Ring-necked Pheasant is a common introduced gamebird across most of the midwest, and the double honks of the roosters are a frequent sound this time of year in eastern Nebraska. On this trip, though we heard the birds a few times, the only one I actually saw was this one, which arrived on Jason’s doorstep under suspicious circumstances the first night I was there.

Morning light brought both an explanation–a neighbor’s practical joke–and rich opportunity to admire close-up the beauty of this most colorful of chickens.

The plush red of the face, the glossy blue-purple of the head, and the outlandish variety of the body feathers is downright incredible, as if patched together by a taxidermist whose imagination far outstripped his good taste.

The borders between the differently patterned feathers are quite abrupt, adding to the cobbled-together look of the bird.

My favorites are the filigreed feathers of the upper back:

Of course, all this beauty isn’t just for us to admire; it also serves to intimidate rival roosters. If that doesn’t work, there’s always violence: get a load of the spurs on this guy!

Needless to say, I came home with an envelope of feathers (it’s legal, never fear). The feet, though, and the longest rectrices stayed with my nephew A.J. and his neighborhood friends, whose bicycles and caps are the richer for it.

In spite of the dramatic thunderstorms that hit Saturday morning, with lightning enough to chase us inside, the weather stayed warm while we were in eastern Nebraska. Eastern Bluebirds and Eastern Phoebes sang from the loess bluffs and fields, and Eastern Meadowlarks, typically an early April arrival, were firmly on territory at Walnut Creek (with one as far west as Alda later on in the trip).

The flip side of all this passerine excitement, of course, was a relative lack of waterfowl. We did eventually record 19 species, including Red-breasted and Hooded Mergansers, but most of those we did find were encountered in only low numbers: a single Canvasback, fewer than 50 Greater White-fronted Geese, and not even 1,000 Snow Geese. On trips we’ve made when March has been colder, waterfowl have been a highlight, with many species recorded in the thousands, even the hundreds of thousands in the case of Snow Goose.

But this year, it just meant that we took the time to enjoy the web-foots we did run into. Especially instructive, I think, were the 4 Ross’s Geese we found at North Platte, which permitted stunningly close approach and great comparisons with the Snows accompanying them. We could even see the dirty gray patch at the base of the bill.

And then there are the “Canackling” Geese. Most of the Canada Geese we saw in eastern Nebraska were large birds with long, sloping foreheads and swan-like bills, and could safely be assumed to be maxima or moffitti or intergrades, a large proportion of them probably the fruits of the successful re-introductions carried out in the last century.

Others, though, particularly in the central Platte Valley, were smaller, with shorter necks and bills and noticeably angular heads. Traditionally, these birds have been assumed to be interior, but it is possible, too, that they are parvipes Canada Geese.

When we started running across these small Canadas, we were doubly happy to have had such good studies of a Cackling Goose near Gretna early in the trip. This bird, with a badly injured wing, has been present at the site for at least two years now, and its sedentary lifestyle has made it fairly trusting.

This individual is clearly smaller than the domestic Mallards it is forced to consort with, and the short neck, tiny bill, and rounded head with a clear ’stop’ make it easy to identify as a hutchinsii Cackling Goose.

How much simpler things were before the split! But it has been fascinating watching the evolution of the criteria for distinguishing among the various white-cheeked Branta over the last three years, and this Nebraska trip was a great opportunity to test some of them out.  

The Aimophila Adventures trip to Nebraska each March is typically a late-winter trip, with chilly temperatures and at least a little snow on the ground. Not this year! It was in the high 60s Fahrenheit when I landed in Omaha last Wednesday, and American Robins, an exotic sight for a southwesterner, were running and singing from greening lawns and fields.

Most were males, as expected, coming in early to battle each other in preparation for the arrival of the females.

Carolyn and I did some scouting on a still-warm Thursday, and were happy to find Tree Swallows chirrupping over Wehrspann Lake.

 

The cedar-lined shores also hosted a good selection of sparrows, including White-throated and Harris’s Sparrows; in colder years, both those birds can be tough to turn up in late March, but we enjoyed Harris’s at several sites and in good numbers throughout the trip.

More surprising were Field Sparrows, two of which joined a flock of Harris’s at Wehrspann on Saturday. Even earlier were Chipping Sparrows, with one at Lake Manawa and another at Rowe Sanctuary. The globe is warming.

One bird we look for with great eagerness, and a little anxiety, on each trip is Rusty Blackbird. As most of you know, this is one of the most rapidly declining songbirds in North America, and where even I can remember encountering flocks of hundreds in spring and fall, seeing the bird at all is cause for celebration nowadays. We ran across only one this year, a nice male at Lake Manawa, picking through a flooded field with Red-winged Blackbirds and a surprise flock of 15 American Pipits.

A great start to what would turn out to be a great trip!