Hi Bill, excellent report from you and Robin. Hope you are both doing well.Jon S.Omaha
On Wednesday, April 9, 2025 at 10:53:56 PM CDT, William Flack via groups.io <sparvophile...> wrote:
Robin Harding and I spent Sunday, April 6, birding in Webster, Nuckolls, Thayer, Fillmore, and Clay counties. We had a pleasant day for it; in particular, we had only light breezes the whole day. Robin needed Greater Prairie-Chicken for her Webster County list, so we set off well before dawn, arriving at Willa Cather Memorial Prairie, south of Red Cloud on the Kansas line, not long after sunrise. As soon as we got out of the car, we heard booming off to the west. We couldn't see birds from the parking lot, so we walked westward, crossing the small dam and getting to the property's western edge. Along the way, we saw four prairie-chickens in flight; three of them landed in a tree. However, they apparently weren't coming from the lek, since we continued to hear booming far off to the west. Even from the property's western edge, we couldn't see the lekking birds. The addition of GRPC brought Robin's Webster County list up to 164 species. At the prairie, we also heard both Eastern and Western Meadowlark singing. We stopped at the Red Cloud sewage ponds, where our sightings included five Ruddy Ducks and an Eared Grebe. The grebe had its head tucked, so we had a hard time making out the head pattern, and couldn't see the foreneck; but we saw enough of the wispy yellow auriculars to identify it as Eared. A stop at the crossing of Pawnee Lake, west of Guide Rock, didn't yield any surprises. In Nuckolls County, a pond on the north side of county road D between 3100 and 3200 gave us a decent collection of waterfowl, and a Greater Yellowlegs. The latter has us hoping that we'll see more shorebirds soon. We had an early lunch in Superior, arriving at the buffet minutes before the after-church crowd arrived and filled up the place. We then ran up to the tree dump and sewage ponds in Nelson. On the way there, we saw several Purple Martins at a place in town with a martin house. The sewage ponds were dry, but we had several Dark-eyed Juncos, a Lincoln's Sparrow, and an adult-plumage Red-headed Woodpecker at the tree dump. We've seen the woodpeckers at the park in Nelson in the winter, so this might've been one of those birds rather than a recent arrival. On to Thayer County! We found a couple of nice birding spots in Deshler that we hadn't known about. At the western edge of town, south of the highway, is a shallow-looking pond called Gabby's Pond. We found a Greater Yellowlegs there, and two Harris's Sparrows at a feeder in a nearby yard. The yellowlegs was a new addition to my Thayer list, bringing it up to 164 species. About a mile east of Deshler are the tree dump and the sewage ponds. The ponds are gated, but they're not behind a berm; the westernmost of the three is clearly visible from the tree dump, and the middle pond can also be seen, albeit poorly. Thayer County doesn't offer a lot of accessible places to look for waterfowl, especially divers, so this could be a good site to check. I've entered Gabby's Pond and the sewage ponds as eBird hotspots. We hit an abandoned-looking sandpit along Hwy 136 east of Hebron, then the Gilead sewage ponds. After that, we turned north into Fillmore County. As we drove northward toward Lone Star RA, we found a Loggerhead Shrike and a Cooper's Hawk; these were both new birds for my Fillmore list. We spent some time scoping the lake at Lone Star. There're lots of dead trees standing in the water of the lake, making for excellent Tree Swallow habitat; and Tree Swallows had arrived and were taking advantage of it—I counted 13 at one point. At the water's edge at and just above the dam, we saw Killdeer, Greater Yellowlegs, and two or three American Pipit. The last of those was a new county bird for both of us. Robin's Fillmore list is now up to 166 species; mine, with three new birds, is at 157. Bruning Dam was a little disappointing. The last time I'd been there, there'd been lots of waterfowl at the upper end. The numbers were considerably reduced this time; mostly, Green-winged Teal. With the day drawing close to its end, we had enough time to hit the Harvard sewage ponds. No surprises there: lots of Northern Shovelers, with a scattering of Canada Geese, Wood Duck, and Blue-winged Teal. We ended our birding there and headed back west. We arrived at our respective homes thoroughly tuckered out from the long day of birding, but pleased with the birds we'd seen, particularly our new county birds and the new spring arrivals. William FlackKearney
