Thanks Robin and Bill.
The Ratzlaff dropped in today and we had lunch together.
They are here in AZ to see Deb’s daughter run the Scottsdale Marathon (yesterday) and her grandson play baseball on Thanksgiving weekend.
They leave tomorrow for SE AZ. We are planning a day trip with them the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.
Their first bird of the trip was the Costa Hummingbird in Lincoln
Don MaasMaricopa CountyMesa, AZ
“If you do not take an interest in the affairs of your government then you are doomed to live under the rules of fools. Plato“You can ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences of reality.”
Don & Shirley MaasThe Maas’s have migrated to the Valley of the Sun in Mesa, AZ from Choctaw, Ok for the winter.
On Monday, November 17, 2025, 8:08 PM, Robin Harding via groups.io <pine2siskin4...> wrote:
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.
