Our first day in the grasslands and we wake up to blue skies and…. howling winds! The morning’s itinerary was a drive to and around the Pawnee National Grasslands, in search of scarce / rare prairie species. I think we averaged about a bird a mile on the trip round – all except Horned Lark, which were everywhere. We did eventually bump into three McCown’s Longspur (now renamed Thick-billed in the move towards political correctness) – a really nice looking relative of Lapland Bunting (Longspur). Later, a skulking bird in longer grass – first considered to be a sparrow sp. – turned out to be a non-breeding Chestnut-collared Longspur. We had no luck finding the mythical Mountain Plover, ‘uncommon and very local – nests on shortgrass prairies – winters on dry barren ground – world population <20k’, on the reserve so took a short detour to a dried-up lake, where Jane managed to pull one out of the bag! A few other bits & pieces during the day but the persistent strong winds forced an ‘early bath’.