In summer our area is host to birds that live here year-round as well as summer residents from the tropics that come to only to nest and raise their young.

Nesting woodland birds include yellow-billed cuckoo, eastern wood-pewee, warbling, red-eyed and yellow-throated vireos, carolina and house wrens, wild turkey, wood thrush, scarlet tanager, rose-breasted grosbeak, eastern towhee, northern cardinal, indigo bunting and warbler species like northern parula, yellow-throated, yellow, American redstart, prothonotary, ovenbird, Louisiana waterthrush and common yellowthroat.

Western meadowlark, dickcissel, Bell's vireo, eastern kingbird, orchard oriole and field and grasshopper sparrows nest in our prairies, fields and roadsides.

The interior least tern and piping plover are uncommon and endangered species that nest on Platte River sandbars. Many of our woodland species may be found in the trees along the edge of the Platte and Missouri Rivers as well. Our earliest fall migrants, the shorebirds begin returning south in July with peak numbers in August.