A group of college students from Angelo State University reached out to Spur officials last week to let them know they would be in town studying Mississippi Kites, a smaller member of the raptor family, which has previously been spotted in the area. As they drove into town, they saw one of the birds they were seeking soaring away.. It turned out to be the only one the researchers would see in their entire Spur sojourn. It’s just been that kind of year. The ornithologists-inwaiting weren’t discouraged. They simply decamped to a state park in a different part of West Texas and continued their pursuit. Twenty-twenty has proved to be a year of elusiveness, with the world trying to get its arms around this pandemic as 17 pharmaceutical firms pour billions of dollars into a space-race–style maneuver to develop a coronavirus vaccine. Texas seemed to have implemented enough rigor to keep Covid-19 at bay and began to open up, only to have the virus explode across a spectrum of locations and turn the state into one of the nation’s highest sources of cases.
