Big Bend Birding

The Rio Grand River near our campsite

Our campsite has a lot of trees and birds. There is quite a lot of racket The park has over 450 species of birds that either live here or migrate through the park, the most of any National Park. So we started the day appropriately with a ranger guide birding. For a beginner, I found it quite interesting how one approaches identifying a bird. Start with the size and shape of the bird, and then observe the shape of the beak – this will generally get you to the right high level classification. Now you need to pay attention to the patterns on the head, wings, throat, breast, and tail. The shape of the wings, and tail can also be a good clue, especially if all you can see is the silhouette of the bird. With the help of a field guide, we identified the white winged dove (very common), turkey vultures, common raven, mockingbird, and a number of woodpeckers and song birds. An interesting and hot morning, the temperature was already about 98 degrees by 11:30.
In the afternoon, we headed for Chisos basin. While most of the park is desert, here is an island of mountain peaks. Thus many species like mountain lions and black bear are only found here. We had a gorgeous view through the windows from the basin, where you see the desert to the Northwest. Then we took a hike up the Lost Mine Trail, which gives you a view of Lost Mine Mountain. Temperatures were about 10 degrees cooler than down below. The evening finished with a program on Raptors.