22 Nebraskaland • November 2020
uring the summer, Calamus
Reservoir is bustling with activity.
Anglers ply its waters, and boats
and personal watercraft buzz
across its surface. Campgrounds are
filled with RVs, and people stake claim
to their own stretch of white-sand
beaches.
The 5,200-acre lake, located
northwest of Burwell, gets a bit quieter
when school begins in August, picking
back up on Labor Day weekend and
again in mid-October for the annual
Halloween activities. After that,
things really slow down, and through
the remainder of the fall, winter and
most of the spring, you might have the
entire lake to yourself.
You might have to share the land
around the lake with a hunter or two,
but with 5,000 acres, you won't know it.
In the surrounding riparian woodlands
and sandhills uplands and the winding
Calamus River and its many backwater
oxbow wetlands in the wildlife
management area above it, hunters can
find deer, turkey, grouse, pheasants,
quail, dove, ducks and geese.
Birders can find plenty of nongame
species to watch on the property,
deemed an Important Birding Area
by the National Audubon Society.
Thousands of American white pelicans
stop in the spring and fall. In the dead
of winter, hundreds of trumpeter swans
may be scattered around the lake but
mostly on its upper end and in the river
above. Hundreds of bald eagles flock to
Calamus, often sitting on the edge of
ice next to open water between flights
to pick up dead gizzard shad.
Far from any big city, the highways
here are less traveled, and the night
sky is dark. It's quiet here in the off-
season, but for many, there is no such
thing as too quiet.
N
C a l a m u s
The Off-Season
Photos and story by Eric Fowler
D
Common mergansers swoop in to land in an oxbow wetland on the Calamus River
at Calamus Wildlife Management Area.
