The Rio that is no longer so Grande

The Rio Grande is the fourth-longest river in North America and runs almost 1900 miles from its origin in south-central Colorado through the cities of Albuquerque and El Paso across the Chihuahuan desert in northern and central Texas to its mouth near Brownsville, Texas, where it flows (or not) into the Gulf of Mexico. I visited that area near South Padre Island in January 2017, and was amazed at how little water there was in the “grand river”.

The narrow strip of water behind the white pelicans and gulls standing on the sand spit is the Rio Grande River emptying into the Gulf of Mexico! You can just barely see the waves of the Gulf waters where the river enters. The sandy hill beyond the river is, of course, Mexico. Photographed Jan, 2017.

Since the mid-20th century, only about 20% of the Rio Grande water reaches the Gulf of Mexico and in some years (e.g., 2000), no water flows to the Gulf at all. This is largely a result of water taken out for irrigation of farmland in Colorado and Texas and water supplied to large cities along its route, along with climate changes in the amount of precipitation.

According to my phone’s GPS, I am standing in the middle of the Rio Grande, right on the U.S.-Mexico border!

But in traveling through the arid landscape of the Chihuahuan desert in Texas in mid-winter this year, we were still able to see what the historic power of this river had carved along some of its routes in Big Bend National and State Parks.

Much of the river topography is rolling hills surrounding the river valley. In some areas, there is enough water to support a grove of cottonwoods.

In places, the river valley is surrounded by 1000-foot limestone cliffs. Grasses and willows line the sides of the river bank.

Typical topography along the Rio Grande in southern Texas

Side canyons with steep walls attest to the powerful action of the water cutting through the limestone.

A view into one of the narrow canyons along the river in the Big Bend Ranch State Park. Santa Elena Canyon is popular with canoers for its scenic beauty.

With so little water in the river and in such a drought-prone landscape, you might expect there would be little wildlife. However, Audubon’s bird inventories of the park show that more than 150 bird species spend the winter in some parts of the park. Much to our surprise, we saw at least one Roadrunner a day, (and an amazing seven of them one day) along with many other brilliantly-colored and new birds for the trip.

A pair of Roadrunners canvassed the grounds of the Cottonwood campground in the state park.

Vermillion flycatchers hunt for flying insects near water. Southern Texas is at the northern edge of their winter range.

Golden-fronted Woodpeckers, with their bright orange and red head feathers, can only be found in south and central Texas in the U.S., the northern edge of their range. Unlike most woodpeckers, these birds consume as much fruit and nuts as they do insects.

Black-tailed Gnatcatchers inhabit the driest desert scrubland in the southwestern U.S., finding enough insects there to sustain themselves without needing much water.

Rock Wrens are insect and spider specialists in the driest deserts of the southwestern U.S., finding enough food in the nooks and crannies of rocks to allow them to be completely independent of water.

Say’s Phoebes are flycatchers, hunting insects from a perch and darting out to catch them. South Texas is the northern extent of their winter range; they migrate as far north as central Canada to breed.

White-winged Doves spend the winter in Mexico and Central America, except for a small area of the Rio Grande Valley in Big Bend National Park. They can be found in brushy thickets in the desert, but are most fond of dining on the nectar, pollen, fruit, and seeds of the Saguaro cactus in the Sonoran desert.

A new bird for us was the Rufous-crowned Sparrow, a chunky-bodied sparrow with a long tail and a handsome face. The species has a very disjunct distribution, occurring along the coastal areas of California, central Texas, parts of southern Arizona and New Mexico, and the grassy slopes of the eastern and western sides of the Sierra Madre in Mexico. Hot, rocky hillsides are their preferred sites for foraging for seeds.