Nebraska Bird Partnership

Click here for the Audubon Society of Omaha's February newsletter.

Articles include:

• The ecology and management of prairies - Feb 9th meeting
• February field trip Saturday the 25th
• Postcard from the President:  Notes on the snowy owl irruption
• Introductory bird identification class
• 2012 Audubon greater Omaha student art contest
• 42nd annual Rivers and Wildlife Celebration
• Great Backyard Bird Count
• Spotlight on Nature:  Northern and loggerhead shrikes
• Backyard bird or squirrel feeder donations for Salvation Army

Bald Eagle Days will be Saturday and Sunday at the Lewis and Clark Visitor Center, four miles west of Yankton, S.D., on Nebraska Highway 121 just above Gavins Point Power Plant.

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Four snowy owls near Republican City, photo courtesy Dianna Eddy

From Joel Jorgensen, Nebraska Game and Parks Commission:

A quick update of the winter 2011-12 Snowy Owl invasion:

All Reports: 186
Confirmed Reports: 148
Confirmed by photos: 83
Collected or picked up dead, injured, or moribund: 25
Confirmed by credible observer: 27
Confirmed by description: 13

Amateur photographers are invited to learn more about their craft, network with other photographers and listen to advice from seasoned professionals at the Photograph Nebraska Symposium to be held on February 24 & 25 at the Hastings Museum of Natural and Cultural History.

Attendees will also have the opportunity to photograph waterfowl and cranes in a blind on the Platte River.

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A rare and spectacular thing has happened along the Platte River west of Grand Island: People have seen and heard flocks of sandhill cranes in January.

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Click here for a crane photo slideshow from JournalStar.com.

It's happened in places like Louisiana, Arkansas and Kentucky. Hundreds of birds mysteriously found dead.

Folks in Yankton, South Dakota, thought they were being added to the list after hundreds of dead birds were found there on Monday.  Turns out the unpleasant feathered discovery has a solid explanation.  They were poisoned.

The USDA confirms the story, saying the deaths were part of a large killing at a private feed lot in Nebraska.

Read the full article.

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.

Read the full article from This Month on the Chicken Dance Trail.

I don’t think you should be able to call yourself a true pheasant hunter until you are carefully taking possession of a long-tailed, pointy-spurred, January ringneck from your trusty four-legged spaniel.  This rooster was not the result of an accidental encounter in an easy-to-walk, short-grassed field that a group of hunters happens to be in discussing football and cussing black labs.  That type of bird was baked alongside some potatoes weeks ago.  This end-of-the-season rooster is the culmination of something even more meaningful – something special enough to be called late-season pheasant hunting.

Read the full article from the Lock, Stock, and Bedlam blog.

Jeff Kurrus was looking for a book that would grab the attention of his two year old, hold the attention of a third or fourth grader and actually teach something about nature.

Then in March of 2011, the NEBRASKAland associate editor was leaving a crane blind on the Platte River during an annual visit when a story idea came to him.

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The Nebraska Game and Parks Commission has scheduled an additional public informational waterfowl zone meeting in Lincoln on Feb. 7.

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