We arrived at Mission, 75 miles west of Port Isabel, yesterday afternoon. Stopped at Camping World to have motor home serviced and enjoyed a lunch of enchiladas at Danny's restaurant while we waited. The private RV park is in an old citrus grove. We may pick grapefruit as we please. Our neighbor reports a campground roadrunner, but we haven't met it yet.

Today's dawn found us at the Santa Anna National Wildlife Refuge at the Rio Grande. We found only one new life bird, the tropical parula, a small blue and yellow warbler. Otherwise we found many of the other Texas specialties we first encountered last week. We visited a spring hawk watch that was having its first day at the refuge. It was led by a George Wilhelm, a former Pennsylvanian. He told us that it would probably be another week before a significant migration begins.

We experienced our first rain in Texas this afternoon, but it was scarcely enough to spot our clothing, but it did encourage the mosquitoes a bit. We are now in the brand new Mission library where they insisted on giving us library cards to use the computers. The facility is lovely.

At 5:00 a.m. tomorrow we plan to be at the Benson Rio Grande State Park listening for elf owl and ferruginous pigmy owl. This little park on the border is most famous for border rarities. We know these birds are present now because we shared finding the parula warbler this morning with a woman who found them there a few days ago. Word of mouth remains a most important tool of birding!