Date: 4/12/26 6:20 pm From: Robin Harding via groups.io <pine2siskin4...> Subject: [NEBirds] Sherman and Valley Counties
Nebraska birders,
Bill Flack, Steve Morris and I birded together on Sunday, April 12. We started at a private lake just south of Loup City, Sherman County. It's posted no trespassing so we looked at it from the highway. In the past, I've often wished that I could go onto the property to look for birds. On this day, the owner walked out to talk with us and told us that we could go in to look for birds. Hooray! We saw a nice variety of birds including waterfowl and sparrows. Nothing rare but it's a great place. I'm so glad that we met the owner.
Gasteyer Sanctuary is right across the road. It's open to the public. We parked and walked in the woods. The highlights for me were the Red-breasted Nuthatch and Brown Creeper. We saw our only warbler for the day, Yellow-rumped. We drove to Bowman Lake, just west of Loup City, to look for shorebirds and maybe a tern on the sandbars. All we found were Killdeer and a Ring-billed Gull but it's a nice place to view the river.
We drove up to Sherman Reservoir and birded at several locations. We found a nice flock of Cedar Waxwings at Trail 11. There were many boaters out on the lake so the birds were scarce. As we were driving from Sherman Lake to Davis Creek Reservoir, we heard Sandhill Cranes. We saw three large flocks flying very high. It looked as though they were gaining altitude.
We birded a couple locations at Davis Creek Reservoir before giving up because of the heat. There were many boaters here as well. Overall, it was a good day.
