#245 AND a Least Bittern!

  The day didn't start off well today or yesterday. After going 45 days in a row with little to no rain, now it's going to rain every day and eliminate all the shorebird habitat- at least that's my fear any time I read the weather forecast or look at the radar. So this morning when more rain came in, I was a little disturbed, to say the least. I had to alter my original plan to go to Vernon Hills first and check the athletic fields for Uppies. Now finding an Uppie in Lake County will take no small act of God. I've never seen 1 here and only heard of 1 or 2 in my 5 years of extensive birding. Still, I need to make the effort in order to have a shot at the record. In any case, I had to start at Waukegan Beach first, since it wasn't raining there, then hit Waukegan Airport, Vernon Hills, and Rollins to round out the morning.
  Waukegan Beach is a tough place to bird mentally. Usually there's absolutely nothing there except standard fare, but 1 day you'll hit something really cool. Initially it looked pretty bleak this morning. No shorebirds except the standard SPOTTED SANDPIPERS and SANDERLINGS. I was expecting something on the beach with impending storms looming dark in the west. I did see a shorebird farther down the beach, so I headed out to walk at least to the pond and back. Yes, there's a pond on the beach. It is favored by shorebirds every once in a while, but I haven't seen many in there over the years. There was a Tricolored Heron that hung out there for a few days in spring a couple of years ago. As I approached the pond slowly, I saw a Great Blue Heron to my left along with a juvenile Black-crowned Night Heron. In front of me I saw a juvenile Green Heron and next to it was a butterscotch ball with a bill staring right at me.....a LEAST BITTERN! I don't swear often, but I let one fly right there. I have never seen a Least Bittern in Lake County. I've HEARD them a few times, but never seen one. I've actually only seen them twice TOTAL in the U.S. and those were either distant looks or fleeting flybys. This was a killer look and it was AWESOME!!

  That was a pretty nice start to the day. I then headed to the Waukegan Airport. Airports are sometimes used by Uppies during migration as well as sod farms and hay fields, so I thought I would check it out. It looked promising but not much was there. Then I headed to Fairway Dr. in Vernon Hills where the Vernon Hills HS and Stevenson HS athletic fields are. This area looks very promising. I had 117 KILLDEER here and over 125 RING-BILLED GULLS. Also 2 HORNED LARKS and numerous blackbirds. If that many birds like the area, I'm thinking an Uppie can slip in there somewhere. I guess we'll see. Nothing today, though. I headed back home and stopped at the Peterson Rd. fluddle which had 6 STILT SANDPIPERS, 4 LEAST SANDPIPERS, 1 LESSER YELLOWLEGS, and 1 SEMIPALMATED SANDPIPER. Not too shabby.
  My last stop was at Rollins. My Rollins trips consist of two parts: taking my bike and riding around the loop to check the trailside ponds, and then hiking off-trail around the main pond. So I took off on my bike appropriately laden with camera, bins, and small scope. My first stop was the west trailside pond. It looks real good at the north end with a nice puddle surrounded by mud. I got off my bike and glassed the area with my bins....1 Killdeer, 2 Killdeer, and, wait....it looks like a BAIRD'S!

I got my scope on the bird and had a nice look at the buffy color on the chest, black legs and thin black bill, thin eye ring, long body, and...the key...long wings past the tail. This bird was also definitely bigger than the other peeps of the day. It was great to see this bird. I don't see many of them usually. The problem, though, was that this bird was very jumpy due to harassment by the Killdeer. It took off and flew away once only to return, but it was constantly flitting around the puddle until the Killdeer drove it off for good. Consequently I didn't get a diagnostic pic at all, which bugged me. Hopefully I will find another one, but still a great bird, #245 for the year! I finished the morning with 11 shorebird species, which isn't too bad for July in Lake County:

Killdeer  125     mostly at VHills athletic fields
Spotted Sandpiper  4
Solitary Sandpiper  2     rollins
Greater Yellowlegs  6
Lesser Yellowlegs  5
Sanderling  4
Semipalmated Sandpiper  1
Least Sandpiper  12
Baird's Sandpiper  1     rollins west side pond
Stilt Sandpiper  6     peterson rd. fluddle
Short-billed Dowitcher  1     rollins discovery trail main pond

Tomorrow the search for the Uppie continues!

The Tube Strikes Again!

It's shorebird season, so the best place to find shorebirds is the Geotube on Grass Lake, so my trusty compadre and rowing partner, as well as my awesome wife, Michelle, and I headed out around 6:30am to the tube. Great weather and calm water as usual, though the boat traffic was unusually heavy for the time of day. It took us about 15 min. to row out to the island where we saw that the water levels were definitely much higher than before the rains. Some mudflat still was present, though, so I was thinking some shorebirds would still be there. There were SOME but compared to last week it was slim pickins. 12 SHORT-BILLED DOWITCHERS methodically probed the mud while 4 STILT SANDPIPERS did the same in a different area to the NE. There were 3 SPOTTED SANDPIPERS on the rocks. Other than those, there were none. Slightly disappointing to say the least. I've noticed that since the rains have come, the number of shorebirds, despite good habitat, has decreased.
  So, since the action was minimal, we headed back around the island and headed toward the dock. Now, as we were watching for shorebirds earlier, I had said to my wife, "we need to check the trees around the island also because now is a good time for some wandering herons to show up." Fortunately, she was listening, because I failed to take my own advice, and as we headed around the island I was focused on rowing and paid no notice to the shoreline of the island. The south end of the island is heavily vegetated and has a nice little moat perfect for herons. As we neared this area, Michelle said, "Hey, what's that bird? It looks too small to be a Great Blue Heron." I glanced over, saw the bird, and nearly pooped my pants when I saw a gorgeous YELLOW-CROWNED NIGHT HERON staring right at me! Being the spaz that I am, I quickly fumbled with my camera to get a pic, and, in so doing, freaked the bird and it flew over the trees and out of sight before I could snap a pic. Unbelievable! Yet another county lifer for me! A truly great bird for Lake County, and one that I would never have guessed that I would see this year.

