Magpies and my first year of birding 2003

We were out on a bicycle tour for 200 miles of Western Nebraska. I had my cheaper camera with me, and got pictures of the Magpies at Scott's Bluff.

The first photo shows the limits of that camera.

Magpies are not common out there in Nebraska, and they are not at all in cities like they are in Europe. I did find one more leaving Scott's Bluff going East to Bridgeport.

I had found my first magpies to document in 2003 on a trip we made to Alberta. I had found them in Colorado after that. But only now in Nebraska.

In my early days of birding I have the first 100 or so birds listed, not in very good order. But I had yet to go on Audubon trips locally and had not sought a lot of birds in Missouri. So this list of birds, which are from that trip, is a bit comical, for "lifers." It took me years to see avocets again, in 2009. The first bird on the trip list was actually lifer 43. So that 1 is Lifer 43 and the last from the trip Lifer 68.

1. yellow-bellied sapsucker (June 2003 Manitoba)
2. gray catbird (Alberta)
3. yellow warbler (Manitoba, other birds were MO a year or two later)
4. spotted towhee (Alberta)
5. black-billed magpie (Alberta)
6. ring-billed gull (Alberta)
7. Clark’s nutcracker (Alberta)
8. Gray Jay (Alberta)
9. Common Raven (Alberta)
10. Song sparrow (Alberta)
11. Chipping Sparrow (Alberta)
12. Great horned owl (Alberta, mobbed)
13. American avocet (Saskatchewan)
14. Canvasback (Saskatchewan)
15. double-crested cormorant (Saskatchewan)
16. Lazuli bunting (North Dakota)
17. white-breasted nuthatch (ND)
18. black-capped chickadee (ND)
19. northern flicker (Nebraska)  THEN MISSOURI:
20. ruby-throated hummingbird (Sep 2003)
21. common nighthawk
22. red-breasted nuthatch
23. wood thrush
24. american kestrel
25. carolina wren

Carolina wrens were in my yard! Why did I not bother to write it down before! 

I saw a lazuli bunting on that trip, and it is the only one I have seen so far. I don't have a date for it so it does not appear on my eBird list.