Eastern Hidalgo County wet spots, 8/20/14

This morning I ran over to Hargill to see if I could find the Collared Plover.  It was not seen yesterday and another birder and I had no luck this morning.  So our little second record bird may be gone.  There were still lots of birds on the playa.

I drove around the area some hoping maybe the Collared Plover had relocated somewhere nearby but I couldn't find any water.  There is a nice wet spot with shorebirds to the east of Hargill on FM 490 but no small plovers were present.  So I ran over to the pond on FM 1015 on the east side of Delta Lake.  Here I found a couple of Black Skimmers which were Hidalgo County year birds for me.  Here's a digiscope shot from about 80 yards.

At this point the wind was howling and blowing lots of dirt, but I thought I should checkout the Sugar House Pond.  I parked along FM 1425 and walked up near the northeast corner on the pond.  Wow!  What a lot of birds!

I estimated the number of Wilson's Phalaropes at 2500 and didn't really try to get numbers for anything else as I could hardly stand on the dike because of the intense wind.  I shall return.