January 10-18, 2026 with Alex Sundvall
South Texas is well known among birders as one of the premier birding destinations in all of the United States. So many species’s ranges just edge their way into the US from Mexico across and along the mighty Rio Grande. The habitats and birds down in the Valley, as it’s affectionately known, are truly one of a kind. And the list of rarities and vagrants that have shown up here are challenged only by the Alaskan Islands and perhaps the sky islands of Southeast Arizona in its length and insanity. Birders eyes go wide with excitement of all the possibilities that might be down on the southern border. This tour was born to chase whatever rarities might be around, while combining it with the joy of the birds of South Texas. All in all, we managed over 200 species during our time together, from the coastal seaport of Corpus Christi and Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, all the way down to Santa Margarita Ranch in the Tamaulipan Thornscrub along the Rio Grande. Our favorite birds of the tour were the stunning male Mangrove Yellow Warbler that we worked so hard for on South Padre Island, a tiny Buff-bellied Hummingbird on our final day waiting just for us on a feeder, and the fantastic Common Pauraques with their unreal camouflage hanging out in the shade at Estero Llano Grande State Park.
From myself and everyone at Field Guides, we would like to thank you for choosing to take this journey through southern Texas with us. I had an absolute blast with you all and I hope to see you all again soon somewhere down the birding trail!
Please enjoy a day to day breakdown of our time together across South Texas:
Day 1: We didn’t waste any time on this first afternoon; in fact our first stop was only about a 15 minute drive from the airport! For a couple years now, there has been a wayward Cattle Tyrant ruling the streets of Corpus Christi. This bird has become so famous and well known among the residents that a mural was painted in its honor! Sometimes the bird can be a little slippery, as it spends lots of time in areas we cannot see. Thankfully, as soon as we walked up to its preferred area (the dumpster behind an oyster bar) it was on the sidewalk ready to welcome us to Texas! Our timing was everything, as after about 5 minutes of close up views, it decided it had enough of us and flew up to a high rooftop out of sight. Next on our agenda was heading just down the road to view the bayfront, as there had been an adult Red-footed Booby hanging out all winter there. Luck continued to be on our side as the Booby was up and flying around, giving us all a great show! After leaving the bayfront, no sooner than turning the corner were we out of the van again as a group of Monk Parakeets had flown over and landed right next to the road! This is a species that has an established population in Corpus, but since we typically spend very little time in the city proper, it is not one we often see on the tour! Our last stop of the afternoon was a brief but very productive stop at Indian Point Park, where groups of waders and shorebirds were utilizing and roosting in the ponds just off the bay. Many of these birds we would see again for longer views, but it was still nice to get our first views of Black-necked Stilts, American Avocets, Long-billed Curlews, Roseate Spoonbills, both Yellow-crowned and Black-crowned Night Herons, and American Oystercatcher. Just before reaching our hotel, we made a quick stop on the side of the highway to see a stunning adult Bald Eagle, at just about the farthest south place you can expect to see one, and a really really difficult bird for the tour!
Day 2: Today was the highly anticipated boat trip through Aransas National Wildlife Refuge with the hope of seeing some Whooping Cranes. We walked over to the harbor after breakfast and met our boat crew for the morning adventure: Captain Jay and his First Mate Kyle. At about 9am we left the harbor and began a rather brisk crossing of the Aransas Bay before arriving into the NWR. We were instantly greeted by birds, specifically a pair of American Oystercatchers that guard the entrance to the NWR. The whole morning was excellent, the pools were filled with ducks and shorebirds with huge flocks of Northern Pintails and Redheads and scattered Mottled Ducks about, and lots of Long-billed Dowitchers, Western Willets, Black-bellied Plovers, and Dunlin feeding on the sand and oyster bars. Pretty much every surface we could see, be it sand or rock, were covered in natural oysters, providing tons of food for these wintering and migrating birds. There was an excellent assortment of Larids around as well, with high numbers of Laughing Gulls, Ring-billed Gulls, American Herring Gulls, Caspian Terns, Forster’s Terns, and Royal Terns all roosting on the shorelines and flying up and down the bay channels. Most impressive for me were at least 7(!) Lesser Black-backed Gulls, many of which were adults, during our time in the NWR. This species has absolutely exploded here in recent years. The stars of the morning however, and the bird we all hoped to see here, were the different family groups of Whooping Cranes wintering there on the refuge. This endangered species is one of the rarest cranes in the world, and was down to a