The Trip
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Summary

Texas is surprisingly rich in species and extremely exiting in birding, especially during spring migration. We experienced a two week trip in the middle of spring migration, had a great time birding and gained excellent results. Our main target was witnessing the spring migration so a lot of time was spent in main migrant traps on the upper coast. But there was more: the annual Attwater Prairie Chicken Festival, the Texas inland specialties, the rugged far west and of course the touch of Mexican birds crossing the border in the Lower Rio Grande Valley.
Our main route was like most routes of visiting birders with the exception of visiting the far west (Davis Mountains and Big Bend), giving us a good bunch of western and local specialties. It is quite a drive but definitely worth it.

We found 325 species in just 14 days. We got lucky several times, including a small fallout in our first week, resulting in a total of 35 species of warbler. The ease with which you can find over 100 species in a single day surprised us. Our best day was just over 150 species and even that is peanuts compared to the US big day record of 260 species, set in Texas during our presence - we even had the privilige to meet the team in Bentsen hours before their trip started! We have to admit that the scenery along the Texas coast is not the most inspiring but the west definitely made up for that.

It was an inspiring and exciting time with exceptionally good birds in a very short time frame. We drove over 5000 kilometers and had about 5 liters of milkshakes each. We did dip several targets of the area (including Masked Duck, Whooping Crane, Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl, Brown Jay, Tamaulipas Crow, Tropical Parula, Audubon’s Oriole) but most were mere choices not to go chase them.

Highlights

· Blackburnian Warbler was the most charming of all warblers.
· But after that it is hard to choose from Cerulean, Magnolia, Chestnut-sided and Bay-breasted.
· Scissor-tailed Flycatcher made it to bird of the trip for its beauty and omnipresence.
· Black Bear in the Chisos Mountains and Bobcat in Bentsen-Rio Grande were the mammal highlights.
· Colima Warbler and Painted Redstart in Chisos Mountains and the locally even more surprising Anna’s Hummingbird made the strenuous hike up Boot Canyon worthwhile.
· The fallout in the first week of our trip accounted for more luck than we could have possibly hoped for.

Some of the photographic highlights (don't forget to check the slideshows!):

Dips

· Golden-winged Warbler was the biggest dip of all. Seen at several spots around us but never by us. We even tried to twitch one, but in vain.
· Canada Warbler, we were close (say 20 feet) but on the wrong side of the bush.
· Hardly possible to call it a dip but we hoped to experience a bit of the massive raptor migration. We were too late in the season.

Strategy

We planned our two week trip in the best time we could find. Main goal was the spring migration but we also wanted our visit to coincide with the Attwater Prairie Chicken festival during the second week of April. This resulted in us being a bit too early for the migration peak (being the last week of April) and too late for the raptor migration (March). Well, you can’t have it all.
The far west is quite a drive but both the specialties (most notably Colima Warbler) and the western species with a limited range in Texas (for example Acorn Woodpecker) were too tempting to skip. And the trip was not too bad.

A lot of birding information can be found from the Texas Wildlife Trails website but these maps are not as useful for targeting specific species. There's a whole bunch of books availlable but most are rather old (> 10 years) so check for the newest books and prints of existing books.

Itinerary
For easy reference we added the links to the Texas Coastal birding trails and other relevant links in the day by day section.

10-04: Sabine Woods, Willows Pond, Sea Rim State Park, Boy Scout Woods, Bolivar Peninsula, 1st street
11-04: Sabine Woods, Willows Pond, Boy Scout Woods, Bolivar Peninsula, Smith Oaks
12-04: Anahuac Rail Walk, Boy Scout Woods, 1st street, Bolivar Flats, Gavelston, Attwater
13-04: Attwater Prairie Chicken Festival, Lost Maples State Natural Area
14-04: Lost Maples State Park, Kerr Wildlife Management Area, Lake Balmorhea, Fort Davis
15-04: Davis Mountains, Big Bend (Chisos Mountains)
16-04: Chisos Mountains, Boot Spring Canyon
17-04: Big Bend -> Falcon, Falcon State Park, Salineno
18-04: Falcon County Park, Falcon State Park, Salineno, Bentsen-Rio Grande State Park
19-04: Bentsen-Rio Grande State Park
20-04: Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, Highway 100, South Padre Island (Convention centre), Frontera Audubon thickets
21-04: Frontera Audubon Thickets, Gavelston
22-04: Gavelston, Bolivar Flats, 1st street, Boy Scout Woods, Anahuac Wildlife refuge, Sabine Woods
23-04: Sabine Woods

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