It wasn't a wild goose chase

 

We were after a duck.

 

Jon texted us about a Eurasian Wigeon at Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge, seen from the Osprey Overlook.  We’ve seen plenty of *American* Wigeons.  They look like this:

(not my photo)

 

We’ve never seen a *Eurasian* Wigeon though.  That would be a lifer.  The Eurasian Wigeon looks like this:

(not my photo)

 

Look at those two ducks.  They should be really easy to tell apart.  Yeah.  How hard could it be?  We grabbed our binoculars and drove an hour and a half to the Osprey Overlook.

 

Here is what we saw:

 

See those dark streaks on the water?  Those are rafts of ducks.  Thousands and thousands of ducks.  There are a dozen different varieties.  We need to pick out the one duck that is not like the others.

 

Through the binoculars it looked more like this:

A lot of ducks.

 

Through the long-lens of my camera it looked like this:

 

Now at least, we could see that there were individual ducks.

 

It was hopeless.

 

Lucky for us though, there were more than a dozen other birders there searching for the duck; a half-dozen of those birders with high quality scopes.  I have a scope, but not like that.

 

Our impulse to go find the duck turned into a stakeout, with people tapping in and out on the scopes, scanning rafts of ducks for that one slightly different bird.  Judy waited in the car with the air-conditioning on, listening to the second half of the Texas, Texas Tech game.

 

After two hours, one birder, Dan Jones, said “Wait a minute.  Wait a minute.  I might have something here.  YES.  I’ve got the bird!”  “Wait a minute, it’s gone.  No there it is; I’ve got it again.  Nope.  Gone again.”

 

It was that elusive, bobbing up and down in the distance in the middle of a thousand other ducks.  Every other person with a scope tried to get on it.  Only one person, Derek, ever did.  But one by one, each birder took turns stepping up to the scopes looking until they located it, then stepping away so someone else would have a chance.  Birders are good like that.  You only look through the scope long enough to I.D. a bird, then you step away to give everyone else a chance.  Once everyone has seen it, you can go back for a longer look.  Everyone got the bird, including Judy who came back from the car when I texted her.

 

For us, Judy and me, ABA lifer number 612.  Year bird number 407, an exact tie with our best-ever year in 2012.