Last night a good birder emailed me regarding his recent visit to the oasis and mentioned he had seen a rare Gray Silky-Flycatcher at Rio Grande Village in Big Bend National Park yesterday late afternoon. So I was determined to chase it. In my anticipation, I woke up at 3:30 AM, and couldn't get back to sleep, so left for the two hour drive at 5 AM. Got there at daylight and walked and birded for the next four hours. No success, but better to look for it and fail, than not look for it, and later learn it was there for others to see, and I missed it.
There were lots of silky flycatchers (Phainopeplas) eating what I think are Condalia berries. Here's a Cedar Waxwing eating them too. Bushes everywhere were loaded with them.
I was really annoyed with the park service. They had half the campground (where the silky flycatcher was reported) closed due to covid, although it wasn't closed two weeks ago. Makes no sense. Then after cramming the allotted number of campers into half the space, they blocked the closed part to vehicles. Like why on earth can't people drive there? Now half of the bathrooms are too far away to use, so more traffic in the open ones. I don't see why the arbitrarily allotted number of campers couldn't be spread out across the whole campground.
So people were supposed to park a mile away and walk in. Too much walking for me, so I parked in a gravel parking spot along the road next to the road block. When I went back to my car a couple of hours later I was greeted with this bright orange notice on my windshield.
The person who put it there circled "Parking is allowed in designated area only. Do not drive or park on grass." There was no campground host so I went to the RGV store to see what I could do. The cashier there barely spoke English, but after a while a man showed up. I waited in line to talk to him. He told me the "designated" parking was at the amphitheater a mile away from the nature trail. I explained I was birding and 80 years old and couldn't walk that far, which I could have but couldn't have birded too, so it would have been pointless. I inquired if I could park somewhere closer. So he got on the phone to a manager since there was no host at the campground. The manager told me to ask the host. I explained there wasn't one, so the manager put me on hold for a long time while she contacted someone else. That person said I could park at the [busy] bathroom in the open part of the campground.
When I got to the bathroom, there was a maintenance worker there. I explained to him and had him show me exactly where I could park. He put me on a spot that had grass on it. (OMG). The spot I had chosen for myself had not one blade of grass on it. Seeing my situation, some arriving birders moved their vehicle from where they had put it, and onto the grass beside my car. By then the maintenance worker was gone, and most of the camping sites had been vacated, or had been vacant to start with (who knows?), so it seemed logical to park in one of them. That's what I would have done had I to do it over again. And of course, those sites have grass on them that campers park on. Oh well...
The good news is that there were no campers where I searched for the bird. Had it all to myself for hours. So I had a good time. Normally, I wouldn't have seen roosting Lesser Nighthawks there. And I think it was much birdier without campers there.
On my way back to Alpine I spent about five minutes at the Study Butte water treatment pond and got a new species for my Brewster County list. An American Golden-Plover was county bird number 334. (Far off across the pond so not a great photo.)
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