellow feet which is a distinctive feature for this bird even if the focus is not very good for the picture).

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As we got ready to leave, we gathered back at the Inn and saw a hummingbird at the feeder (probably Ruby-throated).

There were a few plants I took pictures of…but they were secondary to the birds!

Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge

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The second day of the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival, we did not have any formal field trips scheduled. It was cool and cloudy – not a good day for butterflies, so we shifted our plans back to a focus on birds and headed for the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge.Some of the first things we saw on our hike was insects – still with the cold: two dragonflies

Two caterpillars, and

A queen butterfly…not fluttering about.

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I was pleased to see a land snail on one of the small trees. We’d seen a lot of shells on the ground (i.e. dead) at both Las Estrellas and Rancho Lomitas. We were told that sometimes roadrunners get hungry enough to crack the shells against a rock to get to the tasty morsel inside.

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Ball Moss is something I had never seen. It is like Spanish Moss – also abundant on trees in the refuge.

Then we saw some duck: Northern Shovelers and Blue winged teal.

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A group of chachalaca were in the trees beside the trail. It was hard to get pictures through the foliage and branches…we’d get better pictures on another day.

As we walked across an empty parking lot, we spotted a kiskadee on an electrical line

And then a flash of orange in the trees – an Altamira Oriole was on the move. It eventually made it way to the electrical pole as well.

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The refuge has a swinging bridge through tree tops. On the day we were there, the birds were hunkered down but it was still work the climb and the look down into foliage.

At a bird blind, I finally got some good pictures of the green jay.

We made our way back to the visitor center and had a snack on our way to nearby Estero Llano State Park (topic of tomorrow's post). In this area of Texas there are a series of state and federal lands that make a wild life corridor…more meaningful than each standalone park or refuge.