Covering 1252 square miles and containing more than 80 different trails, Big Bend is a truly massive and spectacular place, and my allocation of a single day was… laughably insufficient. Now, I knew I wouldn’t even begin to scrape the surface of this massive National Park in a single day, but even still I was unprepared for how pitifully small an area I would be able to cover. After spending the night in the Cottonwood Campground, I woke early to head to the Dugout Wells to attempt to track down a handful of targets including Black-tailed Gnatcatcher, a Lifer which I located shortly after arriving, managing to get a fantastic look at the nominal and diagnostic black tail. I also managed to spot a second Lifer while there, a Sage Thrasher.
From there I headed up into the Chisos Basin, where I hiked parts of the Window Trail and Lost Mine Trail. Despite completing neither of these long hikes, I was rewarded with some phenomenal views of Big Bend’s gorgeous scenery. The trails weren’t especially birdy, but they did hold some birds that were new for Texas for me, such as Black-crested Titmouse, Mexican Jay, Dark-eyed Junco, and White-throated Swift.
Once I was done hiking for the day I headed back to my campsite to cook myself some ramen, and as I waited for the noodles to boil I spotted a small group of birders wandering the side of the campground opposite me. Eventually they made their way in my direction, trying to track down a woodpecker they hadn’t managed to ID before losing, and I pointed them in the direction of a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker that had just flown in. From there we started chatting, and they mentioned having had Vermilion Flycatcher, Gray Flycatcher, and Ash-throated Flycatcher around the campground. This definitely drew my attention as Gray Flycatcher would be a Lifer and Ash-throated only the third I’d ever seen – and almost as soon as they informed me of the birds’ presence the Gray Flycatcher flew into a tree right in my campsite. After getting great looks at it and finishing my dinner I spent some time wandering the campground, spotting the Vermilion Flycatcher first and then the Ash-throated Flycatcher a short while later.
The morning of the 14th I rose early to return to the Dugout Wells to try for Western Screech-Owl, and after getting the desired target I began the long drive for the Lower Rio Grande Valley. On the way I made a brief stop at the Pecos River Overlook along US-90, where I snagged a shocking variety of birds. After that I met up with Troy Hibbitts in Bracketville to close out my birding for the day as he showed me around his local patch. Bracketville proved to be an impressively birdy town with a very nice sewage pond, and after birding in the town we headed out to track down an assortment of hawks including one of our main targets, Harris’s Hawk. Before leaving Bracketville Troy armed me with intel on good spots to try for Barn Owl, a bird I still needed as a Lifer, on my route towards The Valley. While I didn’t manage to track down any Barn Owls I did make it to a small town just about an hour north of McAllen where I called it a night.
The next morning I woke early to head to Estero Llano Grande State Park to meet Bill Sain and 8 others for the State Park’s morning bird walk. We had a phenomenal morning of birding at this birding destination site, getting great looks at Green Jay, Altamira Oriole, Clay-colored Thrush, White-tailed Kite, Black-necked Stilt, and 58 other species during the four-and-a-half hour walk. Once the walk was over I left Estero Llano to head to the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge in search of my first Lifer of the day – Rose-throated Becard. I would have good shots at one on the 16th at Santa Margarita Ranch, so I wasn’t too concerned when the bird appeared to be MIA when I arrived, but regardless I gave it about an hour and my patience was rewarded when eventually the bird flew in to the tree by the feeders it had been regularly visiting. As soon as it flew in I got everyone else standing there waiting on the bird so they could get looks and pictures, but by the time I went to snag some photos of my own the bird flew away.
Not feeling like giving the Becard another hour to hopefully get a better look, I decided to head to Edinburgh Scenic Wetlands to track down my second Lifer of the day: Green Kingfisher. The sewage ponds converted into a wildlife refuge were hopping with birds, and it didn’t take too long for me to get phenomenal looks at my primary target when a Green Kingfisher landed just about ten feet away. I also got great looks at other birds while there, including both Black-crowned Night Heron and Yellow-crowned Night Heron, Wilson’s Warbler, and an “expected” swallow sweep when I picked up Cave Swallow, Tree Swallow, Barn Swallow, and Northern Rough-winged Swallow all hanging around the north pond of the facility.
