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WINGS Birding Tours – Photo Gallery

Texas: The Rio Grande Valley in Winter

Including Whooping Cranes

South Texas is small slice of the tropics, nestled in the US. With stunning birds like Green Jay…
…and comical Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks.
We’ll begin around the beaches of Corpus Christie, where Great Egrets…
…a host of shorebirds, perhaps including Baird’s…
…and the impressive Long-billed Curlew…
…join flocks of gulls, terns and Black Skimmers along the coast.
Migrant traps here can host a lot of tired birds, including warblers such as the gorgeous Hooded…
…the neat Yellow-throated…
or the active Black-and-White.
As we head south towards the Lower Rio Grande Valley, we’ll encounter our first Scissor-tailed Flycatchers…
…stop to admire perched Harris’s Hawks…
…striking Crested Caracaras…
…and perhaps also Red-shouldered Hawks.
Once in the valley the woodlands will ring with the cries of Golden-fronted Woodpeckers…
…while Long-billed Thrashers…
…White-tipped and…
…Inca Doves…
…and Olive Sparrows lurk in the undergrowth…
…while Black-crested Titmice titter from the trees.
We’ll keep an eye out for roosting owls like this Eastern Screech, alway gray phase here…
…or ground roosting Common Pauraques.
A few valley specialties are more suburban, like these Green Parakeets…
…and often confiding Clay-colored Thrushes.
We might encounter a lingering Mexican vagrant or early arriving Groove-billed Ani.
Out to the west things are drier, with more frequent Roadrunner encounters…
…and a suite of new species such as Pyrrhuloxia…
…and Varied Bunting.
Gaudy Altamira Orioles light up the trees here too, along with…
…their more local Audubon’s Oriole cousins… (jm)
…while White-collared Seedeater require a bit more effort to pin down.
Water always attracts birds; here a small puddle collecting Lark Sparrows…
…while larger water bodies host the diminutive Least Grebe and…
…some with Neotropic Cormorants in breeding plumage.
Back on the coast, South Padre Island has an excellent boardwalk which offers access to hunting Least Bitterns…
…and more migrant traps which might contain smashing Magnolia Warblers.
We don’t just look at birds. There are a lot of attractive butterflies such as the Zebra Longwing…
…dragonflies like this Thornbush Dasher and…
…a host of attractive herps, like this Texas Spotted Whiptail, vying for our attentions.

 

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