Category: Recent Sightings

You can’t get any farther west than we did today and not be in Wyoming. We left Scottsbluff after a somewhat more leisurely breakfast than hoped, then turned north to bird the little bit of terrestrial heaven that is the Henry Road.

Much of the time, dust and traffic kept us in the vehicle, which proved a good blind for watching the hundreds of horned larks and vesper sparrows on the roadside. I’d expected good longspur watching here, but we saw only small numbers — fewer than ten McCown’s, a few more than ten chestnut-collareds.

After playing a fluttery flittery game of hard-to-get, one of the little flocks of chestnut-collareds deigned to start feeding on the road in front of us; a little patience let us walk up on them for outstanding scope views of a bird that is almost always skittish and hard to see on the ground. At one point, we had a McCown’s and a chestnut-collared longspur perched nearly alula to alula on the fence, a comparison that I always find informative.

Plus, you could really see those long spurs.

Almost as captivating was the first ferruginous hawk for the trip, a splendid light bird turning circles low over the short grass as, some 60 miles from leaving our hotel, we approached pavement again. This bird, flashing white tail and wing bands, ran away with the prize for day’s best raptor, handily beating out the two prairie falcons and the golden eagle we would see later on.

We moved on to one of the great sites in Nebraska birding and ornithological history, Sowbelly Canyon.

On the way down to a quick picnic at Coffee Park, we stopped to watch three pink-sided juncos, newly arrived from the breeding grounds to the northwest. Coffee Park itself was unusually quiet, with just downy and hairy woodpeckers, spotted towhees, and a wood duck to break the stillness. So we drove a little ways down the road to take advantage of the inside scoop Alice, Kathy, and Lee had given us over supper last night. A few flickers, a couple of red-headed woodpeckers, a flock or two of pine siskins, and then the scanning of the treetops paid off.

Lewis’s woodpeckers aren’t common in Nebraska, but lower Sowbelly has been a fairly reliable site for a while now. This bird — barely visible in my phonescoped image, I’m afraid — was taking it easy in the mid-afternoon warmth, swooping out only once while we watched, otherwise keeping to its inconspicuous and rather distant perch high in a willow. Not only was this a life bird for some of the group, it was the number-one target species for at least one of us. Tick!

We needed to make it to Chadron to check in to our hotel and to find some supper, so we pressed on from Sowbelly to the icehouse ponds at Fort Robinson, site of many a fine birding afternoon. It looked pretty bleak at first: an eastern phoebe, a couple of wood ducks, some barn swallows. On the way out, though, we heard chickadees, and soon were watching a small mixed flock of black-capped chickadees, orange-crowned and Wilson’s warblers, and a latish yellow warbler working the willows and boxelders.

A song sparrow in the brush lining Soldier Creek was a bonus; the default Melospiza sparrow on passage here is the Lincoln’s, a species we haven’t picked up yet but expect to see tomorrow, when we get to spend more time on the Pine Ridge (and less time in the van!). Weather willing, we’re planning on making a pre-dawn run for poorwills. Wish us caprimulgid luck.

I never sleep well on the first night of a field trip: too preoccupied, too excited, too ready to go. This first night of our Linnaean Society visit to the western Great Plains was no exception. I was still awake at 1:00 am local time, and finally just gave up when the clock said 4:45. I fueled the vehicle, parked it out front, showered, finished packing, had a not overly wonderful hotel breakfast, and wrestled our suitcases into the van. And we were off.

Our first stop was the beautiful Wyoming Hereford Ranch, where the heat and the strong winds managed to depress activity. All the same, we enjoyed our first encounters with lots of the species we can expect to see again this trip, including Townsend’s solitaires, Audubon’s and orange-crowned warblers, and Swainson’s hawks. Our very best bird of the stop, and of the day, and quite possibly of the entire week ahead, was a more typically eastern species, a neat crisp juvenile broad-winged hawk that was sticking to the willows along the creek. Naturally, I forgot to try to take photos when the bird was closest and most obliging, but still came up with a couple of identifiable images.

