An Evening with Mr. H

As we were settling in for the night in Fort Stockton, Bob Friedrichs and I got word that Mr. H high up in the Davis Mountains had an Evening Grosbeak at his bunker. First thing in the morning I sent Mr. H a note asking if we might visit the bunker and catch a glimpse of this beauty. Mr. H answered quickly that he had not seen it yet today.

Evening Grosbeak
Davis Mountains

We headed out to Imperial Reservoir since Bob had never been. Its about 20 minutes north of Fort Stockton and has had a number of good birds over the years. There is not really any direct access anymore though, the caretaker doesn't appear to be on site anymore, but you can scope a lot of lake from the gate and any big water in west Texas is worth checking out. We would be off grid while there unfortunately.

At the lake we tallied 30 species in 40 minutes, the best birds being a distant Willet and a first for me in west Texas Bald Eagle.

Right as we had gone off grid Mr. H responded telling us the Grosbeak was back. We got the message on the way back into town 45 minutes later and we immediately headed to the bunker. It was 140 miles to the Davis Mountains and we would make it about 11:30 am.

Right after we left Fort Stockton Mr. H went silent. We went silent too, most everyone was silent! ATT was offline and neither Bob nor I had a working connection.  It turned out ATT was out in the whole region and we didn't have service until we got almost to Ozona that day on the way home, We had to hope the situation stayed the same at The Bunker. As a backup I extracted the GPS coordinates from a photo I took at The Bunker and plugged them into the GPS.

We made it almost to The Bunker when the car would not make it a steep hill, right as we passed a 4x4 only sign. The GPS said only 0.2 miles to The Bunker. We parked and started to walk. A flock of Red Crossbills flew over as we huffed and puffed up the steep mountain with our flat land lungs.

We made it about 11:35 and Mr. H greeted us in Duck Dynasty camo. I get the impression Mr. H wears a lot of camo around The Bunker for security reasons.

Mr. H bid us to take a seat and be quite, this bird was skittish. Mr. H left us to make coffee and we watched. A male Rivoli's Hummingbird kept catching my eye.

We had been on watch only about 10 minutes when Bob called out in an excited whisper "There it is!" It came out on to the platform feeder, Evening Grosbeak was Year Bird 491!. There is something about these "diversion" birds when you change plans and go back for a bird that makes them more exciting, more satisfying.

Bob and I raised cameras at the same time. Curse you Alessandro Volta! my camera battery was dead! I had 4 charged ones in my pack, back at the car. Fortunately Bob popped the battery from his camera out and loaned it to me so I could get a few shots of my own.

Headed back it was cash only until we got to Ozona. It seems all credit card processing depends on ATT out west. One wag waved his phone at the woman behind the counter as we grabbed a bite to eat saying "My Verizon phone works just fine". I was so happy for him, he still had to pay cash like me.

It was a long drive home, we covered about 880 miles that day by my reckoning, The Grosbeak made it bearable.