South Padre Island Birding and Nature Center, South Padre Island, TX

Padre Island is the second-largest island by area in the contiguous United States, after Long Island in New York on the Atlantic Coast. It is about 113 miles long  and 1.8 miles wide, stretching from the city of Corpus Christi, in the north, to the resort community of South Padre Island in the south (near Brownsville). The island is oriented north-south, bordered by the Gulf of Mexico on the east, and Laguna Madre on the west. Since 1964, the island has been divided by the artificial Port Mansfield Channel.

South Padre Island Birding and Nature Center is one of the nine unique locations of the Rio Grande Valley World Birding Center.  We went on a guided bird walk and saw Great Blue Herons, Black Necked Stilts, Roseate Spoonbills, Little Blue Herons, White Ibis, Common Gallinules, Coots, Great Egrets, Tri-colored Heron, Reddish Egret White Morph, Laughing Gulls, Osprey, Least Sandpipers, Wilson's Snipe, Redhead Duck, Blue Wing Teals, Mottled Ducks, turtles and alligators. These are a few of the pictures.

Great Blue Heron

Tri-colored Heron

Little Blue Heron

Reddish Egret White Morph

Mottled Ducks

Common Gallinule

Red Eared Slider Turtle

Alligator