Birding Phenomenon 2011

The Linn and Buchanan County Conservation Boards sponsor outdoor outings as a means of promoting unique and important natural places in the Midwest.

This year's trip will offer the opportunity to witness two spectacles of the birding world. We will visit the Kellerton Bird Conservation Area in Ringgold County to witness the mating ritual of the greater prairie chicken, a bird common in Iowa at the time of settlement, and re-established in Iowa beginning in 1987. Male prairie chickens display their bright orange throat sacks and fan out their tails and wings. They stomp and call with “weird, eerie, mournful, haunting” boomings to establish their spot at the lek-center stage means the right to mate with the females. From about 3 pm through dusk, the ritual continues.

Then it is on to a Sunday evening stop along the Platte River near Kearney, Nebraska, which features an experience of a lifetime – the great migration stop of a half million sandhill cranes. Occasionally, whooping cranes, one of the rarest bird species in North America, are spotted among the sandhill cranes. We will witness the sights and sounds of the great gathering of birds from the vantage point of specially placed blinds at the Rowe Sanctuary.

The Ian Nicolson Audubon Center at The Rowe Sanctuary offers guided trips to view the world's largest concentration of sandhill cranes, along with hundreds of thousands of ducks and geese, from observation blinds on the banks of the Platte River in southcentral Nebraska. Trips to the observation blinds are timed to provide the best opportunities to view the huge gatherings on their nighttime roosts. Group sizes are limited to maintain the quality and uniqueness of the experience.