Today was our last day birding Texas. Once again, we started out at the Convention Center and were lucky enough to have some super birder point out a PRAIRIE WARBLER. This guy is a bird photographer, and he told us this was the worst season for birding Texas in the last 10 to 15 years. Dry dry dry. (He’s the one who came up with the name “Laguna del Morte,” which I appropriated for a previous post.) His recommendation: Arizona. So we’ve added to our list, and we shall see. Driving out, we once again took old Port Isabel Road and saw a CASSIN’S SPARROW and BEWICK’S WREN. Then onward to today’s main event, the Santa Ann NWR.

Santa Ana was pretty far away, but the good news (satiric comment follows) was that it was away from Chicago, so it would only help to make the return trip that much more hellish. And speaking of hell, the weather at Santa Ana was, well, I won’t insult your intelligence. As we drove into the refuge, Little Miss I-just-saw-a-lifer-and-you-missed-it caught sight of a GROOVE-BILLED ANI as it dropped into a field. With that monster bill, it’s hard to miss unless you’re me.

Walking around the refuge, we saw only two new birds: some STILT SANDPIPERS and a CINNAMON TEAL. We ran into another super birder photographer, this one a young-ish guy who recently served on search team for the ivory-billed woodpecker. He wasn’t allowed to share anything with us, though, because he had signed a non-disclosure agreement. However, he did help us find a NORTHERN/TROPICAL PARULA hybrid that was lurking about the place. Hybrids — huh! — what are they good for? Sure, it was nice to see it, but we can’t count it, even if I did put its name in all caps.

Thus ended our birding trip to Texas. We still had to drive 1200 miles (!) to Chicago, and it took us a day longer than we planned. If we had stuck to my original itinerary and spent our last day near Houston we would have been fine, but someone (Pole) convinced me we could save time by by starting at the bottom of Texas and sticking to interstates. Aargh. The one good thing about the new route was that by following the Rio Grande toward Laredo, we got stuck in the March for Jesus parade in Rio Grande City. A bizarre experience that cheered me up mightily after our heroic navigator informed me how profoundly we were hosed.

To sum it up, though we weren’t crazy about Texas — specifically the coast and the Rio Grande Valley — we were very glad we came. Texans are friendly and helpful, and the birding was extraordinary. We saw 121 new birds for Little Year, more than doubling our count. Pole saw 81 lifers, and I saw 77. A great trip, and I’m sure we’ll come back again to get the ones we missed. (Especially the ones I missed and Pole didn’t, damn her.)