Identifiable, that is, if you know what the picture is supposed to be of.

A dusky flycatcher was a good find, too. But the heat and the wind and the clock drove us on to Pine Bluffs, where we had a good lunch at the 307 before birding the rest area. Traditionally a good spot, today it produced a total bird list of one species, and that not even native (guess). We cut our losses and crossed over to the Nebraska side, where our luck continued: a lark sparrow, a handful of mountain bluebirds, and that was disappointingly it for what is often one of the most exciting little birding corners in the state.

Rather than give up completely and hightail it to Scottsbluff, we decided to drive north on Stateline Road, a good decision. Soon we started seeing sparrows, vesper sparrows by the hundreds along with smaller numbers of clay-colored sparrows; common, even humdrum out here at this season, those are birds that I see only a couple of times a year in New Jersey. And they’re heartbreakingly beautiful to boot. It was challenging, as usual, to get everyone equally good views from the confines of the van, but there were enough birds that eventually they got sloppy, perching on fences and sunflowers and roadsides to let all of us enjoy them.

The most abundant bird, as expected, was another species I tend to see in only smallish numbers in New Jersey. Horned larks flushed 50 and 100 at a time from the roadsides, and finally one little gang feeding on the newly graded gravel had with it half a dozen smaller birds with big, fat bills, chestnut shoulders, and stunningly white tails. I firmly expected to see McCown’s longspurs this week, but maybe not on our first full day of birding, and maybe not in such great close views right away. Numbers were small — a dozen, perhaps a few more — but we should make up for that tomorrow and the days after.

Where there are longspurs, there are usually ferruginous hawks, but that fine plains buteo eluded us today. Instead we made do with three prairie falcons, two in flight together and the sweet little creature in the photo at the top of this entry; it would have been a lifer for some in our group had it been the first of the three, but in any case was exactly the close and lingering view all of our group were hoping for.

As we turned east to return to pavement, I spied a tiny bit of sheetwater at an intersection, where longspurs were coming in to drink and bathe. One of them obligingly perched on a fence next to the van, confirming that the flock was mostly chestnut-collareds, one of the species I had warned everyone not to expect to see. There’s a special pleasure sometimes in being wrong.

We’d had a surprisingly good afternoon’s car birding, but there was one more place I wanted to check on the way to Scottsbluff. The nature center at the Wildcat Hills almost always has a bird or two to look at, so we pulled in to see if we might pad the list somehow or other. It worked. The most abundant birds in the pines around the building were red crossbills; spotted towhees more or less covered the ground under the feeders, joined by my first Gambel’s sparrow of the autumn. And there were two surprises.

The first was provided by Brian, who showed me a picture on his camera of the big gray finch with white wing patches he had just photographed — evening grosbeak! And the second was provided by a big gray finch with white wing patches — the real thing. It had been years since I’d seen one in Nebraska, and this bird’s presence raises my hopes even higher for tomorrow. If it’s half as good as today, we’re in for some fun.

 

 

I’m in Denver with seven friends on a Linnaean Society field trip to the western plains. We’ll be traveling over the next week to the Wildcat Hills, the Pine Ridge, and the Black Hills in search of residents, migrants, and September vagrants. Can’t wait to see what these days bring!

We started this afternoon with a quick visit to Barr Lake, a few minutes from our hotel and usually just about the birdiest place around. Mid-afternoon on a ninety-plus-degree day was a bit less productive, but there were some notable highlights: great scope views of Cassin’s kingbird, an osprey dive-bombing a perched bald eagle, more than 400 American white pelicans, plenty of prairie dogs and fox squirrels. Some of us even got life birds — and that tally should continue to rise, especially after the promised cold front end of the week.

Stay tuned! Maybe tomorrow I’ll even remember to take some pictures. Or maybe not: sometimes you’re just having too much fun to let the camera interrupt.