By Joel Jorgensen | joel.jorgensen@nebraska.gov | 21 December 2018 The 11th Harlan County Christmas Bird Count (CBC) took place on 14 December 2018. Weather was excellent with a high around 43 degrees and a low of 19 degrees. Skies were clear and winds were light all day. Thirteen observers recorded a total of 94 species, […]
The William Townsley Bird Collection
By Ross Silcock | silcock@rosssilcock.com | 11 December 2018 This article describes research into the fate of the iconic Townsley Collection of mounted bird specimens. The research was prompted by the presence in the Hastings Municipal Museum (HMM), Hastings, Nebraska, of an unlabeled mount of a Carolina Parakeet. This iconic species has been extinct since […]
Does “Lilian’s Meadowlark” occur in western Nebraska?
By Ross Silcock | silcock@rosssilcock.com | 18 October 2018 Eastern Meadowlark (Sturnella magna; EAME) is a widespread grassland species found throughout most of the US east of the Great Plains. There are 17 subspecies recognized (Pyle 1997), only four of these occurring north of Mexico: lilianae, breeding and wintering from central and southeast Arizona to […]
Nebraska’s 2nd Anna’s Hummingbird
By Joel Jorgensen | joel.jorgensen@nebraska.gov | 8 October 2018 Sometime emails are only spam and sometimes they are like Christmas presents. On Friday, Ross received an email about a second-hand report of an unusual hummingbird coming to a feeder just south of Fremont in Saunders County. Fortunately, the email included some decent, albeit fuzzy, photos […]
Are certain species over-reported?
This article originally appeared in the August 2018 edition of The Burrowing Owl, the newsletter of the Nebraska Ornithologists’ Union. By Ross Silcock As Seasonal Reports Compiler for Nebraska Bird Review and an eBird Reviewer for three regions in Nebraska, I might have a unique perspective on trends in reports of Nebraska bird sightings. Although […]
AOS Checklist revisions incorporated into BONO
The American Ornithological Society’s Committee on Classification and Nomenclature of North and Middle American Birds published its 2018 checklist supplement in late June. In recent years, the release of the checklist supplement has generated taxonomic shake-ups and even the addition and loss of species. For example, last year we lost Thayer’s Gull as that taxon […]