Date: 11/17/25 7:08 pm From: Robin Harding via groups.io <pine2siskin4...> Subject: [NEBirds] Sunday birding
Nebraska birders,
Bill Flack and I birded together on Sunday, November 16. Bill submitted
his lists to ebird and shared them with me. We started shortly after
sunrise at the Shelton sewage lagoon in Hall County. Unfortunately, the
sun was shining brightly so we couldn’t see the surface of the water very
well at all. The only place to view the lagoon is from the northwest
corner, looking directly toward the rising sun. There was just a light
breeze and the temperature was a chilly 35 degrees. We couldn’t see much
there so we moved on to the Shelton cemetery and walked a loop around it.
There are many evergreen trees so we hoped for Red-breasted Nuthatches. We
saw ten species but no nuthatches.
We moved on to Cody McGregor’s longspur spot just north of Coal Chute Road
along Navaho Road south of Gibbon. We looked and listened for about half
an hour but heard only one Horned Lark. Just the day before, I stopped by
the spot early in the afternoon and saw a flock of about fifty Smith’s
Longspurs.
Bill and I went to the Bassway Strip lakes near the Minden I-80 exit. We
drove on the public access roads along the north side and then the south
side. There was a nice variety of waterbirds including geese, ducks and
cormorants. My firsts for this winter were White-fronted Geese, Cackling
Geese and Ring-necked Ducks. Our total was a little more than twenty
species.
Thanks to Cody for submitting an ebird list for the dog town with a
Ferruginous Hawk north of Gibbon. We had just gotten out of the car, when
I saw a hawk flying over the town. When it landed in a tree, I saw its
white tail. Bill scoped the bird and saw completely unmarked white
underparts. It spread a wing briefly and he saw no patagial mark. When
the bird scratched itself, Bill saw brown thighs. Cody told me he saw a
Ferruginous Hawk at the dog town many times last winter and wonders if
the same bird has returned .
We walked the hiking trail that goes by the Ravenna sewage ponds and
through woods beside the South Loup River in northern Buffalo County. We
studied a small group of mergansers that had ragged crests. We scoped them
for several minutes and identified them as Red-breasted Mergansers, five
female and one male. New county birds for both of us. Then a female
Hooded Merganser showed up nearby, allowing for a good comparison. As we
were walking the trail through the woods, we found a Brown Creeper going
very high up on the branches.
Bill’s Buffalo County list is up to 213 and mine is a little higher.
