Date: 3/3/25 10:05 am From: Tobin Brown via groups.io <tobinjbrown...> Subject: [NEBirds] Lincoln, Keith, and Garden county birding
Nebraska birders,
This weekend, Keegan and I headed out towards Lake Ogallala to do some year birding! Keegan had a number of targets and I was hoping for a Great Black-backed Gull. We didn't find any interesting gulls, but we did have plenty of good birds including a surprise at Sutherland.
In North Platte on the first day we had great luck with prairie birds: Short-eared Owl, Rough-legged Hawk, Prairie Chicken, and a Northern Shrike. Most were year birds for Keegan and a couple were county birds for me. We also heard plenty of Sandhill cranes flying over throughout the evening and into the night. We visited Box Elder canyon after dinner for owls and Keegan picked up 2 life birds: Northern Saw-whet Owl and Eastern Screech-Owl, both were singing.
On Friday we headed to Lake Ogallala. We spent quite a long time looking through the gulls, picking out Lesser Black-backed, Iceland (Thayer's), and California amongst hundreds of Herring and Ring-billed Gulls. Unfortunately no Short-billed, Glaucous, or Great Black-backed. After sifting through the gulls, we spent some time scoping ducks. After coming across a group of Wigeons, I said "hey, let's look for a Eurasian", and sure enough, not 5 minutes later, we got onto a Eurasian Wigeon! Likely one of the same birds that has been seen over the past few months. We drove around the lake looking for more gulls (picking up some county birds in Garden county), but all the gulls were concentrated by the dam.
Saturday morning we checked the gulls again, and there wasn't anything different, so we decided to try Sutherland reservoir to see if we could find a legendary massive flock of snow geese. On the way, we spotted a Prairie Falcon near Roscoe, a lifer for Keegan! At the reservoir, by the cooling ponds we saw a loon that looked odd, so I snapped some photos. It seemed a little odd for Common Loon and later we realized it was a Pacific Loon <https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/631530734>! State bird #300 for Keegan and #330 for myself. We did find a massive flock of snow geese that we estimated at 275k, with about 12k Ross's mixed in.
Sunday we headed back home, stopping at Sutherland to see the loon again (which is continuing as of this morning). We saw the loon diving again and also picked up our first of year Western Grebe and American Pipit.
Over the weekend I adeed 8 to my Lincoln list (97), 12 to my Garden list (96), and 5 to my Keith county list (162). Keegan picked up 4 lifers, 21 year birds and many county birds!
