Halfway between Laredo and El Paso, the Rio Grande swings southward to form a huge bend that is also the southern boundary of America's finest desert preserve - Big Bend National Park. Established in 1944 to preserve 1,200 square miles of Chihuahuan Desert and mountain grandeur, it contains & wide variety of Southwestern scenery. From the three great canyons of the Rio Grande to the rolling slopes and jagged peaks of the Chisos Mountains, the birder is offered exciting discoveries all months of the year.

It is this diversity that creates the great variety of plant zones, where more than 450 kinds of birds have been recorded. Yet Big Bend is best known for its specialties that occur nowhere else in the United States except within the Chisos Mountains or just within the border country of Texas to Arizona. Such unique birds as the Mexican duck, the Lucifer hummingbird, the Mexican jay, the black-capped and gray vireos, the Colima warbler, and the varied bunting do occur here at different times of the year.