In order to escape the cold (and more importantly the low diversity of bird life present), I decided to take a quick trip down to South Texas. Texas has recently hosted a pretty good string of rarities, including Tropical Parula, multiple Little Gulls, multiple Blue Buntings, White-throated Thrush, Crimson-collared Grosbeak, and two real megas, Yellow-faced Grassquit and Black-vented Oriole. I had 2.5 days to bird, and pretty much made an effort at each bird. A Masked Duck had also been reported, but it was on private property and required special arrangements to see, so I didn't bother to make and effort.
The Rio Grande Valley, not to mention the lower coast, really needs a week to do properly. Because of my time constraint this means I missed out on some easy to see birds and so my trip list was fairly modest (~100 species). It also meant that I really wasn't able to do much leisurely birding; for the most part I spent a lot of time staking out birds.
I flew into Harlingen Friday evening, after a day of travel which began at 2:30 in the morning and did not find me at my hotel until 8:00 pm. By the way, South Texas has a pretty abyssmal road signage, necessitating quite a bit of annoyance and backtracking.
Saturday
I headed north at around 5:30 a.m., on a 6 hour roundtrip to Port Aransas and Goose Island State Park. I managed to reach the Port Aransas jetty at around 9:00 am, and managed to get on the 2 Little Gulls within the tern/gull flock in less than a half hour. There was lots of human traffic and the gull flock was frequently disturbed, although thankfully they allowed close approach on foot. Also of interest in the flock was at least 1 Common Tern. Little Gull was a quasi nemesis bird for me, missing it on several previous trips, so it was a great way to start off the trip list