Sunday morning was spent at the Bentsen-Rio Grande State Park. We arrived early (it was only two miles down the road from the Americana RV Park) and we wandered around the gardens at the visitor center while waiting for it to open. We saw several Clay-colored Thrushes, which look like brown Robins and a new bird, a Black Phoebe.
We had come early to partake in the park's Sunday morning bird walk. It is ranger-led, but was a bit less interesting than the one at Santa Ana. Bentsen-Rio Grande is much more developed than the wildlife refuge and has many feeder stations and blinds, so the walk was basically from feeder to feeder. The first stop was at a bridge over a canal, looking for kingfishers. We didn't see any, but a flock of Cave Swallows came out from under the bridge as we passed by. The weather didn't co-operate much. About 15 minutes into the walk, a front moved through, dropping the temperature, with a strong wind and a bit of rain.
The birds we saw were mostly the same as Saturday, Green Jays, Altimira Orioles, Great Kiscadees, Plain Chachalacas and lots of Red-wing Blackbirds. We looked for a Louisiana Waterthrush that had been seen at a water feature, but it didn't make an appearance for us.
After the walk broke up, we caught a ride on one of the trams than go around the park and went out to the hawk watch tower. Like Santa Ana, there is a spring hawk watch going on. We spent the rest of the morning looking for and seeing hawks. The numbers weren't as great as the Acadia hawk watch we went to last year, but the variety was good...and we saw some new birds, a White-tailed Hawk and a White-tailed Kite as a well as a trio of Scissor-tailed Flycatchers that flew right past us.
The hawk watch ended at noon and we returned to Speedy for lunch, taking about an hour to walk back, checking the various feeders and blinds along the way. It was actually a pretty good day as we saw 39 species.
After lunch, we decided to head back towards Aransas. There is a program called the Texas Coastal Birding Trail which describes a series of loops through birding sites. We decided to follow the trail north from Bentsen then to the coast at Baffin Bay stopping at a county park there. It was sort of a bust.
The first site on the trail was a section of road between the towns of Falffurias and Riviera called Hawk Alley. Migrating hawks supposedly stop along road, perching on the poles and wires, hunting in the fields. Either we were too early, or the high winds were keeping them in the trees. In any case, we saw no hawks.
The second was a small Audubon reserve along the highway at Riviera. Even following the directions and making two passes along busy US 77, the main road to Corpus Christi, we never found it. The final stop was the county park at Baffin Bay, where there was a birding trail along the coast. When we arrived, there was lots of wind and only a few gulls.
Since there wasn't much to see, we decided on Plan B—go back to US 77 and maybe make it back to Aransas. Just outside of Kingsville, there was a massive traffic jam, but we turned down a side road that led across country, a much quieter route that led to Corpus Christi. By the time we got there, it was getting towards sunset...time for Plan C.
We decided to drive across Corpus Christi and spend the night at Padre Island National Seashore. We pulled into the free Bird Island Basin campground just as the sun was setting. We tucked Speedy into a wide spot between a small travel trailer and a big Class A RV in the line of RVs along the shore. We were backed directly onto the beach overlooking Laguna Madre with the sun setting over the lagoon in back of us and the full moon rising in front of us. There was a lull in the wind and a Great Blue Heron was silhouetted by the sunset sky and shining lagoon.
It was lovely until about a half hour later when the Class A started up its generator. Of the 20 or so RVs in the campground, only the one next to us was running a generator. We have scars from our first trip to Padre Island where the RV next to us that ran a loud generator from 7am to 11pm with its exhaust right next to us. We moved over to the quiet day use parking lot.
Then the wind returned. It blew over 30 mph and Speedy was rocking and rolling like mad. It sounded like we were in a wind tunnel. At about 10pm, I checked the rest of the campground and the Class has stopped its generator. We moved back into the shadow of that behemoth and spent a quiet night. We were ready to leave when it started the generator back up in the morning.
After a stop at the visitor center, we drove over to Port Aransas, stopping at Coffee Waves for a mid-morning brew and latte, then on to the Leonabelle Turnbull Birding Center for a look. It is still quite populated with duck, shorebirds and herons—Blue and Green-winged Teals, Ruddy and Black-bellied Whistling Ducks, Coots and Common Gallinules, Black-necked Stilts and Dowitchers, Black-crowned and, the highlight, Yellow-crowned Night Herons were all in attendance. After about an hour of looking at birds practically at arms-length, we moved on to Rockport for lunch and our weekly shopping.
No trip in Speedy would be complete without something wearing out. We'd thought that the brake line failure was this trip's event. We were wrong. Something started squeaking loudly as we approached Rockport on the rather rough road along the shore. When we stopped for lunch, I looked underneath to try to find the source of the squeak. There was oil dripping from the driver's side front shock. Speedy has an appointment for new shocks next Monday. We've driven 60,000 miles since the last replacement. Monroe has a lifetime warranty on their shocks, but claims must be submitted by the installer, accompanied by a copy of the original purchase invoice and the failed parts. Needless to say, that is in Massachusetts. Oh well...60,000 miles isn't bad considering the load we carry.
After lunch and grocery shopping, Speedy was quiet again, as the shocks had cooled down. We got most of the way back to the refuge before the squeak returned, but it must be fixed. We were back in time for dinner and our long weekend to South Texas was over.
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