We leave Mission this morning.  Once a sleepy town on the Mexican border, Mission is now part of the popular Lower Rio Grande Valley.  This includes walled and well watered communities that are similar to gated communities in southwest Florida, shack communities of recent immigrants, vast farms where the corn is now in some places a foot tall, grazing lands, salt scrub, and a miles long commercial strip along US Route 83.    Between Brownsville and Mission there  are about five miles between each Walmart.

Anne suggests that we are safe here because the U.S. Border Patrol is in our campground 24/7.  She neglects to point out that the boys sit in an armored portable lookout tower.  Our rig is not armored.  Still there is the lovely river between us and old Mexico.

Two days ago we visited the historic old pump station in Hidalgo.  There is a section of “the wall.”  Along one section a vertical concrete wall on the Mexico side of the levee forms the barrier.  Near the pump station it is a twenty-foot high steel fence that looks very impressive.  It being handy, Anne and I took pictures of each other standing in front of it.  What I did not notice until afterwards was that two people were climbing the fence as we stood in front of it.  Anne unknowingly caught one in her shot of me.  How about that?

We backed off to give them some room.  I expected that when they slid back to earth they would walk down the street and blend into the local population.  Instead they ran into the tall grass along the levee and dove to the ground.  Bad move. 

I suggested to Anne that if they were wearing the proper clothing, they would blend right in.  Instead they crawled around in the grass.  Meanwhile other tourists, birders as it turned out, approached us.  We chatted with them and I suggested we move off.  I don’t like it when people creep about in the grass behind me.  Moving back down the road a border patrol van approached, and another tourist chatted with the agent.  I would have said nothing planning to observe the phenomenon.  Before we left there were a half dozen official vehicles behind us. 

Clearly the “migrants” were not Mexicans and could not afford a “Coyote.”  They didn’t know what they were doing, poor boys.  Who knows what our ineffective government will do with them.  Probably let them go.

It is a shame.  Enact a reasonable guest worker program and legalize drugs and the border will be easy to protect.  Imagine how much the boats, helicopters, vans, trucks, high lifts, ATV's, bicycles, walls, and fences cost.  How much to pay the thousands of border agents.  What a waste!

The birding was good here and a week was not long enough to visit all they places we had planned.  The temperature ranged from cool to hot in contrast to that at home where cold and snow continue.  We chose a campsite with a tree overhead.  That gave us shade and some bird poop. 

We walked about the Bentsen Rio Grande State Park and Andalzuas Park finding birders and the usual cohort of south Texas specialty birds.  Cave and Cliff Swallows appeared one morning indicating the coming of spring. 

On fields of newly sown corn we found a flock of the rare Mountain Plover, a bird we have seen only twice before.

With all 1099’s finally in hand, I finished preparation of the income taxes.  Turbotax finally priced me out and I returned to paper forms this year.  These have become increasingly tedious with instructions such as subtract B from A and if C is less than G add to D.  Now we have to find a post office.

The environment has changed as much here as it has in Florida.  Once the Rio Grande was a large free roaming river that nurtured this region with rich sediment and abundant water.  Today it is caged and only a token flow reaches Brownsville.  The flood plain forest has turned into thorn scrub woodland. 

Our next stop is a state park on the Falcon Reservoir which provides fresh water for all of the Lower Valley.  We’ll be on higher ground off of the delta of the Rio Grande River.  I expect to see cactus wren and quail.  The nights will be cooler and the days hotter. 

Our camp will be back a bit from the border which is in the middle of the lake, but we’ll be seeking birds downstream along the stream.  I’m sure the border nonsense will be with us until we leave Big Bend Park.  Unfortunate.  At least after this we will be in more remote regions.  This week near Roma and next week at Laredo.  I remember and old song about that town.