Day 6, Scissor-tailed Flycatcher, Hawk Alley, South Texas

On Day 6 of our birding holiday in South Texas, 24 March 2019, we left our hotel in Kingsville, South Texas, and started our drive to Mission. Shortly after leaving Kingsville, we stopped at a gas station. On the next stretch of our drive, we were lucky enough to see several bird species, including a Golden-fronted Woodpecker - we had much better views of this species later in the day - Hooded Oriole, Red-tailed Hawk, Crested Caracara, Harris's Hawk, Pyrrhuloxia male (looks similar to a Cardinal) and a spectacular Scissor-tailed Flycatcher.

We had a long drive south towards Mission, with only a couple of drive-by photos taken en route (of a strangely shaped building). Eventually, we reached our next planned stop, the National Butterfly Centre. This was a great place, my favourite part of it being the bird feeding station, where we saw all sorts of species and reasonably close. Despite the name of the place, we only saw a few butterflies while we were there.

"Ten years ago, the North American Butterfly Association broke ground for what has now become the largest native plant botanical garden in the United States. This 100-acre preserve is home to Spike (who thinks he is a butterfly) and the greatest volume and variety of wild, free-flying butterflies in the nation. In fact, USA Today calls the National Butterfly Center, in Mission, Texas, 'the butterfly capitol of the USA'."

www.nationalbutterflycenter.org/