Date: 5/9/26 1:26 pm From: Olivia DeMarchi via groups.io <oliviademarchi7...> Subject: [NEBirds] Ash Hollow Banding Station Week 3 Summary
Ash Hollow Banding Station Week 3 (May 5-9) Summary
Greetings! Spring migration is in full swing in western Nebraska and the third week of banding at Ash Hollow was quite exciting with many species just arriving at the station within the last week and several fun captures. New species observed within the last week include Western Kingbird, Great-crested Flycatcher, Blackpoll Warbler, Red-headed Woodpecker, and Bullock's Oriole. I'm crossing my fingers a few of these will find their way into our mist nets next week. Some highlights for captured birds are several species of warbler such as Northern Waterthrush, Ovenbird, Northern Yellow Warbler, MacGillivray's Warbler, and one beautiful second-year Magnolia Warbler. We've been hearing Yellow Warblers singing all around the station for the past week, and finally caught one on Saturday, but the rest of the warblers were total surprises, especially the Magnolia. The last recorded sighting of a Magnolia Warbler in Garden County was in 2002, so this was a very special bird to see here!
Another highlight was an unknown Warbling Vireo-- Warbling Vireo was recently split into separate species for its Eastern and Western counterparts and the two are incredibly difficult to separate in the hand as the morphological differences are very subtle. Because of this and the fact that we could potentially get either in our nets, we played it safe and called it an Unknown Warbling Vireo. We are submitting feather samples to the Bird Genoscape Project in hopes they can tease out which species our bird belongs to, but it's likely the Eastern variety as that is the song type we've been hearing around Ash Hollow.
The next couple weeks should be equally as exciting as more migrants make their way north and some birds that breed in the area arrive and stick around.
We are open to the public and encourage visitors to come check out bird banding Tuesday-Saturday sunrise to 6 hours after sunrise, weather permitting, until May 23rd. We are located at Ash Hollow State Historical Park off of highway 26 near Lewellen, NE. If coming north on highway 26, take a right onto Rd 42 following signs for the visitor center, then take the first left after crossing the stream. Ahead there is a picnic area with a small parking lot and a bathroom. The banding station is located in the grove of trees on the west edge of the parking lot. We hope to see you there!
Olivia DeMarchi
Bander, Ash Hollow
Bird Conservancy of the Rockies
