Papers in the Biological Sciences
Date of this Version
September 2000
Abstract
The changes that have occurred in the bird life of the Lincoln area during the past century must certainly be great, but we have little evidence to document this point. There is, however, an annotated bird list from 1900 for the salt basin wetlands of western Lincoln, an area then gradually being developed for recreational use. This list was published by J. S. Hunter in the Proceedings of the First Annual Meeting of the Nebraska Ornithologists' Union (1900, 18-21). Hunter reported that some 84 species (by modern taxonomy) had been seen by him and other bird-club members, including such modern-day rarities as the Whooping Crane, Least Tern, Piping Plover, and Trumpeter Swan. In 1940 a list of 86 (85 by current taxonomy) species of birds reported from what is now called Nine-Mile Prairie was published by D. B. Whelen (Nebraska Bird Review, 8:50-55). These species, of course, are nearly all upland birds, so the two lists scarcely overlap and collectively offer an excellent idea of both upland and lowland bird species occurring in the Lincoln area prior to World War II.
Comments
Published in The Nebraska Bird Review 68:3 (Sep 2000), pp. 132–137. Used by permission of the Nebraska Ornithologists’ Union