Getting tired of the neverending cold, snow, and lack of bird diversity, and also figuring I would need a break (and reward) after my oral PhD examination, I decided to get the hell out of Laramie and travel someplace "relatively" cheap, birdy, and with the prospect of lifers.
I debated between 3 different locations, SE Arizona (still missing a few residents, plus it's been a good year for Rufous-backed Robin), Coastal Texas (missing Whooping Crane and many of the wintering sparrows), or the Texas Lower valley (again, missing a few random birds). Ultimately, I decided on the frankly insane idea of covering both the latter two options in what would be 3.5 days of birding, as I had to be back in Wyoming for a Friday morning class, and travel in and out of Laramie is a bitch in winter
My tentative schedule was the following
Fly into Houston and overnight on the 27th, then fly down into Corpus Christi on the 28th (in the future I would have probably just driven south from Houston).
Spend the afternoon of the 28th and morning of March 1 in Port Aransas, then Drive down to Choke Canyon State Park for overnight
Morning of the 2nd birding Choke Canyon then heading south, overnighting in Falcon State Park.
Most of 3rd birding the McAllen area, on the way back to Corpus Christi.
I intentionally kept my schedule rather loose in order to better twitch any new Mexican vagrants that might pop up (no new vagrants did). As it was, I ended up substantially changing this as I went, simply because of time. In addition, I had originally planned to go on a Whooping Crane boat tour, however right before the trip I found out the website was inaccurate, and that their would be no boat leaving Port Aransas on the morning I was there.
So, starting my trip I flew down to Denver and then Houston with little problems on Southwest Airlines. Unfortunately, the later leg of my trip was delayed, which meant that I got into Houston late and was not able to get a free shuttle to the Baymont Hotel I was staying at. After paying 10 bucks to a rather rude Taxi, I went straight to bed and woke up the following morning to my first Texas birds, most interestingly White-throated Sparrows and Northern Mockingbirds. There were no hiccups on my morning flight, and I soon was picking up my Thrifty rental car and heading to Mustang Island State Park, the location I was camping for tonight.
By the way, owning a 95 honda civic, one of the greatest joys on this trip was simply driving a car that wasn't a piece of crap. Ahhh...the joy of a silent, air-conditioned vehicle with Sirius Radio.
At any rate, I arrived at Mustang Island to find ominous dark clouds and incredibly strong winds. I also discovered that camping area I had reserved really wasn't so much a camping area as it was a glorified parking lot. UGH. I had primarily picked the spot as Sedge Wrens and LeConte's Sparrows were possible here, and most importantly so were Gulf Coast Kangaroo Rats and Spotted Ground Squirrels. While there was practically a ground squirrel city adjacent to my camp, I saw no sign of this species at all. I assume the horrible weather kept them in their burrows.
Birding, not surprisingly with all the wind, was horrible. The nearby beach produced roosting flocks of Laughing and Ring-billed Gulls as well as large numbers of Royal Tern. Amidst these birds were also several Herring Gulls and a lone Gull-billed Tern. There really wasn't a decent trail for hiking at all in the park, so I decided to head into Port Aransas for supplies as well as visit the Leonobelle Turner Birding Center, which was a rather nice marsh boardwalk. On the way, Mottled Ducks were common in the roadside ditches
The weather of course was crap...even common birds such as Yellow-rumped Warblers were a nightmare to locate. The ducks and other water birds were a little less horrible, and I was able to acquire American Coots, Blue-winged and Green-winged Teal, Northern Pintail, and Northern Shoveler. A pretty Tricolored Heron fed close to the walkway, and the end of the boardwalk had roosting Brown Pelicans. I flipped some debris hoping to pull out a frog or skink, but no luck. I did however see a truly ancient Red-eared Slider however. Herps would be completely abyssmal on this trip, likely due to influx of cold weather.
After that I retired to my campground, to have a dinner of PB&J (which was my main dietary item for most of this trip), and attempted a little dusk birding. I managed to flush a few interesting brown jobs at twilight, but the lighting was horrible and most of the time they immediately went to ground, so they remained unidentified. I then did about an hour of night-hiking around the park and adjacent highway, hoping for maybe a Kangaroo Rat or more likely some frogs. While a few frogs were calling, they were all deep within marshy and boggy locals, and I went to bed with nada.