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.

Spiny lizards

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.

There is a lot to see at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. My daughter had visited previously and had suggested it as a great start to our ‘end of summer’ road trip. The art is from various time periods often with links to American history: “We the People” with shoe strings, some favorite artists (Audubon, Chihuly, O’Keeffe, Norman Rockwell’s Rosie the Riveter), a dandelion made in metal originally made for a hotel, the red tinted lens looking out to a water feature, a river in silver on an otherwise blank wall…so much to see…these were just a few of my favorites.

One of the most thought-provoking pieces was a picture of the border wall….as a scar on the landscape. This stretch was a natural area not so long ago.

There were quite a few pieces from Yayoi Kusama (Japanese artist). The infinity room is a dark mirrored space where two people enter at a time (controlled at the door where there is almost always a short line) filled with polka dot orbs lit from within. The minder allows each couple 2 minutes in the space.

Outside there are flower sculptures with polka dots done by the same artist.

There is also a water feature that is partially covered with mirrored orbs made by Kusama …mostly in one group but some seemed to have escaped into the nearby reeds.