Retirement Adventure Has Gone To The Birds!

Anita and I are nature and outdoor enthusiasts (especially Steve) with birding being one of the hobbies. Steve has been watching birds since taking an Ornithology class at Iowa State. In Southern Texas during the winter months, many birds from the northern US and Canada spend their winters here in addition to some resident species only seen in Mexico and near the Rio Grande River. While we were having new tires mounted on our Dodge Ram, we thumbed through some Texas magazines including an advertisement for a birding festival in Laredo, TX which borders Mexico on the Rio Grande River. We spent two nights at the festival host hotel downtown which overlooked a Mexico Border Crossing. The Posada Hotel dated to 1830 and included the capital building of Texas for 384 days. We made reservations to go with a professional bird guide for one day which started at 5:30 am and ended at 3:30 pm. Anita and I saw many unique, rare and unusual birds for the first time which included the following: Road runners, Pyrrhuloxia, Green parakeet, Ringed kingfisher, Chachalaca, Caracara, Great kiskadee, Green jay, Golden fronted woodpecker, Mountain bluebird, Winter wren, Long-billed thrasher, Lincoln’s sparrow and Altamira oriole just to name a few of them! Pictures of a few of them using a cell phone are below:

Green jay and Golden fronted woodpecker

Chachalaca (about the size of a large chicken) we saw 4

Great kiskadee

Altamira oriole

Green parakeets

Whooping cranes (photo taken at Rockport north of Corpus Christi)

Caracara