BIRDS ON THE PLATTE IN MARCH

      During March, each year, I watch our computer screen to see migrant birds on the Platte River in southcentral Nebraska via a live camera at Audubon's Rowe Sanctuary.  And I am excited to see plenty of them, including hundreds of thousands of sandhill cranes, thousands of dabbling ducks of at least four kinds, mixed flocks of blackbirds, and several scavenging bald eagles.  Those birds fill the air, the shallow channels of the Platte, and its many mudflats, particularly at dawn and dusk, and overnight all through March and into April.  And all those bird species are strikingly attractive, making them enjoyable to experience, even on a computer screen.     

     The stately cranes roost on the flats and in the shallows at night, but each morning take off in great, noisy flocks and fly out to feed on waste grain in harvested fields on the Nebraska prairie.  Toward sunset, however, the cranes' great masses are back on the Platte to roost overnight.  Their incoming, swirling flocks fill the sky, and the flats and shallows, night after night during March, into April, until they migrate farther north to their nesting territories in Canada and Alaska. 

     Mixed groups of migrant northern pintails, green-winged teals, American wigeons and mallards, all duck species of shallow water, dominated the flats and shallows during the day when the cranes were in the fields.  Those ducks fed on aquatic vegetation and invertebrates in the slower channels.

     Female ducks of all species were mostly brown, which camouflages them while they are incubating eggs and raising ducklings.  But the drakes of each kind are handsome dandies, which attracts the attention of females for mating.  Pintail drakes are streamlined and gray mostly, with dark-brown and white on their heads and necks.  Male teal are mostly brown, with a green streak on each side of their heads and a green patch on each wing that is visible when they fly.  Male wigeons are basically somber with white feathering on top of their heads, from beaks to necks.  And mallard drakes have lovely, iridescent, green heads, yellow beaks and orange feet and legs. 

     A couple of times, I saw mixed flocks of migrant red-winged blackbirds and yellow-headed blackbirds searching for invertebrates in the mud flats.  Males of both kinds were elegant in their striking plumages.  Males of both species are mostly black, but red-wings have a scarlet patch on each shoulder and the yellow-heads have bright yellow heads, necks and chests.  

     Female red-wings are chocolate-brown, with black streaking, causing them to be camouflaged.  Female yellow-heads are more brownish than their mates and have "washed-out" yellow on their faces and throats.

     Those blackbird gatherings were restless, however.  Every few minutes the birds took off and landed on another flat to feed. 

     Several majestic bald eagles were present through March, into April.  I saw that they were scavenging dead cranes and ducks on the flats and shallows.  And probably some of them stayed along the Platte to rear young.  

     Audubon's Rowe Sanctuary along the Platte River in southcentral Nebraska is a wonderful refuge through the year, but especially in early spring with the sandhill crane and other birds' migrations through it.  And this refuge's live camera can be found by typing " Live camera- Rowe Sanctuary, Nebraska".       

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