I would drive 1200 miles...

Last week Bob Friedrichs and I planned a trip to the Texas Panhandle to look for longspurs. I still need Lapland Longspur for the year and Bob need all the other panhandle ones and a few other specialties of the panhandle. Of course a Green-breasted Mango showed up Saturday afternoon at Quinta Mazatlan in McAllen.

Since the bird was being seen Sunday and the site was open special for it on Monday we changed plans slightly. We would leave two hours earlier and try to get to Quinta Mazatlan by 9 am. That meant I would leave my house by 3 am and meet Bob at 5 am in Palacios.

That part of the plan worked. We made it to the site by 9:15 am. Of course Bill Sain informed me as soon as we got there that the bird was seen at 8:30 am briefly. It looked like from the reports from the day before that the bird came in about every 60-90 minutes. No reason to panic yet. We settled in for a good old fashion stakeout. There was a good crowd there and lot of friends I knew so it was a party.

Green-breasted Mango
Quinta Mazatlan

At about 10 am someone said "there it is" The crowd went wild, well quietly wild. It did sound like a presidential press conference with cameras. Green-breasted Mango was Year Bird 497. It hung around for 5 minutes and was gone. Time to fly, Pampa our destination was 11 hours away. We were on the highway by 10:25 am I noted.

About the time we got almost to Alice, TX about 100 miles north Eric Carpenter sent me a message asking if I had heard about the Tundra Swans at the Fort Worth Nature Center. A little back and forth with Eric and some discussion between Bob and I on logistics and we decided to divert to Fort Worth for the night. We couldn't make it before closing but could be there when they opened at 8 am Tuesday morning.

On the way to Fort Worth I got a report from Eric Clum that a kayaker spooked the birds deep into the marsh. No one relocated them before closing. We could only cross our fingers and hope for the best.

By the time we got to our hotel I had covered 880 miles. Bob drove 760 of those. As we settled in Bob checked his eBird alerts and saw that there was a Pacific Loon at Lake Benbrook. That wasn't far and we could check it at sunrise and still make the Nature Center in good time.

We got to the lake nice and early and started scanning around the dam area where it was seen. No loons at all. We had basically decided to move and check around the point when Bob saw something he wanted to get a better look at. Sure enough, there was the Pacific Loon for a Year Bird for Bob. We headed for the Nature Center, just 19 minutes on our eBird checklist.

Tundra Swans
Fort Worth Nature Center

We made it to the Nature Center by 8:30 am. We birded for the swans for about 60 minutes when I got a text message from Bill Edwards that he had the swans. We hurried over to Bill's location and there they were feeding calmly in the marsh. Tundra Swan was Year Bird 498. Time to fly. We hoped to make it in range of longspurs before it got dark.

We made it to Lake McClellan with about 20 minutes of light. No luck on the longspurs reported there, but we did pick up some Mountain Bluebirds for a new Texas bird for Bob.

We made our hotel in Pampa about 6 pm. We have covered 1250 miles since I left my house Monday at 3 am. Tomorrow we're going to find some longspurs!