Once done at the Wetlands I headed to Anzalduas Park to meet Tom Forwood Jr and try to track down my third Lifer of the day. While waiting for Tom to arrive I spotted a good assortment of birds: Western Cattle-Egret, Snowy Egret, Tricolored Heron, and several duck species. My main target waited until after Tom had arrived, and with almost comedic timing the Ringed Kingfisher flew by only a few minutes after I told Tom I hadn’t managed to track one down yet. After spending a short while at Anzalduas Tom and I headed back to his house, which is actually on the Bensten Rio Grande State Park property, south of the border wall (as Tom is the Superintendent of the park). Before calling it a night we picked up several more pretty good birds, including an Anhinga in I believe the exact same spot where I’d had my Lifer in May of 2023. I am incredibly thankful for Tom’s generous hospitality; treating me to dinner and letting me stay in his guest bedroom – plus the experience provided me the rather unique opportunity to say that I spent the night in the United States on the south side of the border wall – something I’m sure not very many people have done.
I departed Tom’s house incredibly early the next morning to make the drive to one of the most incredible places in the United States for birding – Santa Margarita Ranch. The Ranch is one of very few places in the United States where you can regularly get Red-billed Pigeon, Morelet’s Seedeater, and Rose-throated Becard – the former two of which we were successful in tracking down. It is also the ONLY place in the United States where you can expect to see Brown Jays or the US’s only Mottled Owl – both of which I would get to see in the nearly eleven hours I spent at the Ranch. The only way to access the ranch is to tag along with Simon Kiacz or Zachary Johnson, the two finders of the Mottled Owl who work as the official guides for Santa Margarita Ranch. Also while at the ranch, the two groups I birded with over the course of the day (one in the morning, one in the evening) tallied a collective total of 94 species just in the site alone, including birds like Summer Tanager, Audubon’s Oriole, Anna’s Hummingbird, Eastern Screech-Owl (McCall’s subspecies), Great Horned Owl, and many, many more. The brief three hour gap I had between my morning Brown Jay tour (led by Simon) and the evening Mottled Owl tour (led by both Simon and Zach) was spent birding a few spots only a couple miles away, and between the ranch and that limited time birding the area I managed 102 species on the day.
Once my time at Santa Margarita was ended I made my way out of The Valley and up the coast towards Rockport, saying goodbye (for now) to south Texas. I think the Lower Rio Grande Valley is one of the most spectacular places for birders just about anywhere, as it’s not just the variety of birds and the accessibility of birding locations that make The Valley such a great place, but also the incredible number of birders everywhere. Nowhere is the birding community more obviously accessible, with places like Estero Llano and Santa Ana both holding morning bird walks that often times have a dozen people in attendance, and places like The Alamo Inn, a hotel catered specifically to birders that my dad and I stayed at back in 2023. Plus, of course, the food in the area is good. Like, really, really good.
Rockport, however, also brought a great time as I joined Captain Tommy aboard The Skimmer for the Rockport Whooping Crane tour. This tour through Aransas Bay and Aransas National Wildlife Refuge on the morning of the 17th was an exceptionally birdy one, not only bringing fantastic looks at the tour’s nominal Whooping Cranes, but also incredible looks at birds such as Reddish Egret, Roseate Spoonbill, Eared Grebe, Ruddy Duck, and more. We didn’t only see birds on the tour, though, also getting close-up looks at Dolphins, a Bobcat, a Coyote, and Captain Tommy’s first ever Sea Otter in 21 years of birding and boating around the Aransas Bay.
To be completely honest, I had assumed that once I crossed the border from Texas into Louisiana that the difficulty of getting 100 species in a state was going to ramp up significantly. I also figured that, eventually, I would have a day and a county that would break Tim Burkhardt and I’s January First Pima County Big Day record of 112 species, but that said day wouldn’t arrive until as least the early spring, possibly as late as late-April or May. January 18th in Cameron Parish, Louisiana, would prove me totally and utterly wrong on both of those fronts (Parishes being the Louisiana equivalent to counties, which they don’t have).
I kicked off my time in Louisiana with a visit to the Peveto Woods, a hotspot which during warbler migration is apparently unbelievable, but I was told this time of year would be underwhelming. It ended up falling somewhere in-between, netting me an assortment of songbirds including Orange-crowned Warbler and Tufted Titmouse, as well as shorebirds such as Snowy Plover and Willet, plus a variety of other birds.
After Peveto I drove along the Holly Beach, snagging loads more shorebirds such as Black-bellied Plover, Piping Plover, Least Sandpiper, and Western Sandpiper. This gave me a great start to my time in Louisiana, but the craziness didn’t truly start until I arrived at Cameron Prairie National Wildlife Refuge.
