Nebraska: The Hunt and a Touch of Wyoming & Colorado

My third day in Nebraska was a journey to the old farm and to venture to Camp Hayes Recreational Area, which is a small man-made lake not far from the old family farm. The lake is so small that powered watercraft are not allowed.  But with the Red Willow Creek feeding it and flowing out of it, there is a lot of great habitat for birds.  

I always get a kick out of seeing recently hatched Killdeer chicks and I had to stop the car to allow this one to find better cover than on the road.  

 Killdeer Chick

 Killdeer Adult

Double-crested Cormorant

Whitetail doe and fawn

Spent a few hours in the town of Hayes Center reminiscing with my classmates and then headed out, taking the long way back to Denver, with an overnight stop in Sidney, Nebraska.  My plans were to leave Sidney early in the morning and head west to Kimball, Nebraska.  I was keen on trying to locate Mountain Plover in Nebraska.  They breed in western Nebraska in a restricted range and habitat, but are probably a bit more common on their breeding grounds just a bit south, across the border in Colorado.  The Mountain Plover is a migratory bird that spends winters further south than their breeding grounds, and some show up in Arizona in winter.  This is where I have always seen them in the past.  So I was going to attempt to locate them in Nebraska.  The drive to Kimball was shrouded in fog making visibility really tough.  It was still foggy when I arrived on the roads south of Kimball and was getting a feeling that the weather was going to jinx my effort.  Walked down one road for a ways without my camera and found a male McCown's Longspur in breeding plumage!  Being without my camera was a mistake, so headed back to the car and got my camera, but was not able to relocate the longspur.  Headed down the road a bit further and pulled over and lo and behold, there was a Mountain Plover on a side road.  I took photos from the car as I did not want to spook it.  Yay, success can be so awesome at times!  It is a mis-named bird as it does not spend any time in the Mountains.  This sighting was also cool to me as this one was in breeding plumage, compared to all those I see in Arizona in winter, non-breeding plumage.  Yes, it is a subtle difference, but still fun to see the differences.

Mountain Plover in breeding plumage in Nebraska

Mountain Plover in non-breeding plumage in Arizona for comparison.

Horned Larks were everywhere!

From there I headed into Wyoming where I have never done any birding in the past, so I stopped at an eBird Hotspot called Wyoming Hereford Ranch which is just east of Cheyenne, WY.  A great place to spot and I highly recommend this spot to anyone interested.  By then the fog had lifted and the lighting was much better.  Ended up with 34 species to start my Wyoming bird list.

 American Goldfinch

Gray Catbird

  

 Spotted Sandpiper

 Western Wood-Peewee

Western Wood-Peewee

My next couple of days was spent in Colorado staying with friends.  Birding was not the full focus of my stay, but I did manage a couple of photos during the bouts of rain and overcast skies and even some snow.

 Barn Swallow

Steller's Jay

One of the key birds that I wanted in Colorado was the White-tailed Ptarmigan.  Unfortunately, due to bad timing and the incredible amount of snow fall in Colorado the roads to the best location were still closed.  At least I have learned from this adventure and hopefully I will be better prepared for the next trip to Colorado for this bird.  The trip overall, was a success and I am happy with the results. I was able to add 19 new species to my Nebraska list, 9 species to my Colorado list, and got my first 34 species to my Wyoming list.  

     

Potpourri of Birding (1)

This year, my birding has taken a bit of a different approach.  No more 'BigYears' for me and instead, I have just been trying to enjoy the birds for what they are.  Yes, I have chased a few from time to time, but have not focused on the chase all the time.  Of all the chases that I have made, the trip to Cochise County in Arizona, was probably the best, at least up to this time.   In addition, I have been showing quite a few birders around to various parts of Arizona.  And some of my regular birding has lead to some oddities for me.  This post and perhaps the next two will highlight some of the birds and other fauna that I have seen this year.  

Probably the oddest, was a Common Poorwill that was reported from the Gilbert Riparian Preserve.  It is odd to have one over-winter in Arizona in the first place, but this one was seen by several roosting in the gravel pathways.  This is a nocturnal bird that forages at night rests during the day.  By the time I decided to check on it, it had been reported as roosting in the women's bathroom during the day!  Luckily, Barb Meding was with me that day and she went in to check on it and came out with the confirmation that it was indeed in there and she also confirmed that there were no other ladies in the bathroom and she told me to go in and she would watch outside the door.  Sure enough it was perched on the top of one of the partitions, just totally oblivious to all that entered.  Thankfully someone had taped a sign right below it advising all to leave it be and to not disturb it.  Probably the best photos that I will ever get of this species.  

Common Poorwill

Another oddity from this year, is the Northern Beardless-Tyrannulet.  This is a small flycatcher that is more common in southeast Arizona, but one had been reported at some ponds in Maricopa County.  It was originally discovered in December 2017, and there were many reports of it during January and February of 2018.  I had made 4 trips to this location and came away empty every time.  Finally on my 5th visit, I found the bird and was happy to add this to my Maricopa County list.  

Northern Beardless-Tyrannulet

It is interesting to note that prior to 2018, I had only seen this bird twice before in the US.  Once in 2014, my lifer at that time, and once again in 2015.  So this sighting in 2018 in Maricopa County was my 3rd sighting of this species in the US.  Since this sighting, I have seen this bird 7 more times in 2018 in the US, plus another sighting in Sonora, Mexico.  This species must be my spirit bird for 2018.  

