* BIG AFTERNOON (& Lost in the Wilderness)

Yesterday (8/6/07) I did a "Big Afternoon," in which the birder records as many species as she/he can in that time period (noon to dusk [or to midnight, for the hardy]). These are much more difficult than "Big Mornings": the two hours after sunrise are the climax of the day, bird-activity-wise, with the last hour or so before dusk usually a distant second, in my experience. By noon, the songfests & feasting are done, and the doldrum-heat of the afternoon is lethargic "kick-back" time for many species. Another contrast: on a Big Morning, I am also excited & invigorated at daybreak, along with the birds; with a Big Afternoon, I'm pretty tired & spent by that last daylight hour when the birds are once again quite active. So I did pretty well, I suppose, to get 50 species, a record for me. Since I've rarely done Big Afternoons, for the reasons stated above, the record was easy to break. Plus, early August—after many species are done nesting and before they start migrating—might be one of the worst times for such a venture, next to the dead of winter. Worse yet, yesterday, there was a downpour from before noon until about 1:15, and so the enterprise began as a semi-fiasco (for me, not nature; and would end with another one). But I was rewarded, when it stopped raining, by having driven to a new spot for me, Schramm Park SRA, a state park between Lincoln & Omaha, just south of I-80. (But, characteristically, I took the back roads there, in hopes of more birds.) The highlight was a new species, the Least Tern: there was a pair of them, both diving in one of the ponds at the park entrance, making seemingly kamikaze splashes into the water, for small fish. These are small birds, after all, and ergo their name, "Least." Kinda sad, really, for a bird: some birds are GREAT (e.g., the Great Crested Flycatcher), but some are LESSER (e.g., the Lesser Yellowlegs) than "great," and some are last and LEAST! Well, at least there were two of them: "one good tern deserves another," I always say. (Bad birder-nerd humor.) I saw my first Green Heron of the day at these ponds, too, and several later: I've grown fond of this particular species, which I never saw in SoDak—so small and, uh, skulking, I guess, compared to the Great Blue Heron. (I meant something more positive in connotation than skulking—and something less generic, more assertive, than secretive or furtive.) [(Same day, later add:) Maybe the word is just "sneaky"!?] Later, at a slough in Pioneers Park (Lincoln), I scanned the water—nothing . . . no, wait! There was a Green Heron there, frozen in place & time, its head and neck posed just above the horizontal, its eyes indicative of a mind bent on a fish-fetish monomania of a mission—all beyond the bounds of my human patience. (If I had a heron's patience, my life wouldn't be a collection of unfinished stories, essays, songs, web pages, and other projects grandly conceived but only half-executed.) Across the highway was the Platte River itself: "I've heared talk o' this here Platte River"—and Nebraskans have good reason to boast of its avifauna. I watched a Bald Eagle fly overhead, the first I'd seen in several years. It was an adult, with the full white head. It was probably only 30 or 40 yards away, and I was struck again at how large this bird is, compared to its hawk-raptor relatives—though the Turkey Vulture is nearly as big. I also thought I saw a Piping Plover when I first arrived at the riverbank, on the closest sandbar, but it immediately ran to the other side of the bar, beyond my vision. But this may have been wishful thinking on my part since, Least Tern just recorded, this bird is now #1 on my species-to-get-for-my-Life-List. (And it still remains so—I didn't see it well enough to count it, especially as the first sighting of a new species.) Farther down the river is the Platte River State Park, where I recorded a Yellow-billed Cuckoo, a species I've become much better acquainted with since moving to Nebraska. The song is curious—not a "coo-coo" at all, really: rather a repeated skoht—deep-pitched, gutteral, even fowl-like. The afternoon's other highlights, in terms of variety of birds, were the two best birding venues in Lincoln, Pioneers Park and Wilderness Park. But in the latter place, a second fiasco occurred. Somewhere between marveling at the song of an Indigo Bunting and ogling a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher ogling me back, I got "turned around," direction-wise. Note that Wilderness Park is aptly named, a deep-wooded area several miles long, intersected by a few roads a mile apart. Well, I finally came to the bridge/road where my car was parked—it seemed like it had been a longer trail than usual—but wait: my car wasn't there, and it was actually a different bridge, and a different road. Damn: it was in the mid-90's, Missouri-humid, and I hadn't brought anything to drink, and I couldn't figure out/remember if this road was a mile north or a mile south of the road where my car was, and I began to panic, and I wondered how far it was (these are the boonies/outskirts of Lincoln) to a Mini-Mart phone to call a cab or something—and then I heard a Black-capped Chickadee—ah!—and wrote it down. I finally flagged down a biker who told me that I was on Old Cheney Rd, that my street—W Pioneers Blvd—was a mile north . . . I found a bottle of water in the car that I'd kept in there for months. It was hotter than hell, but still tasted good. In spite of "losing" an hour (approx. 6:00-7:00 pm), I still had the time and motivation to hit some dirt roads and WMAs (Wildlife Management Areas) northwest of Lincoln for a few more species. . . . "Oh, Tom Gannon? Yeh, the irony: he died birdwatchin' down at Wilderness Park. Roasted to death, poor man. But at least he broke his Big Afternoon record that day, I hear." = = = = P.S.: Oh, yeh, I saw a Eurasian Collared-Dove in Elmwood, Nebraska. (Just caught a flash-glimpse, but the white under-tail feathers were distinctive.) I'm familiar with this bird, which has begun showing up in Rapid City (SoDak) the last few years, and I actually wonder why I haven't seen them in Lincoln yet.