Nebraskaland

NEBRASKAland May 2015

NEBRASKAland Magazine is dedicated to outstanding photography and informative writing with an engaging mix of articles and photos highlighting Nebraska’s outdoor activities, parklands, wildlife, history and people.

Issue link: http://mag.outdoornebraska.gov/i/498175

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42 NEBRASKAland • MAY 2015 Arriving to prairie nesting grounds in the northern Great Plains, this long-billed curlew raises its wings in territorial display. L ong-billed curlews. Marbled godwits. Wilson's phalaropes. American avocets. Greater yellowlegs. Their names are as curious as their appearances. With more than 60 species of shorebirds in North America, some of these mostly small to medium-sized birds with thin bills and long legs can appear as odd in appearance as masquerade ball characters. Perhaps their most distinctive features are their bills: some are very long, some very short, curved up, curved down, or straight. Each bill is smartly designed for the prey that they hunt while wading the shallows and patrolling shorelines of lakes, rivers, sandbars and open grasslands, picking and probing their way for small terrestrial and aquatic insects, worms and other assorted proteins. Take the American avocet for example, with its thin and sensitive upturned bill that it sweeps back and forth just under the water's surface for brine shrimp like a person cleaning the sidewalk with a broom. Or the formidable long- billed curlew, as tall as a red-tailed hawk, and as proficient a hunter with its nearly eight-inch long downward curved bill stalking grasshoppers in the Nebraska prairie in summer as it is probing for aquatic insects in the sand and surf of the Texas Gulf Coast in winter. Collectively, these far-flung shorebirds can migrate from wintering grounds as far south as Central America and travel as far north as the Arctic tundra and the edge of the Bering Sea to breed. A few hardy species such as the greater and lesser yellowlegs will show up in Nebraska as early as March with the big pulse of migrating waterfowl and cranes, but the vast majority will push through quietly in April and May. Moving Through Grasslands Photos and story by Michael Forsberg

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