1^st Annual Rio Grand Valley Birding Festival

November 8 – 11, 1995

Tom Pavlik
Cheryl Pavlik

We arrived on Nov 7 and checked-in for the Festival. The trips would start the next day. We had good guides and very good guides. As it turns out we did not go on all the trips – we liked to do a little exploring ourselves.

Nov 8 – We were at hotel by 5:30am and boarded the bus that would eventually get us to Falcon Dam. Our guide was from Victor Emmanuel Nature Tours (VENT) and was extremely good. The prices for each of the trips was very cheap – most only being $5-10$ per person and that included the guide and the transportation.

Out first stop was Salineno along the Rio Grand. There were a few trailers near the area that welcomed birders. In the area we saw several specialties including Red-billed Pigeon, Audubon’s Oriole and Brown Jay.

From there it was on to Falcon Dam. There were a number of good birds here even though it was getting to early afternoon. We added Green Kingfisher and a number of ducks.

Nov 9 – We decided to go on our own to Santa Ana and Brownsville. As expected we did well at Santa Ana but was disappointed as a group saw a Golden-crowned Warbler about 5 minutes before us. The ponds were active so we added a couple more ducks and shorebirds. At the Port of Brownsville (basically just a pull-off along the road) there was some decent shorebird and gull/tern activity. Here we added Western, Least, Pectoral and White-rumped Sandpiper as well as Ruddy Turnstone. Gulls included Laughing, Franklin’s, Ring-billed and Herring. Terns included Caspian, Royal, Sandwich, Forster’s and Black Skimmer.

Nov 10 – This was another day on our own. We spent the day at Laguna Atascosa and Sabel Palm. Laguna Atascosa was very good. This seems to be a place where it is either really good or really bad. We walked around the visitor center then did the auto loop. There were quite a few raptors on the loop including White-tailed and Harris Hawks, White-tailed Kite, N. Harrier and Merlin. There were quite a few ducks as expected. The highlight of the loop was a Piping Plover.

Nov 11 – We joined one of the tours again. This time it was to Bensten State Park. We got there in time to see Paraques before dawn. As the day went on it got very windy so the birding was pretty much done by noon. However, we added a few more decent birds like Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, White-winged Dove, White-tipped Dove and MacGillivray’s Warbler.