Nebraskaland

March 2022 • Nebraskaland 45 ogged writer and photographer. Accuracy hound. Swearer. Whiskey drinker. That was Jon Farrar. This colorful character of a man, who spent 42 years on the staff of Nebraskaland Magazine, passed away on March 30, 2021, at the age of 73. His closest friends will remember the stories he told, the late-night decoy carving sessions and how he disappeared into the Sandhills each October, primarily to hunt ducks. His body of work, however, including more than 580 articles, several books and tens of thousands of photographs honoring, and trying to conserve, the fl ora, fauna and history of our great state, will live on. "He is Nebraskaland," said longtime colleague and friend Michael Forsberg. "Not to take anything away from the others on the staff that were in that same generation, but he defi ned it. He set the bar." Nebraskaland employed writers and photographers when Farrar was hired, and he excelled at both. His other passion was research. He leaned on colleagues for insight and read everything he could fi nd on a subject, from scholarly papers to fi rst-hand accounts, before ever setting foot in the fi eld. Once there, he recorded his own observations in fi eld journals, a practice he began as a youth growing up a short walk from the Loup River in Monroe. Those small, brown, tattered notebooks came to be arranged neatly in a fi le cabinet in his offi ce, to aid his own or a fellow staff er's work long into the future. "As an outdoor writer I can think of few that were as good of a naturalist as him," said Gerry Steinauer, a longtime colleague. Farrar produced articles with a greater depth than had been seen previously in Nebraskaland, a depth that makes many of them reference material still today. Often, his work focused on articles about little known species that could be considered obscure. The Obscure Farrar wrote many natural history pieces during his career, stories detailing the life cycle, habits and habitats of plants and mammals of the state. While he wrote several on common species, including pheasants, Canada geese and bald eagles, many of his subjects were species the magazine's readers likely had never heard of, much less seen. There were stories on shrikes, skinks, wood rats, blue-eyed grass, and perhaps Farrar's favorite, grebes. In 1984, he wrote "Crested Hell Divers," a story about eared grebes, one of three subspecies of the birds found in the state. It is perhaps the best collection of photographs he captured for a story. "Jon didn't just think those birds were cool, he was in love with those birds," Forsberg said. " And every story that he e ver wrote about them, that love was just sort of oozing from the page and from the pictures." That collection of eared grebe images provides a glimpse of the time Farrar spent in the fi eld. He didn't just take one A Rare Bird Remembering Jon Farrar D Jon Farrar By Eric Fowler

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