Greetings All:
I spent close to four hours in Hockley County yesterday, mostly chasing
butterflies - as a Breeding Bird Survey had eaten up a lot of productive
birding time.
The most remarkable sighting of the day was of a female Lesser Prairie
Chicken ambling her short-tailed, dark brown-barred breast and belly, and
vaguely harlequin- headed way across a road that passes through the largest
area of contiguous oilfield habitat in the far western portion of the
county.
This is an incredibly weird location for a Lesser Prairie Chicken sighting
- well away from any of the recent records in Lamb County to the north or
from Cochan County to the southwest ... but the region has seen some
strange post-breeding wanderers in recent years, including one female that
made it as far as Lubbock County where it was collected. I can not give a
precise location as folk managing the oilfield properties would not welcome
any influx of birders and, quite frankly, I have no idea how to go about
relocating the bird. I spent close to an hour in the immediate vicinity of
the first sighting in an attempt to get a photograph.
It is also odd in that, so far as I can tell - from repeated surveys - the
species has vanished from some formerly well-known sites in Yoakum and
Cochran Counties. The odds of seeing a Lesser Prairie Chicken anywhere in
my region get poorer with each passing year, much less finding one in an
oddball sighting.
There is also the possibility that the bird was human-assisted in some
fashion (as was suspected for the recent Lubbock County record - as the
bird was injured and may have come from a hunter's bag when they realized
they had a no-no in their possession) but the bird showed no evidence of
injury and was certainly not, in any sense, domesticated. It paused
briefly at the side of the road, affording me good looks but no time to get
the camera in a good position, and then bailed into some fairly thick
vegetation.
After that, the other highlight will seem somewhat mundane but here they
are: 2 Blue-winged Teals near Anton, 2 Ring-necked Pheasants near Pep, 2
White-faced Ibises near Anton, 2 Black-necked Stilts near Anton, 16
Black-necked Stilts near Whitharral, 8 American Avocets near Anton, 4
American Avocets near Whitharral, a family group of 6 Say's Phoebes in Pep,
a family group of 5 Say's Phoebe near Pep, a family group of 6 Say's
Phoebes near Petit, 2 male Bronzed Cowbirds near Pep, and 2 Lesser
Goldfinches along FM 597 near the Hockley/Cochran County line.
I will be working the same area this coming weekend and will, if I relocate
a particular bird and can get permission from the right folk, release a
more precise location.
Anthony 'Fat Tony' Hewetson; Lubbock
