March 13, 1998

ANOTHER RITE OF SPRING TAXPAYERS read through tax instruction booklets in Love Library. IRS and state publications are free, and can be found on the second floor of the library. (Photo: Richard Wright)

Keith, Garden Counties Hot Spots for Birders

The annual northern migration of Sandhill cranes through the central Platte River Valley is well under way, and each week thousands of people troop to the Grand Island-Kearney corridor to marvel at the half-million cranes resting and refueling for the completion of the trip to their nesting grounds in Canada.

The passage of the cranes is Nebraska's best-known bird phenomenon, but the central Platte Valley is not the state's birding hot spot.

According to Paul Johnsgard, foundation professor of biological sciences at the University of Nebraska, that honor goes to the area around Lake McConaughy in Keith and Garden counties.

In 1996, Johnsgard and four colleagues published a paper in the Transactions of the Nebraska Academy of Sciences that identified 305 species in the area, including 104 breeding species, 17 probably breeding species and 184 transient, casual and accidental species.

"It's somewhere close to 310 now," Johnsgard said. "We've added two or three new ones in the last year or so.

"It's the best place in the state and the third-best place in the country to go birding. It has the third-largest local list for any locality in the entire United States."

The largest list, he said, belongs to the Laguna Astacosa National Wildlife Refuge at the southern tip of Texas. The second largest is the Cheyenne Bottoms area near Great Bend, Kan.

Johnsgard said the reason the Lake McConaughy area attracts so many different bird species is its range of habitats - a large reservoir that stays open most of the winter, the North Platte River, coniferous forest in the cedar bluffs on the south side of the reservoir and the river, deciduous forest next to the river and the Sandhills grasslands to the north.

"The birds perhaps get blown in and see this big lake and decide it's a good place to rest," Johnsgard said. "It's especially good for shore birds, water birds and diving birds. The river valley attracts birds like magpies out of the western coniferous forest and eastern warblers from the eastern deciduous forests drift west along the Platte. Several of the arctic loons and strictly arctic breeding gulls have turned up out there. There are some mockingbirds, but that's really right at the western and northern end of the of their range."

The NU ornithologist said that in warm, dry years, species have tended to move up out of the Southwest, including a nesting Cassin's sparrow, a species that "shouldn't breed in Nebraska at all."

Johnsgard said the cornucopia of birds came as a total and immediate surprise to him when he first started working at Cedar Point in 1977.

"It was like Dorothy landing in Oz," he recalled. "It came as an enormous surprise to see the diversity there. From that point on, I've done my best to get back there every year to teach. Over 20 years or so, we began to build up a big list, especially when William Scharf and Josef Kren (two of his coauthors on the paper) started mist-netting and catching a lot of birds you don't ordinarily see."

Johnsgard said work on finishing four books will prevent him from participating in another field season NU's Cedar Point Biological Station near Ogallala, but he said he thinks the area's bird list will continue to grow because of unusual weather and the use of mist nets.

"We have at least one record of an owl that shouldn't be nesting yet but has already fledged young; the cranes' migration started very, very early; and the peak of the snow goose migration is already over (in mid-February)," he said. "All this suggests a very early migration and I think this is a reflection of El Niño and mild winter temperatures.

"Every year we add a few species and there's a fair chance we might hit 320 in the next few years."

- Tom Simons, Public Relations

Severe Weather Awareness Week Looming on Horizon

Severe Weather Awareness Week will be March 23-27. The statewide tornado watch/warning test will be March 25. The simulated watch and the simulated warning will be issued at about 10 a.m.

UNL will participate with the Office of Civil Defense and test its systems when the outdoor sirens are sounded. All faculty, staff, students, and visitors are requested to participate in the test to refamiliarize themselves with the locations of their designated shelters and the procedures to follow should UNL be struck by a tornado. When the warning is sounded, all personnel on campus should proceed to the designated shelter area.

The designated shelter area is displayed on orange posters located throughout all UNL buildings.

Here are some reminders:

A tornado watch means that conditions are right for tornadoes to form. A tornado warning means that a tornado has been spotted on the ground or is approaching the vicinity.

When a tornado warning has been issued, the University Operator will activate the internal building alarms at the same time Civil Defense sounds the outdoor sirens. The internal alarm is an intermittent signal that sounds at six-second intervals. The initial warning tones continue for five minutes. It will then silence. If after five more minutes, UNL is still under a warning, the internal signal will be reactivated for one minute. This process, one-minute of intermittent tones followed by five minutes of silence, continues until the threat has passed. Do not take the one-minute signal as an "all clear" message. The official "all clear" will only be given over the radio. Do not assume that if the signal stops for more than five minutes that all danger has passed. There may be a system malfunction that could make it inoperable.

For more information, call Bruce Bernt at 2-2131.

Tornado Awareness Training

All faculty, staff, and students are invited to attend one of two identical training sessions on "Tornado Awareness," scheduled for March 18. One session meets at 11 a.m. in the Nebraska Union. It repeats at 1:30 p.m. in the East Union. The Civil Defense Office of Lincoln/Lancaster County will present these sessions. The purpose is to increase knowledge and awareness of tornadoes and the proper action to take should a tornado strike UNL. The information presented will be relevant to your safety at home as well.

For more information, call Bruce Bernt at 2-2131.

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