The Greatest Shows on Earth: Spring Nebraska
Smack-dab in the middle of the continent, Nebraska is the resting place spring and fall for millions of migrating birds, from hawks to longspurs. In March, all eyes are on the central part of the state, where the braided channels of the Platte River swell with snowmelt—and with nearly the entire world population of Sandhill Cranes. More than six hundred thousand cranes loaf and feed along the river, roosting in the shallows overnight and fattening themselves in the adjacent fields during the day. There is no more moving spectacle in North America than the evening return and the morning departure from the roost, an experience of noisy abundance virtually without equal.
Just as spring begins, so does another show, the mating dances of the Greater Prairie-Chicken. Males gather on long-traditional booming grounds, or leks, to strut and hoot in the short grass, in hopes of intimidating each other and impressing the hens, almost all of which will copulate with a single successful male. The scene, repeated at dawn and dusk for several weeks, is a powerful evocation of the prairie's past, when the grass belonged to the birds in their breathtaking abundance.
His numerous scholarly publications include two books on the Latin animal literature of the later Middle Ages. Among Rick's recent books are the ABA Field Guide to Birds of New Jersey and the ABA Field Guide to Birds of Arizona; his Peterson Reference Guide to American Sparrows was published in 2019. He is also the co-author with Sanford Sorkin of Watching Birds in Montclair and Watching Birds in the New Jersey Meadowlands. Especially interested in the history and culture of birding, he is hard at work on a study of hummingbird collecting in France from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. In his spare time, he teaches Latin courses online for the Paideia Institute. Rick lives with his family, Alison Beringer and Avril Huang, and their black lab, Quetzal, in northern New Jersey, where he offers private birding tours to the marshes, woodlands, and ocean beaches.
Victor holds a B.A. in zoology and botany from the University of Texas and an M.A. in government from Harvard. In 1993, he was the recipient of the Roger Tory Peterson Excellence in Birding Award, given by the Houston Audubon Society in recognition of a lifetime of dedication to careful observation, education, and addition to the body of avian knowledge. In 2004, he received the Roger Tory Peterson Award from the American Birding Association, and the Arthur A. Allen Award from the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology.
Victor is a past board member of the Nature Conservancy of Texas, the National Audubon Society, the American Bird Conservancy, and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. In May 2017, the University of Texas Press published his memoir, One More Warbler, A Life with Birds.
