Nebraska: The Last Morning

Birding time goes way too fast, and we woke up last Wednesday to find that our trip would soon be over. But the overnight rain had cleared up, and we had a delightful walk through the Missouri River bottomlands, where the now-familiar Harris’s and Song Sparrows were joined by 8 to 10 Red Fox-Sparrows and a Swamp Sparrow. Tough to find in the winter, a Red-headed Woodpecker afforded us brief but dramatic views as it paused in an enormous dead cottonwood behind us.

I’d been hearing Golden-crowned Kinglets on and off all morning, but it took a while for a small flock to approach the trail. Common as it is in some parts of North America, this was not an overly familiar species to a couple of members of the group, so I was doubly delighted when a male pranced in at eye level, bowed his head to us, and flashed the orange-red patch at the center of his crown. He accepted our admiring gasps as nothing more than the homage due him, and continued to flit about with his companions at close range.

Disappointingly, the feeders near the parking lot were on the empty side. But a few of the common woodland species were somehow finding a stray seed or two in them, giving us our last good views of birds like Downy Woodpecker, Black-capped Chickadee, and Tufted Titmouse.

A close look at the wall beneath the feeder log proves that the feeders are sometimes well stocked.

And so to the airport. Already. But we’d traveled some 1,300 miles, seen something like 95 bird species, and enjoyed mammals ranging from Mink to White-tailed Jackrabbit. And, I hope, collected memories to last us until the next time: http://birdaz.com/nabestbirds.htm.