National Butterfly Center
/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.
