Today we arrived in the Lower Rio Grande valley via the excellent reserve of Laguna Atascosa. We started seeing new species on the approach track to the reserve, including Lark Sparrow, Golden-fronted Woodpecker and Roadrunner. The trails around the centre provided our first encounter with some of the LRG specialities – Olive Sparrow, Kiskadee, White-tipped Dove and Green Jay. Atacosa is also home to the highly endangered Ocelot which, although we didn’t see, we did find some foot prints of. We arrived at South Padre Island by lunch-time and then headed to the Convention Centre. The bushes around the main buildings and the board-walk out to the coast have long been a birding hot spot and we weren’t to be disappointed. It was immediately apparent that there’d been a minor ‘fall’ during the recent rain and we quickly started seeing warblers, vireos, orioles, flycatchers and tanagers – several of them new for the trip. We left to get to our AirBnB, had a brief session of R&R, and then returned for a final session before dusk. A week after the start of this adventure it really feels like we’re getting somewhere.