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.  

     

More of Sonora - Chapter 2

Day 2 quickly turned into the day of the Sinaloa Wren.  This is a bird whose range is predominantly in Mexico, but occasionally a few stray into southeastern Arizona.  In fact there is currently one in Arizona that has been reported for almost 2 years.  They can be a very secretive wren, but their loud song is unmistakable.  The bird in Arizona was quite cooperative for photos back in February when I visited and my blog post for that trip can be found Here.

This trip to Aribabi was an eye opener for all of us.  Sinaloa Wrens were quite numerous and their singing was quite loud.  We even had the fortune of finding a pair in the process of constructing a nest.

Sinaloa Wrens and nest

And as a bit of an experiment, I tried my luck at making a video of this process. (Quickly realized that I definitely need to improve my video skills!)  Right at the end of the video, you will see the wren emerge from the bottom of the nest and fly off and shortly thereafter, you will hear its very loud call. 

Sinaloa Wren in nest and its song is recorded at the tail end of the video.

 Black Vulture

 Gray Hawk

 Gray Hawk pair

 Crappy photo of a Violet-crowned Hummingbird

 Western Wood-Pewee

Yellow-breasted Chat

This is just part of the fine group of avian experts embarking on their early morning adventure that morning.

Some of the other non-avian finds for the day included some damselflies and a butterfly.

 American Rubyspot - Female

American Rubyspot - Male

 Unidentified Damselflies

Texan Crescent Butterfly

Common Checkered Skipper or perhaps a White Checkered Skipper

Siesta time.

At dusk on Saturday evening, the bats began to emerge from the rafters of the hacienda.

 Bat emergence

And finally after darkness overtook the area, a few of us managed to find a pair of Western Screech Owls.  (Found an Elf Owl the night before, but it did not allow any photos.)  Even the Western Screech Owls were difficult to photograph due to the low light and trying to hold a flashlight and take photos at the same time.

Western Screech-Owl

Sunday morning meant for an early departure but it did allow for a couple of hours of further exploration and a few more photos.

 Backside of a Rufous-winged Sparrow

 Another Sinaloa Wren

Vermilion Flycatcher

Flame Skimmer Dragonfly

This was one more very enjoyable weekend.  I have plans to return for a couple of nights in July and maybe someday in the far off future, I might even consider taking a small group of new people to this remote place where one can just enjoy nature without lots of humans.

Apache County Birding - Day 2

The second day we wanted to get an early start for another reason than just the birds.  September is the rut season for Elk and we were hoping to find a bull Elk or two and maybe witness some bugling.  As we were driving we happened to come upon a lone bull on the highway, but it bolted quickly through the meadow and into the pine forest before we even got a chance to get our cameras out.  But it wasn't much further down the road when we came upon a herd of about 30 cows and calves and one large bull.  They were quite a distance from the highway, making photos a bit tough, but the bugling was an awesome sound and we did witness a couple of smaller bulls that first appeared to maybe try challenging the large bull, but they turned away and we did not see any fighting.

Elk herd - large bull on the right

After enjoying this for a short while, we headed to South Fork for some birds and what a great place this was.  This will always be on my list of stops on any future trips.  Of course we were back to seeing and counting Wilson's and MacGillivray's Warblers again, but no complaints about that especially since one of the MacGillivray's Warblers actually came out and into the sunlight for photos.  This bird is a skulker and likes to hide and forage deep the foliage of shrubs and trees, so sometimes it can be a bit difficult to see and photograph.

MacGillivray's Warbler

We had a Willow flycatcher the day before in Wenima Wildlife Area, and one again on this day and this one proved to be a bit more photogenic.  Western Tanagers were also quite numerous and even though the bright colors of the males were not to be found, the bird is still a great one to see anytime.

Willow Flycatcher

Willow Flycatcher

Western Tanager

Broad-tailed Hummingbird

Once we started heading out of this place in the car, I spied a Downy Woodpecker in a small tree along the road, that was doing quite a number on chipping away at small branch on the tree.  It had sawdust and wood chips flying all around. 

Downy Woodpecker

Downy Woodpecker

A pair of White-tailed Deer walked out of the woods near us as we were walking the roadway.

 White-tailed Deer - Buck

White-tailed Deer - Doe

Our next stop was Grasslands Wildlife Area which is a place that is easy to drive by if one is not looking for it.  The road into the area passes through grasslands pretty much void of trees, but here is where the habitat is just right for Burrowing Owls that have made their home here and we found one in a natural setting which is rather satisfying.  Man made nest cavities are wonderful as it has really assisted in the increased numbers of this species, but it is always fun to see one in a natural setting and this one was definitely skittish and not used to humans near its domain.

Burrowing Owl

Once we took off on the trail from the parking area, we were greeted by Pinyon and Western Scrub Jays.  Speaking of Pinyon Jays, this bird was a nemesis bird for me for a long time, but on this weekend I saw and heard well over 100 of these birds at various places.  A nemesis bird no more!  A Western Wood-Pewee and a Cooper's Hawk provided my only decent photo opportunities.

 Western Wood-Pewee

Cooper's Hawk

From there we started checking out many of the lakes in the White Mountains.  A stop at Crescent Lake produced a few first of the fall American Pipits which were still sporting a bit of their more colorful breeding plumage.  We also had a Prairie Falcon at this location.  

American Pipit

At Lee Valley Reservoir we found a couple of Gray Jays which was great to see once again after my first sighting in July.  Also had a Red-naped Sapsucker and Red Crossbills.

 Red-naped Sapsucker

Red Crossbill

At Big Lake we had a nice flock of White-faced Ibis, but our greeter was this very handsome Mountain Bluebird.

 Mountain Bluebird

Mountain Bluebird

One of the last places we visited on this day was Benny Creek.  We had walked along the creek to the turn around point all the while with the threat of rain nearby.  The overcast cloudy sky made the trail fairly dark and Tommy had mentioned that the habitat seemed ideal for Spotted Owls and we were focused on finding one.  On the return hike Tommy did spot an owl deep in the shade in front of us, but it was not the Spotted Owl that we had been looking for.  It turned out to be a Long-eared Owl!  After having one of these visiting our campsite in late July in the Greer area, it was awesome to find another one.  It was daytime, and I attempted photos, but had a hard time getting focus on the bird in the heavy shade.  Might be a crappy photo, but it is one of my own photos for this bird and I am sure there will be more and better chances in the future for photos.

Long-eared Owl

This would normally be where I would end this post so I could finish with a third post covering the final day.  Sad to say that early the next morning, my camera had an accident so I was without a camera the whole day on Monday.  Tommy graciously gave me permission to use one of his photos from Monday from a new place called Concho Lake.  I love this photo because it is one with 3 different species of sandpipers all in the same frame and is a great photo for comparison on the 3 species.  It contains a Baird Sandpiper, a Western Sandpiper, and a Least Sandpiper.  The 'peeps' are known to be a difficult bunch of birds to sometime identify and this photo really helps to learn and study the differences in these 3 species.  Definitely will help me for future birding trips.

Baird's Sandpiper - rear center, Western Sandpiper - front center, and a Least Sandpiper - on the right.

Photo courtesy of Tommy DeBardeleben.

A couple of flowers to add some color and end this blog post.

 From Sunrise lake

I started out this trip with only 108 species in Apache County, but I gained 59 species and now have 167 species.  Pretty awesome trip with a lot of birds!