30 June 2009

Last day - 30 Jun 09

Well, the curlew season here in western Nebraska has ended for the summer. It's always amazing when they finish up, I often think "wait, they aren't DONE, are they?" but indeed, they finish very early in the season compared to other birds.


So on our way home to Iowa, we stopped at Lake MacConaughy to check for terns and plovers and weren't disappointed. Below is a LEAST TERN, one of our targets:

And secondly, PIPING PLOVERS are very common. Here is one of them:

And lastly, not too much usually happens while you're pumping gas at a gas station... but in this instance (behind the Cenex/Subway in North Platte), we heard a BELL'S VIREO singing from behind the building! A quick check confirmed this although the skulker did not reveal himself without a fight: