I can tell you firsthand that the monarch butterflies and some of the Neotropical birds are back in the United States and heading toward Ohio.


I spent last week exploring the Rio Grande valley at the southern tip of Texas. I saw roadrunners, raptors known as crested caracaras, and collared peccaries.

I saw signs in roadside rest areas that warned, "Look out for poisonous snakes," and signs marking "Ocelot Crossing" in the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge.

Those are things you don't see in Ohio.

I went down there with five women birders, including my wife, who told me to just keep my mouth shut and I would be OK. I pretty much did what she told me, and everything worked out fine. We had a great time.

We were so far south, along the Rio Grande just south of Brownsville, that we were twice stopped and checked out by the Border Patrol.

Although peccaries -- or javelinas, as the Spanish called them -- look like pigs, I'm told they are more related to the hippopotamus or the American wild horse, now extinct.

Many of the poisonous snakes down there are coral snakes; there are some rattlesnakes. I did not see any, but I watched my step.

Volunteers told me that an estimated 35 to 40 ocelots -- a small cat with beautifully marked fur somewhat like a leopard -- live in the thorn forests in the wildlife refuge.

The temperature got to 105 degrees one day and 103 the next, and the wind was gusting to 45 mph. It's a harsh place and a whole different world down there, with mesquite trees, Spanish moss and prickly pear cactus, some in bloom with yellow, red and orange flowers.

We saw many yuccas as tall as a house and lots of scrubby trees. Everything seemed to have thorns on it. I've heard that cactus flowers are sometimes called cactus roses, and they do resemble a rose.

The landscape is very arid. Still, it's the home for so many unique birds that it's a mecca for birders. I found 37 new birds for my life list.

One of those is the green jay, which is common as dirt there, but only there. The jays are so common that they tried to share our picnic lunches. I have to say, though, that the green jay ranks right up there with some of the most beautiful birds I've seen, with its blue, black and white head, yellowish breast and green back.

I also saw a bird called a pyrrhuloxia, which resembles a female cardinal and is native only to the southwestern United States.

There are many tropical birds, such as the green parakeet, a Mexican bird; the plain chachalaca, a noisy, chickenlike bird; and the great kiskadee. I saw the chachalaca and the kiskadee in Costa Rica.

The chachalaca sits in trees, loudly calling its own name: "chachalaca." When the birds are around, it sounds like a Tarzan movie.

And, yes, I think coyotes chase roadrunners, just as in the cartoons. We saw both of them in the same area.

The scissor-tailed flycatcher, with its ridiculously long tail, sits on the utility wires. The tail looks to me to be a foot long, and the bird's belly is pink.

We drove the back roads and looked hard and long in the pre-dawn and at nightfall for ocelots, but we didn't see any. The cats are nocturnal.

The monarch butterflies were everywhere, having just left Mexico.

I have long wanted to travel along the Great Texas Birding Trail, and now I have done it. It's a fabulous place. I want to go back.

Retired weather columnist John Switzer writes a Sunday Metro column.