mere 21 individuals in the 1900s. The population has rebounded thanks to huge conservation efforts and now sits at somewhere above 800 individuals left in the world, in both the wild and captivity. The Wood Buffalo flock, which is the only official self-sustaining Whooping Crane flock, sits at about 550 individuals. Most of these birds winter in the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. The first birds we saw were a little far off, but still incredible to see Whooping Cranes at all, after all they have gone through as a species. Eventually, we were able to see a family group quite close, giving everyone the views they had been hoping for. We even got to hear their classic bugling calls! After a successful morning boat trip, we headed to lunch which acted as a hybrid birding stop as well, as after we parked we noticed a Clapper Rail foraging out in the open mud! There were also 6 species of Herons walking around in the mud, including Tricolored and Little Blue Herons and Reddish Egrets. After lunch, we drove north to the nearby town of Tivoli which is as far south as Boat-tailed Grackles get these days. It seems that Great-tailed Grackles have just out-competed them a little farther south, so they have retreated northward. Thankfully they are still thriving here in town and we were able to connect with a flock of these US endemics relatively easily. Heading back south on the highway, we quickly shouldered the van for our first looks at a couple gorgeous White-tailed Hawks, a real south Texas speciality! A little farther south, we stopped at a creek crossing hoping for some Seaside Sparrows. While there weren’t any sparrows around, we did get some fantastic looks at a couple Marsh Wrens and had our only Common Goldeneye for the tour. We ended the day along the Port Bay Road watching the shorebirds and waders coming in to roost for the evening. Here we had our first group of Sandhill Cranes, which we had missed in the NWR this morning, and in the saltmarsh here we were able to get great looks at a couple Sedge Wrens and a fabulous Seaside Sparrow!! Another very hard bird for the tour; this is about the only place we could expect to see one.
Day 3: Today we began our journey southward, heading towards the famous Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. After a quick ferry trip, our first stop of the morning was at the Leonabelle Turnbull Birding Centre where we hoped the longstaying American Flamingo would show itself. Unfortunately, it appeared that the Flamingo had skipped town the day before and it was nowhere in sight. There were plenty of other birds around however, with a lot of birds really close to the boardwalk hunkering down in the cold and wind. We had incredibly close and intimate views of Northern Shovelers, Green-winged Teals, American Avocets, Long-billed Dowitchers, Common Gallinules, and again Clapper Rails foraging out in the open, and even found a single Bonaparte’s Gull and our first Lincoln’s Sparrow. From here we continued southward along Mustang Island, stopping briefly to spot a pair of Aplomado Falcons hanging out on a nesting platform. This can be a tricky bird to spot down in the valley, so it was good that we were able to track these down before we headed any farther south! After leaving the falcons behind, we spent a while driving back and forth along the JFK Causeway hoping for some of the rarer plovers in the area. While the Piping Plovers were elsewhere today, we did get some really great views of Snowy Plovers foraging in the wrack line. After an earlier lunch, we headed south of town to some nearby ranchlands, first stopping again on the side of the highway to watch an incredible spectacle of Crested Caracaras and White-tailed Hawks following a plowing tractor. The raptors were feeding on whatever was being stirred up by the plows, and it was creating quite a large flock of birds! Nice too to see a couple younger White-tailed Hawks with their uniquely dark plumage. At the ranchlands proper, we drove down a dirt track hoping for some field birds along the edges. We had just that, with fabulous looks at a Burrowing Owl hunkered down in the wind and a Sprague’s Pipit right out our windows feeding in the short grassy weeds. From here, we made a quick stop at a roadside pond where the only new thing we saw was a Peregrine Falcon perched high up on a tower. We still had quite a ways to travel, so to keep us on schedule the next stop we made wasn’t until the Sarita Rest stop. Here, we had our first taste of the true “valley” birds like Green Jays, Black-crested Titmice, Harris’s Hawks, and a Golden-fronted Woodpecker. We didn’t have too much time to dillydally here however, as we had a date with some parrots to get to! The day ended with a spectacular showing of Amazons at the well known roost at Oliveira Park in Brownsville. We saw hundreds of Red-crowned Amazons, which have been well established in the area for years now. The next most common were the White-fronted Amazons, which have been slowly increasing in recent years and are now considered countable by the ABA, along with the couple Red-lored Amazons we saw. We also had very good views of some stunning Yellow-headed Amazons, however their populations are not deemed high enough to be countable at this time.