The Pintail Wildlife Drive at Cameron Prairie NWR was a phenomenal one, loaded with all sorts of ducks, geese, and herons – plus birds like White Ibis and King Rail, both incredible pick ups. After leaving Cameron Prairie I made my way to another wildlife drive, the one at Lacassine NWR, which proved to be even more exceptional. There were an overwhelming number of birds present at Lacassine, including thousands of Snow Goose, Greater White-fronted Goose, Black-bellied Whistling-Duck, Northern Shoveler, and Ring-necked Duck as well as 39 other species of birds including birds like Limpkin, Fulvous Whistling-Duck, and Mottled Duck.
Eventually I wrapped up my time at Lacassine to make my way southwest to a spot where I would be meeting Jonathon Leuck, a marshbird biologist who specializes in Yellow Rail research. Along the way I stopped at a couple of agricultural fields where a variety of blackbirds had been seen, and was met with an incredible spectacle of tens of thousands of blackbirds moving through the sky like a river. These flocks were predominantly comprised of Red-winged Blackbirds, but from the mix I picked out varying numbers of Yellow-headed Blackbird, Brewer’s Blackbird, Brown-headed Cowbirds, Bronzed Cowbirds, Great-tailed Grackles, Boat-tailed Grackles, and European Starlings. Once I was done being mesmerized by the incredible display I headed to meet up with Jonathon, who spotted my Lifer American Barn Owl at our meeting spot before we left to head to a nearby sedgy field.
Once in the field the group of us – five in total – spread out with headlamps, flashlights, nets, and a rope with homemade noisemakers attached to it to spend the next several hours wandering through the marsh at night. The goal of this seemingly ludicrous endeavor? To locate and band Yellow Rails (and, hopefully, if we were lucky, maybe even a Black Rail). The exact location of this site was kept a secret – hence why the checklist is not included in my attached eBird Trip Report and is instead hidden – and I learned that this practice was with good reason as over the course of the night we managed to band or record the existing band data of eleven different Yellow Rails, a haul barely over half their record of 20 at this same site. We were unsuccessful in locating a Black Rail (which had we located only Jonathon would have been legally permitted to handle), but I did get the opportunity to hold a Yellow Rail in my hand after being instructed in the proper way to handle the bird without causing it any harm.
Also over the course of this banding we spotted many Sedge Wrens, another Barn Owl, and a handful of LeConte’s Sparrows. Once the rail banding was concluded I found myself settling in for the night after having one of the greatest days of birding I’ve ever had, totaling an astonishing 114 species including 108 in Cameron Parish alone, counts which respectively beat January 1st and Pima County by two each.
On the morning of the 19th I headed north into west-central Louisiana, in search of a few target Lifers. The first came early and in abundance, as Brown-headed Nuthatch would prove to be the bird of the day. The other two targets would not come so easily, however, as it took hours of searching the Piney Woods for me to track down and get brief looks at a Bachman’s Sparrow, and I was never successful in locating my primary target of the day, Red-cockaded Woodpecker. Eventually I called it a day and found somewhere to camp for the night, briefly visiting a field before sundown where I spotted a tremendous flock of shorebirds that I knew I would need to return in the morning to ID.
Next week, after tracking down that shorebird flock and seeing a higher number of shorebirds in a single day than I ever have before in my life, I will finish up my time in Louisiana and head to Mississippi for three days and the morning of a 4th, then get started on Alabama. During that time I will be forced to deal with an regionally-incredible snowstorm that will seemingly grind society to a halt for a few days. The frigid weather, reminiscent of my home in Michigan, will definitely slow down my birding to some extent, but as I look forward to continuing to learn during my travels this year: no matter where you go and what the weather is, there is always birding to be done.
In the meantime, Happy Birding!
eBird Trip Summary:
First and foremost - thank you to anyone who chooses to support me in this insane adventure of mine. When I initially had this idea and began planning I didn't even consider the possibility that others would want to support me, but I am extremely grateful to those who have reached out to do so. For those who are interested in supporting me, I have set up a Patreon, which can be accessed by clicking the logo to the left (or you can send me a message via the contact page). Again, thank you for your incredibly generous support!
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Thank you again to those of you who have supported me so far, it's tremendously generous and greatly appreciated.
Follow me on my journey to see 100 species in every Lower-48 State during 2025, experience some of the incredible places and events in American birding, and meet and bird with as many local birders as possible along the way.
Posts will be made every Wednesday (I will try to have them out by 5pm, but situationally they might be a bit later) and will cover the previous Monday through Sunday. Additional posts will be made periodically with no set schedule.
