Date: 7/31/26 8:04 am From: Robin Harding via groups.io <pine2siskin4...> Subject: [NEBirds] Dawson and Gosper Counties
Nebraska birders,
On Thursday, July 30, Jessica Gorecki, Bill Flack and I went birding in Dawson and Gosper Counties. The weather forecast was for cloudy in the morning and hot afternoon so we started early. Our goal was to bird at Johnson Lake but I couldn't resist stopping at a few places along the way.
We birded at the south end of the Overton bridge over the Platte River. There's not much water in the river. The Cliff Swallows are still here but they're done nesting. We heard a Great Crested Flycatcher.
We walked from the paved road to the J-2 Eagle viewing facility south of Lexington. It's not open this time of the year but the birding can be good along the road. We heard another Great Crested Flycatcher and a Spotted Towhee. We flushed a large raptor out of a tree that may have been a Great Horned Owl.
We stopped at the sandpits south of the Lexington I-80 exit. We saw several small white terns. Finally, a few of them came close enough for us to identify them as Least Terns. We also saw a Franklin's Gull and some Bank Swallows. A few Great-tailed Grackles wandered over here from the Walmart. We didn't see any Piping Plovers. We also stopped at the north end of the bridge over the Platte. We got an even better look at a few Least Terns. No Piping Plovers here either but we did see a Killdeer with two small chicks. We also saw a Green Heron up close and out in the open.
Mid-morning, we finally got to Johnson Lake. We walked around the State Recreation Area on the east side. The water level was very high. I heard that they had a big storm a few days ago. When we got to the swimming beach, we saw a Black Tern or a Forster's Tern perched on every buoy around the swimming area. We could see two people in the water with only their heads above the water. They were just a few feet from the terns. Also in the Recreation Area along the hike/bike trail, we heard an Eastern Wood-Pewee and a Red-eyed Vireo both of which were new Gosper County birds for me. We also heard crossbills so we looked at the pine trees. We saw one male Red Crossbill working on the cones. A life bird for Jessica.
We drove across the highway to the Chapel Woods hoping for more Crossbills. We were searching the tops of the pine trees when I spotted a Red-breasted Nuthatch. It disappeared before I could describe its location to Jessica and Bill, but then we saw two Red Crossbills in the same tree. One was a female and the other was immature. We also saw about ten birds flying over that sounded like the Ponderosa Pine Type 2.
We stopped at a couple more spots at the lake before the weather just got too hot so we headed for home. Jessica showed us the Mississippi Kite nest in Kearney which is near her home. We saw one adult perched near the nest and two young ones in the nest.