Day 4: Our first day in the valley! We spent the whole morning staking out the water features at Los Fresnos Nature Park hoping that the Tropical Parula that had been hanging around would come and visit. Unfortunately, that bird had other plans and never showed itself. We did get great looks at many of the other resident valley birds however, like Long-billed Thrasher, Clay-colored Thrush, Green Jays, Couch’s Kingbird, Olive Sparrows, Altamira Oriole, and White-tipped Dove. From here, in order to dodge the impending rain, we headed to the coast and South Padre Island to try for the newly split Mangrove Yellow Warbler. These birds are resident in the coastal mangroves of far southern Texas and were recently officially split as a separate species by the powers that be of bird taxonomy. Our first stop on South Padre was the beach next to a KOA, where some folks had been seeing a couple of young male Mangrove Yellow Warblers recently. Unfortunately, these birds were incredibly slippery and while I was able to glimpse one, they just never really popped into view for longer than a split second and left us all unsatisfied. Discouraged but not giving up hope, we went farther north on the island for lunch and a stop at the famous SPI Convention Center. Here they’ve built a long boardwalk through some mangroves and protected some great bird habitat along the bay. We first went over to the mudflats beside the convention center and picked up a few new shorebirds for us, including Marbled Godwit, the Piping Plovers we had missed earlier, Gull-billed Tern, and Black Skimmers. Walking the boardwalk, we hoped for the warbler, but unfortunately they were elsewhere today. We did find yet another Clapper Rail feeding out in the open (they really seemed to be everywhere on the coast this year), an incredibly friendly Western Cattle-Egret, and a couple of Pyrrhuloxias in the parking lot; strange birds to see out here on SPI! Our time was running out, and before giving up hope entirely we made one last ditch effort for Mangrove Yellow Warbler at the start of the Queen Isabella Causeway. And suddenly there it was! A young male in the trees right next to the van, sporting just a couple of colorful feathers right at the base of the bill. But that’s not the only individual we found there, after a couple of minutes of scanning deeper into the mangroves Kay spotted a bright and shiny full adult male with an entirely chestnut rufous head. What a glorious sight! I’m not even the least bit embarrassed to say that it gave me bird tears to see this bird, after putting in quite a lot of effort throughout the day to find one, to nail a bird as stunning as this one was really rewarding! Heading back towards Harlingen and our hotel, we made a quick stop at the Shrimp Basin Bridge to get a closer view of some Black Skimmers, and to San Benito where there had been an overwintering Limpkin. This species truly exploded its range in recent years, with Texas’s first record and breeding record occurring less than 10 years ago. Now, they are a regular bird in eastern Texas, and some years they even get down to the valley!
Day 5: Another day, another morning looking for a Tropical Parula at a water feature. This morning took us to the fantastic Resaca De La Palma State Park, situated just off the border of Mexico. Since our main goal was to watch the water feature for the Tropical Parula, we stationed ourselves behind the blinds and waited. While the Parula never showed (something we’d gotten used to at this point) there were still plenty of the typical valley birds we’d seen the previous morning visiting the feeders and water features. In fact, one of the first birds we noticed here was a large roving flock of Plain Chachalacas, one of my favorite birds of the valley. The northernmost member of the Cracid family that includes Guans and Curassows, they just feel so foreign as a bird when thinking of other typical US birds! They’re incredibly social and watching these big groups interact is always such a treat and something I look forward to every time I come to the valley. We also had our first looks at Inca Doves with their intricate scaled patterning. While there was a good group of warblers that came through the water feature a couple times while we were there, including Orange-crowned, Nashville, Yellow-rumped, and Wilson’s; the Parula was never with them. Before leaving, we decided to take a quick walk down one of the main trails, but the park was fairly quiet so we decided to head westward toward lunch. Our afternoon was spent at the famous Estero Llano Grande State Park, well known for its water birds and often has some roosting nocturnal species we’re otherwise unlikely to see. Our first stop here was in the back of the Tropical Zone where, with the help of the park volunteers, we were able to find a roosting Common Pauraque and an Eastern Screech-Owl! Pauraques are related to nighthawks and whip-poor-wills and are well known in the birding community for being expert camouflagers. In fact, even when we knew the exact location of the birds, and they were completely in the open, we still had a difficult time finding them! The Eastern Screech-Owls here are pretty unique as well with a new paper that just came out proposing to split them as a separate species: McCall’s Screech-Owl. Whether or not this will happen is yet to be seen, but it is something that has been on the radar for birders for decades now. Amongst the other new birds for us here were our first looks at the diminutive Least Grebe, a flock of White-faced Ibis, and the tiny Green Kingfisher. After a full afternoon of walking the trails and watching the hummingbird feeders in hopes for a Buff-bellied to show up, we headed towards Mission and our hotel. Our hotel was right in the middle of a massive Great-tailed Grackle roost, with tens of thousands of birds present. This area also has a Green Parakeet roost, and just before dinner we were able to spot a few sleeping in a palm tree in a nearby parking lot.
