I’m not sure why I chase birds, maybe its just in my nature. I’ve always been a collector, comics, coins, stamps and just about everything else.

So I’m sure chasing birds is collecting, in a weird way. ABA birds, Canada birds, Ontario birds, Ottawa birds and finally year birds totals have become the norm for many birders, with the advent of eBird which keeps just about every type of count you can imagine.

But as our lists get bigger, the birds get harder to find. My list of birds, that I’m able add to my ABA list, gets shorter with each bird. So we listers, have got to be able to go for any new birds that shows up in North America. Unless I’m mistaken, there are no normally occurring land birds in North America that I haven’t seen except for Yellow-green Vireo and newly listed Chihuahuan Meadowlark. Now there are a host of other birds that show up regularly from Europe, Mexico, Caribbean and even as far as the Asian coast. This is the reason we listers chase bird, its the only way to increase our totals.

In November of 2020, at the height of the Covid pandemic, a Social Flycatcher was found in Brownsville, Texas but at the time we were unable to travel to the USA, so that bird was put on the back burner. Fast forward to November 2022, things with Covid had slowed considerably, so I called my friend from Augusta, GA, and suggested we go to see this bird. At the same time we’d also go see a newly added bird to the ABA list, the Red-vented Bulbul.

In early December Chris Feeney and I, flew to Houston and away we went on what would be our last adventure.

We landed in Houston midmorning and decided to make a dash for the Red-vented Bulbul but it was too late and we couldn’t find any and by 6pm we were on our way south to Brownsville.

We got to Brownsville late in the day and went for a walk and the Social Flycatcher wasn’t being seen. So we settled in at the hotel and got a good nights sleep.

In the morning we were out the door by sunup and in the general area, where the Social Flycatcher was being seen. Chris and I checked the area but bird wasn’t showing and by the afternoon Chris was noticably slowing down so, He stayed in area where bird was know to frequent and I went walkabout.

After about an hour I came around a building looking out to a large parking lot and there it was up at the top of a tree, in the glow of the sunset.

I called Chris and got no answer but one of the couples and I had traded phone numbers, just in case one of us found the bird. I gave them directions to the bird and asked if they could let Chris know I’d found the bird. The rest is history.

We then headed north towards Aransas to see the overwintering Whooping Cranes.

This is one of the last times I saw my good friend Chris, He was one of the best