Latest Features

By Todd Mills It’s impossible to measure the heart of your hunting dog, or in my experience, your retriever. Even more impossible is measuring when you should shut down your dog, or in some cases, manage them into their twilight years. No matter how willing the heart is, the body will grow weak. Long gone might be the days of the perfect water entry, or the sunrise to sunset upland hunt. Managing your own expectations and caring for your elderly …

In March, we highlight the timber rattlesnake, a Tier I at-risk species in Nebraska.   By Olivia DaRugna, Watchable Wildlife Biologist Like Indian Jones, many people are terrified of snakes, but this fear is not much more than a defense mechanism. When you stop to think about snakes and their role in the ecosystem, these animals have evolved to possess unique traits that are actually quite ingenious. For example, the serpents’ cryptic coloration keeps them well disguised, and with no …

How a forest-dwelling shorebird makes a living in Nebraska’s prairies By Joel Jorgensen and Stephen J. Brenner Photos by Eric Fowler As winter’s grip begins to loosen in early March, one of the first tangible signs of spring comes in the form of one unusual bird’s evening courtship display. Along with first returning flocks of geese, sandhill cranes and a noticeable northward push of bald eagles, the American woodcock is one of our earliest arriving migratory birds, often laying claim …

Best of Show BEST OF SHOW – Wondrous Woodies Photo by Roy Swoboda, Meadow Grove @wild.focus.photography With more than 3,500 entries submitted through Instagram, the 2022 Nebraskaland Magazine Photo Contest once again drew a record number of stunning images, forcing us to add an additional category, Invertebrates, to our perennial categories of Wildlife, Flora, Scenic and Recreation. This year’s Best of Show winner, “Wondrous Woodies,” by Roy Swoboda of Meadow Grove, was taken on a slough near the Missouri River …

By Joel Jorgensen, Nongame Bird Program Manager A few years ago, if someone raised the possibility of a limpkin reaching Nebraska, an appropriate response would have been “when pigs fly.” That is because, not long ago, limpkins were restricted to Central and South America, the Caribbean and Florida. In North America, any limpkin wandering north of the sunshine state would have been big news. Over the past two decades, limpkins began to increase in Florida and push a little farther …

By Monica Macoubrie, Wildlife Education Specialist Aldo Leopold, John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt are names you might know. These men are considered the forefathers of conservation in American, and although what they accomplished has been important, the contributions of women in conservation often have been overlooked. To celebrate International Women’s Day, let’s peek into the past and see how women have shaped the wild places of North America. Rachel Carson Rachel Carson grew up in the rural river town of …

By Amber Schiltz, Wildlife Educator Dirt, soil, ground, outer crust layer — we walk, skip and drive on top of it every day without giving it much thought. Humans and most animals we know spend their lives above it, under blue skies and the light of the sun, in the wide-open space we call home above ground. But life doesn’t stop at the ground surface. There’s a whole world of nature found below. Let’s dive into this underground world and …

March Wildlife Viewing — Sandhill Cranes By Olivia DaRugna, Watchable Wildlife Biologist Observing the convergence of over a million sandhill cranes along the Central Platte River is like immersing yourself in a nature documentary. The sandhill crane migration is truly one of the world’s greatest wildlife spectacles, on par with the awe-inspiring caribou migrations across northern Alaska and Canada or the mass movement of wildebeest herds across the Serengeti in Tanzania. The best part about the sandhill crane migration is …

By Alie Mayes, Community Science Specialist Tardigrades, also known as water bears or moss piglets, are a group of animals that are found almost everywhere on earth – including Nebraska! Now, you may be thinking, “If Tardigrades are so common, why have I never seen one?” It’s because tardigrades are tiny – very tiny — like half a millimeter tiny. That’s even smaller than the point of your pencil. On top of being minuscule, tardigrades are also hard to see …

By Ronica Stromberg, National Research Traineeship Program Coordinator Miyauna Incarnato, doctoral researcher at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, has discovered that studying monarch butterflies is not for the faint of heart. For one thing, eastern monarch butterflies are hard to track. The orange-and-black beauties breed four to five generations in a year, with successive generations migrating from Mexico to Canada and back again. Depending on where and when they are born, the butterflies live for different lengths of time. Only adults …