Date: 5/13/26 6:24 pm From: William Flack via groups.io <sparvophile...> Subject: Re: [NEBirds] Birding Marathon
Fellow NEBirders—
May 10 was the fourth and final day of Robin's and my joint expedition to northeastern Nebraska. For this last day, we joined Jan Johnson, who's recently moved to Wayne, and who guided us to some fine birding sites in Wayne and southern Dixon counties.
We started the day in Wayne city, on the nature trail that runs through the Wayne State College campus. The prize there was a Blue-headed Vireo: rather shy and tending to hide behind branches and foliage, but we all eventually got some good looks at it, near eye level. The same or a different Blue-head sang from the upper branches. The song perplexed us for a while: not quite right for Red-eyed, and not raspy enough for Yellow-throated. Other nice birds included a Cooper's Hawk that flew across the trail, fleeing a mob of Blue Jays; we only saw the bird for about half a second, but during that half-second it uttered a "kek kek kek" call that enabled us to identify it with confidence. The oddest behavior was displayed by an American Crow that we saw hanging upside down, clinging to a branch with one foot. We wondered whether it might be tangled in a piece of string, the way that we've all too often seen dead water birds dangling from the fishing line in which they've become snarled. However, once this bird was through with this bout of gymnastics, it let go of the branch and flew off in the usual fashion.
We made brief stops at the ponds in the park on the south side of Wayne (at the former site of the sewage ponds), and at the entrance to Ike's Lake (not being Izaak Walton members, we couldn't go in). Nothing remarkable at either location, and we didn't stay long.
Just northwest of Ike's Lake, on the north side of 861 between 573 and 574, we birded Dog Town Creek Prairie & Arboretum. This is a piece of private land, but it's open to the public from March 1 to October 1, according to the sign at the entrance. I've created an eBird hotspot for it, so it can be found on the map that way. We birded the eastern part of the preserve, following a mown trail generally northward along the edge of the woods, then cutting eastward to check out a very small pond before returning to the car. The western part, which we didn't visit, apparently consists of prairie. It was around noon now, and the bird activity was dropping off somewhat. We didn't see anything remarkable, but had a decent suite of birds, including at least three Eastern Bluebirds and two Cedar Waxwings.
Jan led us on into Dixon County. At the crossing of an unnamed creek on Hwy 116 just north of county road 861, we found a bit of puddle and mudflat with some shorebirds: Killdeer, Baird's, Least, White-rumped, and Pectoral Sandpipers. A bird that we almost missed was a single Savannah Sparrow standing in the water among the Least Sandpipers. Of course, we hadn't thought to bring my scope or Jan's, so the three of us spent lots of time changing places at Robin's scope.
Our last stop was at the tree dump and sewage ponds in Allen. According to the signs, some years ago several high-school classes made a project of planting trees there. It looks as though the original two sewage ponds have been turned into park ponds, and a new large pond's been installed just over the low hill to the southwest. Our sightings included Blue-winged Teal, Spotted Sandpiper, Wilson's Phalarope, Black Tern, and Purple Martin. I've created an eBird hotspot for the site.
It was getting warm, and we were getting hungry, so we called it a day. Returned chez Johnson, picked up Richard, and the four of us checked out the Wayne dining scene.
I logged three new birds in Wayne County: Blue-headed Vireo, Bank Swallow, and Clay-colored Sparrow. Five of our birds were new for my Dixon list: Baird's Sandpiper, Least Sandpiper, White-rumped Sandpiper, Wilson's Phalarope, and Clay-colored Sparrow. I've now got 149 species for each of the two counties. Robin added Rock Pigeon, Spotted Sandpiper, Black Tern, Cooper's hawk, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Downy Woodpecker, Blue-headed Vireo, Purple martin, Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Swainson's Thrush, Orange-crowned Warbler, and Yellow-rumped Warbler to her Wayne list, for a new total of 78 species. Baird's Sandpiper was new for her in Dixon County, giving her 127 species for the county.
