Republican River Valley and Cather Country are new to Chicken Dance Trail

HOLDREGE -- A new bird watching adventure featuring Red Cloud, the lower Republican River valley, Harlan Dam and Oxford is the latest addition to the popular Chicken Dance Trail Website.

"Birders from all over the country have discovered the Chicken Dance Trail region of southwest and south central Nebraska as one of the most interesting and fruitful bird watching regions of the country," said Nancy Herhahn, who, with her sister Betty Sayers launched chickendancetrail.com in 2006 under the auspices of the South Platte United Chambers of Commerce.

The new adventure, presented as a first-person narrative, takes readers from the Willa Cather Memorial Prairie near Red Cloud along back roads beside the Republican River where the authors encounter turkeys, bushes full of Baltimore Orioles and an abandoned bridge that's home to an entire neighborhood of mud swallows.

At the Harlan County Dam, our birders are treated to an unusual view of a turkey vulture as well as a variety of shore and water birds. In Oxford, they find a quiet pond and a wide variety of avian visitors.

The Republican River Adventure joins several existing adventures at http://chickendancetrail.com, including the Rainwater Basin Adventure, the Sand Sage Adventure and the Loess Canyons Adventure. Each adventure is accompanied by detailed interactive maps with GPS coordinates and includes information about local restaurants, lodging and other attractions.

"We try to imagine a couple or a family out for a day of bird watching," Betty Sayers said. "We try to suggest where they might stop for coffee or lunch."

Sayers said the site receives visitors from all over the country and throughout the world. "We have an extraordinary resource here," she said.

"We hope by bringing people to the site they are getting a sense of what Nebraska has to offer."