Texas Trip :: Day 2 – Santa Ana NWR

When we were getting ready for our trip, I looked to a few resources to find out where we should focus our efforts since we would only have 5 days (WAY too few, it turns out). My ADD has a way of becoming a bit OCD-ish in these situations as I try to figure out how we can go everywhere and try to plan it out. So, I deliberately DIDN’T do that this time. Instead – much to the suprise and pleasure of my wife – I took a tact to just let it ride, and figure out where we were going each morning (or the night before).

But we still needed to know where to look. She bought me a book (Birder’s Guide to Texas) for Xmas which didn’t seem that great at first but actually turned out to be a pretty valuable resource although it was a bit dated. My friend Joe had given me several suggestions, as well. Lastly, I joined the Texas Rare Birds listserv and sent out a question to the list about what the ‘can’t miss’ places were – to an enthusiastic and helpful response. Once we had that information, we had our short list and some “B” places if we felt like a less aggressive day.

Nearly at the top of every list – including Joe’s – was Santa Ana NWR, one of the premier birding spots in the country, let alone Texas. I was pretty excited to check it out; in fact, in many ways it was THE place I wanted to go most (followed closely by Sabal Palm Audubon Center). Located south of McAllen, TX, the NWR provides a multitude of habitats including wetlands, forest, desert scrub and more. Nearly 600 species of birds have been seen there at some time – an amazing total.

No Such Luck

Unfortunately, despite all of the praise and great references, it turned out to be the most disappointing stop on our trip. I have to admit that we didn’t pick the best of days to go – it was extremely windy, making it tough to see any birds that might be in the trees, which is the main habitat we hiked through. Also, Shari had a major sugar low while we were out, cutting short the trip – which would have probably been already shortened by her 2nd day of lugging around 15 pounds of camera, teleconverter, lens and flash.
The park itself is great, with some beautiful trails and terrain. But for much of our hike, the birds were playing hide-and-seek; in all, we saw far more lizards, butterflies and dragonflies than birds. But that wasn’t exactly a bad thing, although a 300mm lens isn’t the best one for shooting small, quick creatures, to Shari’s chagrin. Still, the day had some highlights. We met a bunch of really nice people, including those at the visitor center and other hikers as we were heading in and out.

If we were disappointed overall with the park, I have to say that one element was incredible – seeing a pair of mating Harris’ Hawks just above us when we sat to have a snack. It was something to see and something that not many people will. We also got the chance to see a Clay-colored Robin, which is a pretty cool variation on the common American Robin we have at home.

Unfortunately, the weather – chilly and windy – conspired against us and we saw very few birds there. So, we did what seemed like the only sensible alternative – started looking at butterflies, dragonflies and reptiles. And it was quite a place to find them – we saw a bunch of them as we walked toward, through and past the butterfly gardens, particularly on the grassy paths leading out to the ponds.

While hiking along the paths, we saw a lot of smaller butterflies that we couldn’t get a bead on, as well as a few lizards (Western fence lizard, rose-bellied lizard). Then, as we approached the butterfly garden, we got to see some very cool butterflies: a Zebra, a Brown Long-Tailed Skipper and a Giant Swallowtail. In the butterfly garden itself, there were a bunch more that we never really got to ID, as well as a Black-chinned hummingbird. After we passed the garden, we found a bunch more plus some really awesome dragonflies – pictures eventually, when I have time to get to them.

After a bit, Shari was exhausted from lugging that lens, and we were talking about what we wanted to do next. I asked for 5 minutes to check out another butterfly garden near the entrance, and she decided to join me. It was a BONANZA of butterflies, including at least 10 new ones (see list below), as well as others I still haven’t ID’d yet. A 5-minute quick look ended up being almost 45 minutes of shooting both normal and macro to get all of the cool butterflies.

Ironically, a little over 2 years ago, I was making fun of my friend Joe for being into butterflies. Now, I’m into them, too – partly for the challenge of ID’ing them, and partially because in the heat of summer the birds dry up but the butterflies are still around. Same thing happened with the dragonflies – during the ‘dry season’ for the butterflies, the dragonflies are in full force, giving me something else to take pictures of. And Santa Ana supplied both in quantity when the birds weren’t around – so much so that Shari wants to go back down in October – because she read that you can see 160+ species of butterfly in ONE DAY. We’ll see…

Bird Tally

SANTA ANA NWR (link)