Nebraska Big Year: March Recap

April 01, 2025

Year birds: +34 (165), State birds: +3 (332), Life birds: +2 (507)

March was a great month of birding. I'm ending the first quarter of the year with 165 species, exactly 25 species ahead of Paul's 2013 pace. A portion of the birds I'm "ahead" with are more common ones that will come easier later in the year (and he had 16 I've yet to find), but I did pick up a couple really good ones this month!

Out West

The month started out west. Keegan and I were camping at Lake Ogallala looking for gulls the last few days of January, and not finding much on the third day, we decided to go to Sutherland Reservoir to see if we could find one of the legendary massive flocks of Snow Geese. On the way in, by the cooling ponds, we saw a loon. Naturally, I snapped some photos, and we both wrote it off as a Common Loon, but something was still odd about it. It took until 2 hours later when we got back to camp for me to study the photos and realize that it was actually a Pacific Loon (132)! A really great bird to pick up early in the year, and a state bird for both of us. Later Boni E, Dave C, and others were able to relocate the bird and add it to their state lists!

Also at Sutherland we did manage to find a massive flock of geese. Atempting to estimate the size was difficult, but with a little studying of the maps we were able to estimate a flock size of 560,000!

Gull-a-palooza!

As new year birds were coming in a bit slowly in mid March, I decided to go bird at Marsh Wren, just to see if any early shorebirds decided to stop there. Instead of shorebirds, I ran into a MASSIVE flock of gulls!

Among the flock, I found a Glaucous Gull, multiple Lesser-black-backed Gulls, "Thayer's" and "Kumlien's" Iceland Gulls, 2 California Gulls (very rare for Lancaster county), and a hybrid Herring x Lesser Black-backed Gull! The flock seemed to be resting there after foraging at the dump and showed up regularly for over a week! It was very cool to see many people come out and get life, state, and county birds from such a diverse and cooperative flock! Just goes to show that birding some spots in the "wrong" time of year can pay off!

Cranes, Cranes, Cranes

March is Crane season in Nebraska, and I made 4 trips out to see them! The first trip was a blind tour at Crane Trust. The tour was amazing as always (even though Snow Geese tried to steal the show), but didn't produce any Whooping Cranes, so Keegan and I came out the next week to find a Whooping Crane (142) to add to our year lists.

The month of March also resulted in 2 other trips specifically to search for the Common Cranes. The first search was fruitless, but an extended second trip resulted in success! You can read more about the Common Crane (159) in it's own blog post.

Prairie Birds

If I had a state nemesis bird going into the month, it would probably be Smith's Longspur. I went out to Spring Creek Prairie 5 times last fall searching and listening for the elusive prairie bird with no luck. So when Paul D texted me and gave me a few spots to checkout in the southeast portion of the state, I couldn't help but give it a shot.

I started at Pawnee Prairie WMA where I racked up over 20 Pawnee county birds. I did have some Longspurs there, but I wasn't confident enough in the call notes to turn them into Smith's. I later visited Burchard WMA, but the strong winds made listening for the rattle calls nearly impossible. So finally I headed to Berg Tallgrass Prairie near Talmage, and not 5 minutes after stepping out of the car, a dozen Smith's Longspurs (157) flew over my head, rattling all the way and landed in the shortgrass. I was even able to snag a few photos before they flew off again and disappeared to the west.

Shorebirds

Shorebird season is starting up again, and I'm off to a pretty good start! A couple of last year's go-to spots like Pawnee Lake and Branched Oak Lake seem to have much higher water this year, leaving little to no mudflats to work with, so I'm needing to branch out a bit more. I've scouted out a few places in the southwest side of Lancaster county that should be good for this year, especially Yankee Hill WMA, where I snagged my last 3 year birds of the month: Lesser Yellowlegs (163), Marbled Godwit (164), and American Avocet (165). Migration will begin in earnest soon and I'm ready for the challenge of finding everything that comes through!

Thank you so much to Caroline, Keegan, Paul, Dan, Colleen, and everyone else I birded with this month for all their help and encouragement!

eBird Trip Report

Pacific Loon, Lincoln
American Pipit, Lincoln
Western Grebe, Lincoln
Common Grackle, Lancaster
Killdeer, Lancaster
Eastern Phoebe, Hall
Yellow-headed Blackbird, Hall
Eastern Meadowlark, Seward
American Woodcock, Lancaster
Spotted Towhee, Lancaster
Whooping Crane, Hall
Wood Duck, Hall
Savannah Sparrow, Lancaster
Blue-winged Teal, Lancaster
Horned Grebe, Lancaster
Loggerhead Shrike, Lancaster
Turkey Vulture, Lancaster
Franklin's Gull, Lancaster
Common Loon, Lancaster
Red-necked Grebe, Lancaster
Baird's Sandpiper, Lancaster
Field Sparrow, Pawnee
Brown Thrasher, Pawnee
Tree Swallow, Pawnee
Greater Yellowlegs, Pawnee
Smith's Longspur, Nemaha
Long-billed Dowitcher, Lancaster
Common Crane, Keith
Pectoral Sandpiper, Lancaster
Barn Swallow, Lancaster
Purple Martin, Lancaster
Lesser Yellowlegs, Lancaster
Marbled Godwit, Lancaster
American Avocet, Lancaster