Nebraska: Over the River…

The same weather I’d been complaining about during the first couple of days of our visit seemed just right for a Thanksgiving morning: cold, gray, and snow in the air is the stuff of holiday memories in the midwest, and the short drive to my grandma’s house, once we cleared the stomach-wrenching sprawl of Sarpy County, was much the same as it was 40 years ago. The birding wasn’t much different, either: a few Red-tailed Hawks and a couple of American Kestrels toughing it out on the roadsides, House Sparrows and European Starlings gathering at grain spilled at corncribs and elevators.

Just outside of Greenwood, I slowed down for two Horned Larks flying low, hoping that they might land in sight. They did, and joined a flock of 19 other birds that to our happy surprise turned out to be not larks but Lapland Longspurs, creeping in their huddled way down the middle of the gravel road before taking off and disappearing into the corn stubble.