January 23 – 31, 2024: We decided to head south for the last part of January and first week of February to escape some of the snow in Colorado, but mostly to check out much of the gulf coast of Texas and the amazing birds that hang out there in the winter. We also focused our stay in public campgrounds, meaning Crane Mill Army Corp of Engineering near San Antonio, Mustang State Park near Corpus Christi, Isla Blanco Regional Park on South Padre Island, Seminole State Park near Del Rio and Rio Grande Village in Big Bend National Park. It’s much cheaper to stay in these campgrounds, but we rarely had full hook-ups, meaning we may have electricity and water, but no sewer. Or in the case of Rio Grande, no hook ups at all and we had to be very careful with our power usage.

The focus of this part of the trip were the Wildlife Refuges and finding birds unique to this area. Two major flyways–the Central and Mississippi come together for this bird migration corridor. It was particularly interesting for me as our time in Maine is another major bird flyway with huge numbers and varieties of birds migrating in Spring and Fall. Many of the birds we saw in Texas winter in this area, which includes many birds from Mexico and Central America.

We started our stay on Canyon Lake in Crane Mill Corp of Engineering Campground near San Antonio. We had a full day of rain in that area, but were able to pop over to Fredricksurg and visit the WWII Pacific War Musuem. We also stopped at Wimberley’s Blue Hole Regional Park, which wasn’t so blue since there was so much rain. Interesting fact, many lakes, reservoirs and bodies of water in Texas can be incredibly blue due to the fact much of Texas is a former sea bed made of millions of years of layers of limestone. We met my cousin’s husband, Matt, for lunch at the Salt Lick, a most famous BBQ joint in Hill Country.

In between visiting Wildlife Refuges, State Parks and anywhere an unusual bird may be found, we visited the aircraft carrier, the USS Lexington in Corpus Christi and the Sea Turtle Inc., a sea turtle rescue on South Padre Island and wandered the beaches. Facinating story with Sea Turtle Inc, they rescued about 5000 sea turtles from the cold snap or Cold Stun, that southern Texas has a few weeks before we arrived. Apparently, they had tons of volunteers take the stunned turtles from the beaches in the area and brought them to their facility, let them warm up for a few days, then launched them back into the sea once the temperatures had warmed up enough.

Here’s a re-cap of some of the better shots of birds I took. I am not a bird photographer and am mostly interested in identifying them and perhaps making quilts of them. Either way, I do love them!

• Leonabella Bird Refuge
• Goose Island State Park area
• Padre Island National Sea Shore
• Sea Turtle Inc. on South Padre Island
• Bird Institue on South Padre Island
• Laguna Madre Nature Trail
• Laguna Atascosa Wildlife Refuge
• Bentsen-Rio Grande State Park
• Santa Ana Wildlife Refuge