April 15th: Up again early for a 6am breakfast with Ray and Monica, while Harriet and Ann decided to enjoy sleeping in. After breakfast we say our goodbyes and left El Canelo shortly after 7am. Lots of deer and Nilgai on the road on the way out. We then drove north on Hwy 77 fairly pretty much directly to Corpus Christi except for one brief bathroom stop just north of Kingsville. In Corpus we drove downtown to our destination - Blucher Park arriving around 9am. This small oasis of green in the middle of the city is often a good spot to see migrants. We managed to find two new birds here for the trip list - KENTUCKY WARBLER and GREAT CRESTED FLYCATCHER. Other birds seen included OVENBIRD, WOOD THRUSH, RUBY-THROATED HUMMINGBIRD, and several INDIGO BUNTINGS.

We left Blucher at 10am and drove east to Up River road driving west along this road and a series of refineries to a good area for shorebirds. Several stops at this area added SEMIPALMATED and WESTERN SANDPIPERS, as well as a small group of DUNLIN. We also got better views of feeding MARBLED GODWITS and there were hundreds of other shorebirds and other waterbirds here.

From here we took Interstate 37 northwest to San Antonio with one brief stop at a rest area, plus a short pull over when Marilyn spotted a huge swarming mass of migrating AMERICAN WHITE PELICANS, Actually she spotted two groups with the first one having roughly 500 birds and the second about half that much. In San Antonio we first went to the National rental pick up area where we said goodbyes to Bill and Barbara who were driving west towards Big Bend. At the Holiday Inn, Marilyn and Andy transferred their gear to their van and Tom continued reorganizing his gear as they headed off to check in to their hotel for the night.

Everyone agreed that having a small cozy group was a real treat. And with 265 species for a group total we shattered the previous cumulative total for this itinerary. A fine way to start the spring in south Texas!