SOUTH PADRE ISLAND AND LAGUNA ATASCOSA NWA--February 4, 2013

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Monday, February 4th. Motel 6 on South Padre Island

Temperature is 68 degrees at 8:20 with a light misty rain falling and dark rain clouds overhead.

Had breakfast first thing at a nearby Mc Donald's. With some sort of sign ordinance in this community, it was hard to spot the "golden arches" as they were on the ground, instead of their usual place, in the air. Noticed many hotels/motels signs were also hard to find. The island is particularly narrow at this end and makes everything squishy and on top of one another.

Drove north for a little ways on P100 to the parking lot of the Convention Center. When we were at the King Ranch, the guide, when she heard we were heading in this direction, told us there was a rare 6" Ferruginous Pygmy Owl roosting near this Center. When we got there, we had no clue where the bird was until we saw signs posted to "stay off the grass" and "no standing on a wall" around a tangled copse, in the middle of a landscaped island, made up of native brush and trees.

We spent quite a bit of time peering into this tangle of limbs, but saw nothing. If he was indeed in there, he was very well hidden. Nearby, a butterfly garden was in full bloom, with hundreds of butterflies flitting around. While taking photos of the butterflies, we saw a couple arrive at a spot where we had been staring and he started setting up his camera equipment. Of course, we asked him where the owl was sleeping. He kindly pointed him out, but he was still so hidden, you could only see a black blob with some breast feathers through my binoculars, even though he wasn't more than 4 feet right across from us.

From there, we walked to the Laguna Madre Nature Trail boardwalk that extends from the parking lot of the Convention Center to the Laguna Madre over a freshwater marsh. This marsh we learned from the birding map is perhaps the best spot in the U.S. to see all of the regularly occurring rails. By this time, a number of birders were on the extensive boardwalk, but no one spotted any rails that morning. We did see a sora, some grebes, coots, marsh hens, a variety of ducks, an alligator, and a number of sunning turtles.

Valerie got a good picture of the northern pintail duck. Our only "new" find was an American Bittern slowing walking out of some reeds and then very quickly disappearing. Tired of walking, we returned to Rosie and headed back through the community of South Pdre Island.

This southernmost tip of Padre Island (no road runs the length) was settled by the Spanish and the first land grant was given to the grandfather of Padre José Nicolás Ballí (c.1770-1829), who served as collector of finances for all the churches in the Rio Grande Valley. He surveyed the land, set up a ranch and settlement here and it is this man for whom the island is named.

We crossed the Queen Isabella Causeway to the town of Port Isabel. Drove by the historic lighthouse and continued on highway 100 west to a shopping center where we had seen a hair cutting place the previous night. Both got cuts shorter than usual as we had, had it, with the hair in our eyes. Got gas at $3.29 a gal and took 22.35 gals.

Continued on down the road to where it intersected with FM 510 and turned north going past the airport toward the Laguna Atascosa NWR. This last turn brought us onto a "no-name-that-we-could-find road” that was a terrible pot-holed, bumpy, rough, rough road. Worse than any road we were on in Alaska.

Laguna Atascosa NWR "comprises nearly 90,000 acres of coastal tamaulipan brush, grasslands, lomas, and tidal flats" (quote from the trail map). I have no idea what the all the descriptive terms mean, but the vegetation and environment looks the same as we have seen since we got into this southern part of Texas.



Stopped at the visitor's center and looked around. To our great surprise, we discovered that the refuge is home to the ocelot. A small secretive cat that has been hunted years (until regulations) for coats and pets. Fewer than 30 ocelots live within the refuge with only about 50 total in south Texas. The area is all that remains of their historic range that once included all of Texas and the states of Arizona, Arkansas, and Louisiana. I bought a T-shirt-- of course with birds and not cats printed on it.

We got a map of a 15-mile loop around a small area of the refuge that borders the Laguna Madre and slowly drove it. Here, it was very evident, like on the King Ranch, the ravages of the persistent drought conditions. The lakes and wetlands were bone dry and just sandy depressions. Saw osprey, red egrets, and lots of northern harriers; no ocelots, but several signs posted where they frequently cross the park road in their nocturnal wanderings.



Drove south out of the Refuge on the road in terrible condition to 510 and then due west through fields after fallow fields to FM 2925 where we again turned north. There are no through roads nor camping allowed in the refuge, so in order to get to a tiny part of it where camping is allowed, owned by the county and operated as a park, you have to circle way out and around.

Went through the long strung out community of ArroyoCity, which was on one side of the road to take advantage of the banks of the Arroyo Colorado, and into AdolphThomas,Jr.CountyPark. $30 per night with full hook-ups and no discounts for being seniors.

Parked with Rosie's nose to the water and watched the antics of pelicans and other birds out her front windows—a lot of them appeared to be fishing as the dive-bombed into the water. At dusk, we were startled to see a huge barge that took up the whole width of the arroyo side to side, go gliding by. The pelicans loved it as they dove after fish that the barge churned up.

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