Lake of the Pines—Buckhorn Campground—January 3, 2019—D Day +2—Today we packed up in a pouring rain, drove through water covered roads and made our way to Buckhorn Campground on Lake of the Pines.  Even after we arrived we continued to have heavy downpours.  Finally, the rain ceased about one and we were only getting a light mist.  This country is soaked, creeks and rivers are out of their banks, several campgrounds at the lake are closed due to being inundated with water from the lake.  However, when the rain stopped we headed out to do some birding and were rewarded with the addition of 7 to our list of 51.  The best of these addition was a White-winged Scoter spotted from the road across the dam.  The picture is the best I could get under the distance and lighting conditions of the day.  The below picture is heavily cropped.  This is an immature bird.

White-winged Scoter

In all we found 22 species of which 7 were new—American White Pelican, Ring-billed Gull, American Coot, Herring Gull, Lesser Scaup, and White-winged Scoter and Mallard.  Tonight we are heading to Longview to watch the Baylor/Uconn women’s basketball game.  Tomorrow we will go for the Fork-tailed Flycatcher and do some birding at Lake Towakani.