Nebraska Warblers

Nebraska, Warbler: Not two words that most birders might think of together, those; but the Missouri River in spring can have some nice warbler days. I was fortunate enough to spend most of Monday out stomping one of the birding grounds I’m fondest of, Fontenelle Forest, and wound up with a dozen parulids for the day. That’s not a bad tally for any site north of Texas the first week of May, and it was particularly exciting to this transplanted southwesterner (imagine: twelve warbler species without Lucy’s or Wilson’s!).

I knew it was going to be a good day when I stepped out of the car on a damp, dim morning to find my ears assaulted by wall-to-wall Northern Parulas. Usually scarce to uncommon as a migrant (and among the rarest of the rare as a breeder), this was the most abundant warbler of the day for me, and I was almost never out of earshot of one or two or five practicing their chromatic scales from the treetops. As a measure of their unwonted abundance, I can say only that I began the morning by looking for them, and soon enough stopped even looking at them, devoting my attention instead to the other birds they shared the lush lowlands with.

Among them: Yellow-throated Warbler. This southern species has an odd history in Nebraska over the past thirty years. My first ever was a bird at an Omaha suet feeder on Christmas Eve 1979, one of the great novelties of local birders’ year; but then the next spring, singing birds appeared in the Fontenelle Forest lowlands, and they’ve been back every year since (check out that little red dot on Nat Geo’s range map). I was listening hard Monday morning, and never heard so much as a chip–but one silent bird popped up in a sycamore for me just about where I’d expected to find them. Much more surprising was a second individual a considerable distance south, on the east shore of Hidden Lake, a site where I’d never seen the species before. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to see the bird’s lore clearly enough to identify it to race.

Meanwhile, of course, wonders like American Redstart, Myrtle Warbler, Orange-crowned Warbler, Tennessee Warbler, Common Yellowthroat, and Northern Waterthrush had all appeared to delight me and the growing crowd of warbler-watchers. I headed to the mouth of one of the hollows where I thought the other waterthrush had been reported this spring, and sure enough, just a few moments later I was watching a beauteous pair of Louisiana Waterthrushes feed on the mud. As I look back, I’m not certain I’d ever had better views of this often reclusive bird ,and I was doubly happy to run into another Northern Waterthrush just after leaving the Louisianas, for a comparison with memory still fresh.

There was another southern species I wanted to try for, so I set off south, past the marsh and a new little “prairie” garden; I had great views of a Marsh Wren, one of only two for the day, but the noisy Sedge Wrens singing from the tall grass eluded the eye–which was caught instead by a set of white tail corners landing on the path ahead of me.

Western Palm Warbler has always been one of my favorite parulids, a pretty bird seen close up and very distinctive–and distinctively unwarblerish–in its pipit-like habits.

But I was headed for Hidden Lake, past Great Crested and Least Flycatchers, Harris’s and White-throated Sparrows, and more Northern Parulas. Finally, at the south end of the lake, just below the house I lived in when I started birding lo-these-many ago, I heard it: the frank, sweet tweeting of a Prothonotary Warbler. This is not (or at least was not) a rare bird in the area, but to think that it was probably (well, just barely possibly) a direct descendant of the first individual I ever saw was appealing, so I sat down to wait for it to become more than just a ringing golden voice.

As usual, the bird was completely fearless, and soon enough he was singing and feeding from the low-hanging branches in front of me, spending a fair amount of time flycatching, too, a behavior I don’t associate with this species at all (in fact, BNA says that flycatching accounts for less than 5% of the bird’s feeding effort).

At that point, I left the lowlands to try my luck on the rapidly greening ridges and ravines of the river bluffs above. Warblers were scant up there, though I did hear a Yellow-throated Vireo, another eastern specialty more easily found in Fontenelle Forest than just about anywhere else in the state. And thrush numbers were impressive. American Robin and Eastern Bluebird, common breeders, both, were conspicuously outnumbered by Swainson’s Thrushes, their little plipping notes almost constant on the dark hillsides.

I’d had a single Gray-cheeked Thrush in the lowlands, and Wood Thrushes were tuning up here and there, so it was a great thrush day. But no “new” parulids for the tally until I reached the new playground (!–expressions of indignant incredulity and horror on request) they’ve built in the northern uplands. There, creeping above the garish plastic toys and loud marimbas (what on earth?), was the day’s first and only Black-and-white Warbler, a bird I’d expected to be the first, not the last, of an excellent warbler-watch.