Northern Beardless-Tyrannulet

In January, one of my good friends, Josh Wallestad, came to Arizona and even though we only had 2 short mornings for birding, we did manage to see some great birds. 

Fox Sparrow

Crested Caracara

Mountain Plover

4 Ruddy Ground-Doves and 1 Inca Dove

Some other field trips with various other birders and also by myself resulted in several other specialties and also some common birds that just happened to pose for me.  

Prairie Warbler

Verdin

Crissal Thrasher

 Black-capped Gnatcatcher - A rarity that can only be found in Arizona and perhaps a tiny corner of New Mexico in the United States.

Cassin's Finch

Of course there were butterflies and moths to be seen at many spots.  Here is a small selection of which 3 were new butterflies for me.  

 Brown Elfin - New to me

Sagebrush Checkerspot - New to me

 Juniper Hairstreak - New to me and one that I had always wanted to find!

Spring White

Moth - Litocala sexsignata - It does not have a common name.

Trying to get caught up on my blog posts as I have plans for a big trip in July that will probably occupy all my free time when I return for some time.  Hopefully that trip will push me over the 1000 mile marker of life birds.

   

Santa Cruz Flats

About midway between the cities of Phoenix and Tucson lies an agricultural area in the flat open desert.  The Santa Cruz River that originates in extreme southern Arizona flows south for a ways into Mexico and then turns northward and flows back into Arizona and eventually makes its ways to this flat expanse of desert.  This river is dry in most places, but water does flow when there is adequate rainfall, but by the time it reaches the 'Santa Cruz Flats', it quickly dries up.  This area is well known for the abundance of birdlife and most of this can be contributed to the agricultural development in this area.  If not for this development, this would be a very dry desert area and not very hospital to most avian life.  In the winter, many specialty migrants show up to spend their winters here. 

 

About a week ago another birding friend, Jason Morgan contacted me to see if I would like to travel to this area to look for some specialty birds.  I was more than happy to take him down there.  For a person to travel there on their own for the first time, it can be a bit daunting as the network of roads can be a bit confusing and knowing where to look for certain birds does take a bit of getting to know the place.  Even after several trips to this area, I still find more roads to explore.  One of the first birds we discovered was a nice Ferruginous Hawk in the early morning light.  This one seemed unbothered with us and let us take photos from the vehicle, in fact we were almost too close.  This bird was a great start for the day.

 

Ferruginous Hawk

 

We also had a Prairie Falcon in the early morning, but it definitely did not want its photo taken, but the second one we found later in the morning was a little more accommodating.  But even then, it did not allow us to get too close.  Prairie Falcons seem to be one of the most wary of all the raptors.

 

Prairie Falcon

 

By far, the most numerous of all the raptors we found was the Red-tailed Hawk.  Here is just a sampling of a few of them.

 

 Red-tailed Hawk

 

 Red-tailed Hawk

 

 Red-tailed Hawk

 

Red-tailed Hawk

 

Our target bird for Jason, was the Crested Caracara.  This is an area that they can be found with regularity and after driving to the places where I normally found them in the past and coming up empty, I was starting to think I had failed to find them.  I had known that it was common for them to hang out with Common Ravens and had advised Jason of that fact.  Finally we came to an intersection and got out of the vehicle to scan the fields and sure enough, Jason was quick to spot some far off in the distance.  Most of the farm land in this area is posted and this presents a bit of a problem in getting close to these awesome birds.  We traveled around to the far side that got us a bit closer and was able to at least get better views, but even then they were probably still ¼ mile away.  Photos were not meant to be this time, so I made a feeble attempt to at least try,

 

Crested Caracara

 

We then worked our way up to the sod farms where wintertime can bring Mountain Plovers to the state of Arizona.  These are birds that most people would think love to be near water and most plovers are found near water.  Quite contrary, the Mountain Plover likes to nest on short grass prairies, especially near Prairie Dog towns.  They breed on the high plains of North America from southern Alberta and Saskatchewan south to northern New Mexico and Texas.  They are not a common bird and their numbers are being monitored due to loss of habitat on their breeding grounds.  It is a bird that many birders love to find as they can be difficult to locate.  Jason and I were fortunate to find 6 of these, but they were even further away from us than the Caracara.  Once again, I still took some photos just for documentation purposes.

 

 3 Mountain Plovers

 

Mountain Plover

 

As we were leaving the field where the Mountain Plovers were located, Jason and his sharp eyes noticed a Burrowing Owl along the side of the road on his side of the vehicle.  We parked right there in the road and watched and photographed this character for some time.  It was probably the most cooperative of all the birds we saw on this day.  By the looks of the pellets outside his 'burrow', it appears to be finding plenty to feed on in this area.

 

 Burrowing Owl

 

Burrowing Owl

 

Our last stop was at Arizona City Lake just to check out the waterfowl that might be there.  Here we found some Eared Grebe and it was nice to compare them to the Horned Grebe that I had seen recently in Chandler.  Very good comparison which helps to make future identifications much easier. 

 

Eared Grebe

 

Another great day of birding and sometimes the fun is in the hunt for those special birds that you know are there and then when you find them, it is quite gratifying.