This Month on the Chicken Dance Trail

2011 New Year's Resolution Review…and Snowy Owls

Snowy Owl, photo by Don Brockmeier
Snowy Owl, photo by Don Brockmeier

I am NOT your typical birder. Most birdwatchers don’t have a job like I do, where I get to travel a lot to different parts of the state, work with landowners across southwest Nebraska and occasionally even get paid to do bird surveys. I am a lucky man.

But that’s just one way that I am not a typical birder. I am always birding; just can’t stop. I am birding when I am driving or riding down a highway, while I am at a football game, at the mall, at a track meet, coaching youth baseball, hunting, fishing, etc. It is always on – even when I am having conversations with friends, families, landowners, hunters, fishermen, etc. And most of it, for much of the year, is “by ear” where I hear most of the birds I report each day.

Due to my obsession, it was only natural for me to finally decide to start “eBirding”. On January 1, 2011, I made a New Year’s resolution to report my daily bird observations on eBird (www.ebird.org) throughout 2011. This is probably the first and only time I have successfully completed a New Year’s resolution. Over the course of 2011, I submitted 2,354 different checklists (6.4/day) for 1,014 different locations from Amber Lake to Zwickle Road across Nebraska, with a few South Dakota observations thrown in as well. I observed and reported 237 different bird species including three “lifers” (birds I had never seen before – which raised my life list to 391 species) and five “state listers” (birds I had never seen in Nebraska before – which got me up to 302 species for Nebraska). Daily species totals ranged from a low of 4 on a snowy day at home in January to a high of 117 species while birding with members of the Nebraska Ornithologists Union (NOU) at their spring meeting on May 21, 2011. Some of my highlights bird-wise for 2011 included:

  • A Whooping Crane that hung out west of North Platte for more than two weeks in March and April.
  • A Chestnut-sided Warbler at Rock Creek State Recreation Area, found while I was teaching area students about birds (my only other previous sighting of this species was in Dixon County, at the opposite corner of the state).
  • Several Black-necked Stilt observations in May – they are a COOL bird.
  • Mississippi Kites over a cemetery in Norfolk during the NOU meeting (after my 9-year old son said “Wouldn’t it be cool if we saw Mississippi Kites today?”, which several of us, myself included, said probably wouldn’t happen).
  • Finding a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher on a nest in northern Frontier County, right off Highway 83.
  • A gorgeous Yellow-throated Warbler at the late date of 11/11/11 at Mormon Island State Recreation Area by Grand Island.
  • A Common Redpoll found during the North Platte Christmas Bird Count on 12/17 while birding with members of North Platte’s Tout Bird Club and visitors from Kearney.
  • The Snowy Owl invasion – finding two myself in the North Platte area on 12/16 and 12/27.

And speaking of Snowy Owls…

Speaking of the Snowy Owl invasion, if you haven’t seen one yet, you really need to get out and look for them. They are an unmistakable and beautiful bird. They are a large, mostly white bird, with a round head, yellow eyes, and variable amounts of grey barring and spots on them. Unlike other owls, they are active during daylight hours. Most winters we get three or fewer documented reports of Snowy Owls across the entire state, typically between December and March. This year, as of January 12, we have already had 153 Snowy Owls reported with 121 of those confirmed at different locations across the state. They prefer open habitats, like grasslands, croplands and wetlands and are typically found perched on power poles, fence posts, hay bales or on the ground. The map below shows where they have been documented across Nebraska this winter so far. Odds are pretty good that there is one somewhere within 20 miles of you right now, if not much closer.

Snowy Owl Map

If any of you observe a Snowy Owl, please report it to me (photographs would be appreciated) including the date and location (as specific as possible including road names, distances from towns, etc.) via email at Thomas.walker@nebraska.gov so that we can continue to monitor this irruption, which could literally be a once-in-a-lifetime event.

Get out there and enjoy this mild, snowless winter weather we are having, you just never know when that will change. And while you are out, take time to look for Snowy Owls and other birds. Happy New Year everyone!

~ T.J. Walker
Wildlife Biologist
Nebraska Game and Parks
North Platte

Special Thanks to:
Nebraska Game and Parks, Birds of Nebraska
www.ngpc.state.ne.us/wildlife/guides/birds/findbirds.asp

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