Nebraskaland

46 Nebraskaland • March 2022 trip, capture a few frames and call it good. He went back time and time again, brushing aside heat, cold and bugs, to get the images he needed to tell the story of the lives of these creatures. He also cared about his subjects. When photographing nesting birds, he slowly moved blinds closer, often through the course of days, hoping they would accept his presence. In time, he knew which birds would and which ones would not. One bird he wrote about in "A Tale of Two Stilts" in June 2001, the black-necked stilt, never really did. As Farrar chronicled, it was hot and there was no wind, and the stilts, one appearing to have "sheer terror in her eyes," were taking turns tending the three chicks that had hatched that morning and one yet-to-hatch egg, between cooling off in the water. "The birds were suff ering," Farrar wrote. "I was torn between doing what was right, and what I had to do. I had nearly as many days invested in the nest as the stilts. And, if I left my grass-covered blind only 12 feet from the stilt nest, I might disrupt the hatching more than if I stayed. Telling myself that helped briefl y. But I knew this was the most important day of the year for the two stilts panting and pacing near the nest. By noon, my conscience was unbearable. I pulled the blind and quickly left the meadow." Farrar focused on these lesser-known species partly because he hated the ordinary. But he also wrote about them in hopes of fostering greater appreciation among people for all things wild, and the landscapes and habitats in which they lived. To him, they mattered, just as much as the game species with which most people were familiar. "He was way more interested in the true natives and the little guys, the underdogs ... the kangaroo rats and blowout grass species," said Jim Van Winkle, a long-time friend of Farrar's from Wood Lake. "I think he felt that those species were entitled to recognition. And they were just such an intrinsic part of the ecosystems up here that they needed to get the same amount of attention that a ring-necked pheasant would." The Sandhills Farrar's true love was the Sandhills. He loved everything about the region, and in 1977, he produced an entire issue of the magazine dedicated to it. "Have you got a few minutes?" he wrote in this issue. "Have another cup of coff ee and let me tell you what I know of these hills and their people. No, I'm not a sandhiller; didn't even move here as a boy. But I wish I had. I'm just passing through, like you, but I've passed through here before and I know something of these people." He wrote about the history, from the Native Americans Farrar once told me this image he captured of a female eared grebe laying an egg in a Sandhills marsh was his "all-time high." In "Crested Hell Divers," he wrote: "The ear grebe's nest is even fl imsier than the western grebe's. I guess the eared grebe is a lower middle-class bird living as if he's wealthy."

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