Day 6: The plan for this morning was to spend the whole morning birding around the Edinburg Scenic Wetlands looking for the long staying Crimson-collared Grosbeak and hopefully getting some different waterbirds. The first place we went in the park was the pond overlook, where we quickly found both Green and Ringed Kingfishers, getting close looks at a Green and distant but great views of a raucous Ringed Kingfisher. We also got significantly better looks at Least Grebes and our first Black-crowned Night Herons. As we were looking through the ducks and waders around the pond, a very nice man walked up to us and informed us that he had found the grosbeak! We quickly walked over to the olive tree he had found it in, and sure enough she was still there! This is often a very shy and very challenging bird to see well, which is why I had devoted an entire morning to it, and here she was at eye level not 20 feet from us! We were in and out of there in 45 minutes! A bit perplexed with what we should do, I decided we could take a late morning walk through Bentsen-Rio Grande State Park and maybe hope for some raptors getting up to soar. Once we got to the park, we took a quick detour to see a continuing Purple Gallinule hiding in the tall grasses. From there we walked down the loop road to the resaca overlook where we spotted some distant Stilt Sandpipers, Green Kingfishers, Osprey, and some assorted ducks. In the lawn around us were Wild Turkeys and American Pipits. We took a long and warm walk down to the Hawk tower where we spent the better part of an hour hoping for maybe a Hook-billed Kite to decide to fly over. Of course, this wouldn’t happen, but we did see some Hook-billed Kite food with some snail shells! At least the Gray Hawks put on a good show while we were there. Thankfully, by the time we made it down off the tower the shuttle was there waiting for us and we were saved having to take the long walk back to the parking lot. After a late lunch, we decided to spend the rest of the afternoon at the National Butterfly Center hoping for Audubon’s Oriole and maybe some butterfly action. While the oriole didn’t show, the feeders were a spectacular show giving some of our best looks at Plain Chachalaca, Long-billed Thrasher, Green Jays, Black-crested Titmice, Inca Dove, and our first Common Ground Dove. Before dinner, some of us decided to try for Lilac-crowned Amazon at the McAllen roost, but we didn’t see anything!
Day 7: Today was a day full of promise and expectation. We had been talking about it since day one of the tour. It seemed like every bird that there was ever a question of “are we going to see xyz” I almost always said that we’d see it on the ranch. Well today, we were finally visiting the Santa Margarita Ranch. This place used to be a must stop whenever anyone came to the valley, but gradually fell out of fashion. Now though, with regular rarities and a few exclusive birds, the ranch is back on the agenda and today was the day! We had an exceptionally early morning and a long drive to get there, but it was all worth it. When we arrived at the ranch, we met our local guide Simon right alongside the border wall, which runs through the property. From here, we actually went through a gate and over to the other side! Welcome to Mexico (kidding)! We walked a short way through the thornscrub hearing Black-throated Sparrows as they began to wake up and greet the morning sun. The rest of the morning was spent at an incredible viewpoint overlooking a large section of the Rio Grande and actual Mexico as we hoped for some of the rarer local birds and maybe some migrants. On the river was a large squadron of ducks, including our first real Mallard (a rarity down here) and a couple of pure enough looking Mexican Ducks. We pretty quickly also got all three kingfishers from the overlook, with spectacular views of a couple pairs of Ringed Kingfishers actively flying up and down the river, and sometimes perching in the close trees! Here we also had our first Chihuahuan Ravens, Rock Wrens, Zone-tailed Hawk, Audubon’s Orioles, and our first views of Verdin. Soon we heard the faint calls of a Morelet’s Seedeater from below us in the cane, and a few lucky people even spotted it. This is the only true tanager that is native to the US, and only just hits the border of Texas. It was here too that we also got our first looks at one of the stars of the ranch and the reason so many people go there now, a family of Brown Jays. Brown Jays used to be a rare but regular breeding bird in South Texas, but slowly they started vanishing with the last sighting sometime around 2006. The Jays were rediscovered here a few years ago, and have been pretty reliable ever since! After spending a few hours here at the overlook, we walked back to the van and drove down to a different part of the ranch where we’d walk into the early afternoon. On our drive, we