Nebraska Big Year: October Recap
November 02, 2025
Year birds: +2 (352)
State birds: +1 (356)
Life birds: +1 (532)
eBird Trip Report
October was another one of the slower months, as expected. I picked up one expected species, and one complete surprise.
Sparrows
My main target for the month was Nelson's Sparrow. After a report on the 1st, I went out looking at Little Salt Fork Marsh. The few of us there spent about 2 hours with no luck, when I received a call from Mark Brogie. He told me he was currently looking at not one, but FIVE Nelson's Sparrows out at Niobrara State Park. I decided to take the day off and head that way for the "sure" bird. Mark met me there, we drove over to the spot, and the birds immediately popped up!
The month continued on with many more sparrow species. And funny enough, just the next day I went to Marsh Wren with Eugene and we had 2 coooperative Nelson's Sparrows! Over the month of October, I saw pretty much all 19 expected resident and migrant sparrow species for Eastern Nebraska.
Other Ideas
After reaching the record last month, this month let me relax a little... but instead I started going after crazy things. Keegan and I attempted to flush Yellow Rail one weekend at Jack Sinn WMA, and we did the same with a group of UNK folks out at Rowe the next weekend. We failed to find any of this incredibly secretive and hard to detect rail, but picked up quite a few county birds, and Keegan got his year "nemesis" American Bittern out at Rowe!
Throughout the month, I continued to check marshes, mudflats, and reservoirs for any vagrant shorebirds, gulls or jaegers, but nothing showed up. I spent a bit of time county birding in surrounding counties, ticking off birds like Harris's Sparrow, White-throated Sparrow, and Fox Sparrow in nearly all neighboring counties.
Visible Migration
October is the month of Franklin's Gulls, I saw over 60,000 throughout the course of the month! But an interesting few days of prolonged northern winds during peak raptor migration released a spectacle directly over Lincoln. On October 5th, a huge kettle of an estimated 1,800 Swainson's Hawks circled over town in the evening. Not only was this a new bird for my yard list, this was the first time I'd ever seen something like this before, and it will take a long time to top! (The photo below is "only" 500 of the flock)
One last surprise
Near the end of the month, there was one last surprise. I'd been hearing reports of vagrant hummingbirds in Michigan, North Carolina, New York, and Kansas, when would Nebraska get one? The answer was October 29th! A gracious homeowner re-spotted a purple throated hummingbird in her Canna lilies and sent it off to some friends and Game and Parks to ID. Joel confirmed it was a Costa's and put some of us into contact. A few of us went out first thing the next morning and were able to spot my lifer Costa's Hummingbird (#352)! Over the next few days, Jennifer was an amazing host, and as of today, I think nearly 50 people have gotten to enjoy this very lost hummingbird.
As always thank you to everyone that I got out and birded with: Mark, Eugene, Dan, Tommy, Olivia, Em, Jacob, and more. And especially thanks to Jennifer for being such a great host for the vagrant hummingbird, the entire birding community appreciates it!
- Nelson's Sparrow, Knox
- Costa's Hummingbird, Lancaster
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