A Good Friday for Birding

My dad and I got up early today (Good Friday) in order to go visit a Greater Prairie Chicken Lek out in the fine state of Nebraska. When we showed up to the site it didn't take long to find displaying birds. We could see and hear them from the road but as you can tell from the picture below we couldn't manage to get a great photo. It was neat to see them inflate their neck sacs with air and dance around. One female in particular had three crazy male birds booming around her.
I have been out to these Leks before to see the chickens but the other two times I have been out there the winds were very strong, the birds were fewer in number, and you couldn't hear them. It was nice to view them on a nice calm morning when I could take it all in. We easily saw close to twenty birds on two Lek sites within an hour.

After we observed the prairie chickens for a while we decided to head out to Yankton to see what birds were around the lake and dam. I had a couple year birds including Pied-billed Grebe and Great Egret. There was a lot there just not much variety. I had some fun photographing the birds there and I got a very nice shot of a Ring-billed Gull that came down to check out our cinnamon rolls. The Bonaparte's Gulls however were not interested in what we had to offer.
The most common bird there was the American Coot. They were all over the place in the thousands. Some birds were out of the water feeding on the grass. During the summer there is one particular location where they are all over the road and it is like the parting of the Red Sea as they run to get out of the way of your car.
I really liked this picture. It is not the prettiest or the sharpest but I loved that the coots were side by side, one with the wings up and one with the wings down as they took off.

After our birdwatching around the lake we had to head home. We did howeverdo a little birdwatching when we stopped at a small city pond. It had a few "wild waterfowl" there including Wood Duck and Ross's Goose (pictured).It was a good Friday for birding indeed with three new year birds and nice weather!

Birding 'round the Lake

On Saturday the local Audubon group headed out to Yankton, SD to do some birding. A large reservoir called Lewis and Clark Lake was created along the Missouri River and it is a favorite birding spot of many avid birdwatchers

*FOY=first of the year

On the way there we saw some gulls including my FOY Franklin's Gull. When we got there it didn't take long to find birds. We stopped at a lake below the dam for birds first. Many waterfowl species were on the lake with 21 species present. Highlight birds around the lake included Cackling Goose, FOY Red-breasted Mergansers, FOY Horned Grebe, Great Blue Heron, FOY Bonaparte's Gull, and a Merlin. I got a picture of a not-so-shy Ruddy Duck that was swimming about 30 feet away from me at the time I took the picture.We also birded the river below the dam and saw Ring-billed and Herring Gulls but not much else. Roger, a local birdwatcher, took us out to a spot where there were several species of shorebirds present. Besides the ever annoying Killdeer we found Greater Yellowlegs, a FOY Dunlin, and over 40 FOY Baird's Sandpipers.

After a nice morning of birding we went and had lunch at a large cabin owned by an Audubon member that overlooks the lake. We saw a few birds there on the feeders including some Pine Siskins that posed for some pictures.

After we had a great lunch we headed over to a marina on the Nebraska side of the lake (the SD-NE border runs down the middle of the lake) to see an active Bald Eagle nest. Much to our delight a Bald Eagle was sitting on the nest when we showed up. That was the first time I have seen an active nest.
We saw a number of birds on the way back home. We cut through Nebraska and saw 16 American Kestrels (I saw more kestrels than I have ever seen in a day in the period of 1 1/2 hrs.), a FOY Swainson's Hawk, and a FOY Loggerhead Shrike.

Not a bad day with 74 species seen and a few year birds to put my year list at 118.

loon, gulls, ducks, and more

At Fort Randall Dam in South Dakota a number of good water birds have been recently found. The best of these was a Yellow-billed Loon that has been seen in the area below the dam for a few days. This species is a new bird for the state and I wanted to see it a lot. I called up a couple birders and we decided to head out there to find it. Even if we missed the bird we still would find Long-tailed Duck, Thayer's Gull, Glaucous Gull, and more which would all be worth the trip to me. We headed out at 6am and made the 2hr 30min journey up there. The sun was up and out when we arrived and so were the birds and I was getting excited. We drove down to where they had been seeing it and after only a short minute of looking for it I saw the loon sitting out in the middle of the river. It was easy to spot as he was much bigger than all of the other birds on the river. The pressure of finding it was off and now we could observe it as well as the other birds there with a little more ease. After a while of watching my 294th life bird swim around for a while we started paying attention to some of the other birds around the area.

A couple Thayer's Gulls, my 295th life bird and the second of the day were flying around with the Herring Gulls out in front of us. A Long-tailed Duck was also in the river in the tail race below the dam along with hundreds of other waterfowl such as mergansers and goldeneye. Bald Eagles were also everywhere and were a pleasure to watch as they went back and forth up the river looking for food.

Once the area was completely birded we decided to head for home. We missed the Glaucous Gull that were supposed to be there. Another dam was on the way back to Sioux City so we ducked in there for ma moment. About a quarter mile down the river we found our Glaucous Gulls! There were four of them sitting in the river. All of the birds that we were hoping to find today were found and it made for a very successful trip.

After a great day of birding we headed home with a good number of year and life birds under our belts!