Fan-tailed Warbler at UTRGV Brownsville, 2/2/24

Back in December the second ever for Texas, Fan-tailed Warbler, was found by Evan Farese on the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley campus in Brownsville.  I went out there a few days later and had a good but very brief view of the bird in the thick vegetation that borders the resaca behind the biology building.  It was a much better look than I had of the first record in Pine Canyon at Big Bend National Park.  I got very poor views of that bird and no photos at either sighting.  The Fan-tailed Warbler has been present since then at UTRGV but was MIA for a few days until Evan relocated it farther east along the resaca.

So today I drove to Brownsville to make another try at getting photos.  Problem was I didn't realize the bird was at a different location from when I saw it in December.  I put Evan's lat/long coordinates into my phone but I didn't notice the marker was about 50 yards farther east.  So I put in a couple of hours at the old location before I discovered birders were seeing it at a new spot.  So anyway, here's the fantastic Fan-tailed Warbler.

Fan-tailed Warbler is endemic to Mexico occuring in both the Sierra Occidental and Oriental.  They show up in SE Arizona every few years and there's also a record from New Mexico.  As with the Crane Hawk, my views of the Fan-tailed Warbler brought to mind the 1985 Christmas Bird Count in Alamos, Sonora where I saw my first along the Rio Cuchujaqui.  Now we need the other two skulkers I saw along the river that day, Blue Mockingbird and Orange-billed Nightingale-Thrush.  Stranger things have happened.