stopped for a large covey of Scaled Quail on the road and even spotted a couple of Greater Roadrunners! Once we got to the border wall again, we crossed through and walked through a nice riparian zone down to an area where the ranch has some feeders set up. Here the Brown Jays were waiting for us and pretty quickly started taking the food that Simon was putting out. On top of all the more regular valley feeder birds, the ranch feeders also attract a covey of Northern Bobwhite and the Audubon’s Orioles we had up at the overlook. The best feeder bird however was a bird that never actually came down to the feeders. Attracted to the area by all the bird commotion was a gorgeous female Rose-throated Becard, which ended up being Jim’s 700th ABA Bird! What a great milestone, congrats to Jim! After celebrating, we took a short walk through the trees to get a look at the river where we found a Song Sparrow, quite the rarity for the valley but one that has overwintered here in the past. By now it was getting quite late, and we had to say goodbye to the ranch. Overall, we logged 90 species on the Texas side of the ranch, and viewed nearly 70 species across the national border into Mexico. We decided to take an easy afternoon after such a long and early morning, taking a picnic lunch down to the Salineño Preserve. While waiting for our lunch to be made, we spotted a Cactus Wren which gave us some good scope views! While there was nothing new for us at Salineño, it is such a lovely place to stop and have a picnic, and they did have a couple of roosting Eastern Screech-Owls that were much easier to see than the one at Estero! After lunch, we took the long drive back to the hotel and took the rest of the day off.
Day 8: Our final full day of birding was a day to try and clean up anything we hadn’t seen yet. Right away in the morning was an attempt to see Cassin’s Sparrows. The spot they had been seen from was right along a busy highway, which didn’t excite me too much, but once we got out of the car there was indeed a pair of Cassin’s Sparrows calling out in the shrubby grasslands. We got great scope views of them perched on a barbed wire fence. We decided to keep driving up the road to see what else was around, and ended up finding some more sparrows once the highway ended and turned to a nice and quiet dirt road. Here we had more Cassin’s Sparrows, Grasshopper Sparrow, Lark Sparrow, White-crowned Sparrow, Savannah Sparrow, and another Greater Roadrunner! We went from having almost no sparrows on the whole trip to having most of them in a single morning. The next stop was thanks to a great tip from Simon yesterday, his backyard! We had been struggling to find a Buff-bellied Hummingbird anywhere in south Texas, but thankfully Simon had at least 2 that visited his feeder regularly. And sure enough, as soon as we got into his backyard one was sitting on the feeder! A major sigh of relief for me! From here, we took an early lunch and then spent the early afternoon at Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge where we finally tracked down some Cave Swallows, Cinnamon Teal, and a Vermilion Flycatcher. We had to cut our afternoon birding here short however, as it was back to the ranch for us! Yes, one visit to Santa Margarita isn’t enough with this time a night outing planned. We took a picnic dinner out to the ranch border and waited for it to get dark. In the fading light, we walked back out to the feeder area and once again saw the family of Brown Jays, and this time picked up the Red-naped Sapsucker we had missed when we were there yesterday morning! As night fell we began to listen for our target, but tonight was a cold one and she was silent for a long time. Even when Simon and Zach started using playback, she remained silent. But eventually, we heard her and then eventually even saw her quite well! This was the now famous Mottled Owl of Santa Margarita Ranch, the first chaseable and first true living record for the United States. She has taken up residency at the ranch for the past few years, and thousands of people over the years have seen her. It turned into a really late and cold evening, but what a fantastic closer to our birding here in south Texas!
Day 9: After a nice long rest, we had a celebratory final breakfast at the best breakfast place in town, the Denny’s down the street from our hotel. From there, we packed up the van one last time and drove northward back to Corpus Christi. The drive was mostly uneventful, except for showing some Border Patrol Agents some Northern Bobwhite. Other birds seen on the drive back were Cassin’s Sparrow, Greater Roadrunner, and Sandhill Cranes.
You can see my complete trip report on eBird at this link: https://ebird.org/tripreport/499475
You can download a combined PDF of this page and the eBird report at this link: https://fieldguides.com/triplists/rgr26TRIPLIST.pdf
-- Alex