3/21/2021 0 Comments And the hits keep comingYesterday's steady south breezes blew out lots of the migrant waterfowl that had been stacked up here in south-central Nebraska awaiting good tailwinds, but they blew in a few new birds as well, including two FOY Eastern Phoebes. (My wife & I named our firstborn Phoebe, an homage to both the bird and to the female church leader mentioned in the Bible in Romans 16. Hi, Phoebe, you delight, you!) I've always loved these early spring flycatchers of farm and wet woodland with their simple song and gentle tail-wagging habit. Something about the humble, brown phoebes quietly but busily building their little mud cup nests under bridges reminds me of Hobbits, which Tolkien says "have been living and farming for many hundreds of years, quite content to ignore and be ignored by the world of the Big Folk" and "must seem of little importance." Phoebes won't grab your attention or demand your allegiance; they win our affection by gracefully going about their lives in earth-tone suits. Blessed are the meek. One species I was getting nervous I wouldn't be able to find in Adams Co this year was the Greater Prairie-Chicken, but I finally located a flock of six yesterday. They were along a rutted, minimum maintenance road through rolling sandhills covered in tall, native grasses. Prairie chickens have something of a celebrity status here, second only to our Sandhill Cranes; birders from all over the world have paid for space in a Nebraska photo blind to watch these rare, native birds on their leks (communal dancing grounds where males come to compete and perform while females watch and choose a mate.) I won't be able to give adequate description of how they stamp their feet and erect their "horns," raising their orange eyebrows and inflating their orange air sacks, so look for a video online. A phoebe would blush to see such a gaudy and audacious display!
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