Every spring, more than a half-million Sandhill Cranes migrate through central Nebraska, where they stopover and spend a few weeks feeding in and along the North Platte River and surrounding land. Since 1971, the Rivers and Wildlife Celebration has been an annual event timed with this great bird migration.
It’s cold as I work my way up the dark west side of Dinosaur Ridge. The fresh snow crunches then slips under my feet as I clamber with my binoculars and scope to the observation view point. Outreach biologist Jeff Birek writes about a typical – and always eventful – day monitoring birds as part of RMBO’s HawkWatch citizen science program.
Before conducting field surveys, RMBO staff contact landowners for permission to access their land. Through these series of phone conversations and e-mail exchanges, a similar question from landowners often arises, “Why do you want to survey that particular location, especially when there are better birding spots nearby?”
On a recent cold and snowy Friday, students from St. Agnes Catholic School in Scottsbluff spent an afternoon on an indoor camping trip. Educator Maggie Vinson writes about the wintry day where the outdoors were brought inside for students.
A herd of bison grazes the golden-hued grasslands, Ferruginous Hawks patrol the skies for jackrabbits, and packs of coyotes yip back and forth across the prairie dog colonies. Thus was our welcoming as we arrived at Reserva Ecológica El Uno near Janos, Chihuahua, Mexico on the afternoon of Nov. 11. Our mission: Catch and place radio transmitters on Baird’s and Grasshopper Sparrows this winter to track them and study their habitat use and overwinter survival.
Forty volunteers turned out for a cold but clear day to participate in the Barr Lake Christmas Bird Count on Jan. 4, 2013. Count compiler and RMBO board member Chuck Hundertmark writes about the day and birds spotted.
Grady Grissom, a rancher in southeast Colorado, had a problem playa. Someone had pitted a playa lake on his ranch many decades earlier to make a deeper water pond for cattle. While good for cattle, it concentrated the water into the pit, degrading the wetland habitat for other wildlife. To solve the problem, he turned to the Stewardship team at Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory for help.
Earlier this month, the sustainable tourism website Rumbos published a photo of an alleged Black Swift taken Dec. 2, 2012, during a birding rally in Tambopata, Peru. If it is indeed a Black Swift, this would be the first known sighting of the species in South America, outside of samples of a Black Swift subspecies collected in Colombia in 1993.
Last week, RMBO Private Lands Wildlife Biologist Colin Lee conducted a meeting and tour with NRCS leadership and partners, including representatives from CPW, USFWS, Ducks Unlimited and Playa Lakes Joint Venture, to discuss the results of a comprehensive inventory of 52 NRCS Wetland Reserve Program easements along the South Platte River in eastern Colorado.
Twenty fourth-graders, grouped in teams of 3 and 4, hold their hands above their buzzers as biologist Andrew Pierson reads the question. He scans the 20 pairs of eyes watching him, letting the anticipation build, and finishes the question. Hands hit buzzers, bells ring and a light comes on to indicate which team was first. Answers fly, and the points for the correct one are tallied for the winning team. Just another day, just another PEEP program.
