South Texas

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Length of trip

Description

Highlights

  • Wonderful, often easy, birding!
  • Boat trip for Whooping Cranes and other wading birds
  • Lots of Mexican specialties that are located nowhere else in the United States
  • Excellent reserves and birding areas

Tour Overview

Winter is a fine time for a birding tour in south Texas. Resident species are starting to nest, and some choice species are here before setting off for the north. Wading birds along the coastal lagoons will include Whooping Cranes alongside stunning Roseate Spoonbills and Reddish Egrets. There are the southern Texas specialties – Tropical Parula, Green Jay, Clay-colored Robin, Altamira and Audubon’s Orioles, Buff-bellied Hummingbird and Hook-billed Kite, and we look for Brown Jay and Morelet’s Seedeater up the valley, and Aplomado Falcon towards South Padre Island.

Our route will take us from Corpus Christi to Rockport, then down to the Rio Grande Valley where we will explore the sub-tropical preserves of Sable Palms Frontera Audubon Thicket, Bentsen State Park and superb Santa Ana NWR, and then up the valley to the riparian zone sanctuaries of Salineño, Chapeno, and the Chihuahuan Desert habitat of Falcon State Park, the later location being an excellent location for arid country species like Vermillion Flycatcher, Greater Roadrunner and Black-throated Sparrow.

You can combine this tour with our Arizona in winter birding tour.

Read our trip reports and see checklists below.