            On the way back we had nice looks at many BLACK TERNS in various stages of molt. At least 8 were flying around.

Gotta love Grass Lake!

0 for 2

  It's been a few days without blogging......mainly because I haven't seen much of interest. It's the beginning of shorebird season, so the shorebirds are beginning to show up. Unfortunately, they're always the same ones. Of course, when 2 new birds showed up last week, I was in Wisconsin for a week. Amazing. Well, part of the aura of doing a big year is the frustration of missing good birds. I've already missed a Mockingbird, a Harlequin Duck, and a Baird's Sandpiper this year, so I was hoping to improve on that today.
  Jake Cvetas saw what he thought was a Yellow-crowned Night Heron yesterday afternoon in Buffalo Grove. That's a great bird for Lake County. In fact, it would be a county lifer for me. So I headed down there at 5:30am this morning to beat the traffic. Unfortunately, I didn't see the YC anywhere. I saw the willow tree where Jake saw it, but no bird. I looked for about an hour to no avail so I left and explored other areas. One nice side trip I took were to the athletic fields at Vernon Hills HS. There were birds all over them including 1 SOLITARY SANDPIPER, 1 LEAST SANDPIPER, 3 HORNED LARKS, numerous swallows, many blackbirds, and about 30-40 KILLDEER. Looks promising for grasspipers!
  I spent the day tooling around checking shorebird spots and finding nothing, so when I got home and checked my email to find out that Al Stokie found a Lark Sparrow at IBSP South, I almost passed out. Another county lifer! I hustled down there ASAP and got there around 4:30. There was a lot of beach traffic, though, and no song at all, so I found no bird. Tough day, but it's all part of the game. There are tough days and, hopefully, some more exhilarating ones to come later :)
 

Another Shorebird Jaunt

This morning Fran Morel and I ventured out around 6:15am to hit a couple of Lake County's better shorebird spots: Rollins and the Tube. We started at the Tube where we had 8 shorebird sp. New for the fall was a SEMIPALMATED SANDPIPER. We saw 5 of these. Lots of SHORT-BILLED DOWITCHERS (25) and STILT SANDPIPERS (8). Otherwise standard fare. Also good numbers of BLACK TERNS (11), 2 FORSTER'S TERNS and 2 juvenile CASPIAN TERNS. Best bird was probably a BONAPARTE'S GULL which is pretty rare here in summer.

                          Bonaparte's Gull (foreground) and Caspian Terns
                            (background)
   After returning the canoe around 8:45, we headed to my house, got some food and changed, and then headed over to Rollins where we hiked the western side of the main pond. Had more SHORT-BILLED DOWITCHERS (12) and a couple of GREATER YELLOWLEGS  as well as the standard LEAST SANDPIPERS.

Still looking for that Baird's Sandpiper and some rarities!

2 Days, 2 New Birds....

   Happy Friday the 13th! It was an awesome day today as it was yesterday. After not getting a new year bird for a week and a half, I
was greeted with #242 yesterday and #243 today. Pretty nice.
   So yesterday the plan was to go to the lakefront and check the beach for shorebirds and then go to IBSP to look for the mythical Black-billed Cuckoo. I started at Waukegan Beach and found a weird-looking hybrid duck of some sort.

   No shorebirds other than the resident Spotted Sandpipers, though, so I headed over to IBSP South and walked the trails there looking for the cuckoo. No luck, of course, but there were scads of Field Sparrows and Eastern Towhees. I then headed to IBSP North and Sand Pond Rd. This is a road behind a locked gate which is only locked to cars. It's perfectly OK to take your bike or walk around the gate, which everyone does. So I rode my bike down the road looking for Blue Grosbeaks, Lark Sparrows, cuckoos, and any other rarity I could find. As I was approaching the lake, there was a corridor of oaks on my right. It was from this corridor that I heard the characteristic "peer-peer" call of a CAROLINA WREN! Now the Carolina Wren is very common in southern Illinois and even in some of the southern suburbs. However, it is very rare in lake county. So rare that I have NEVER seen one in this county. I heard the call, then played the call on my iPod. No response. So I just stood on the trail waiting. At this point a walker came up to me and asked what I was looking for. On cue, the Carolina called again, and I said "That bird!" The walker, now intrigued, asked about the bird as the wren flew right into the tree I was standing next to! Alas, I couldn't get my bins on the bird, though, because it kept moving. My new birding friend followed the bird as I kept losing it in binocular transition until it finally sat in a shrub for a second so I could get a diagnostic look. Once I saw the bird, I had to get a photo:

     #242!

 Today my goal was to look for Snowy Egret at sunrise at Red-wing Slough and then head to Rollins Savanna and hike around the main pond and cover every interior pond looking for shorebirds. No Snowies today but at Rollins things were hoppin'. I saw 8 species of shorebirds: KILLDEER, SPOTTED SANDPIPER, LEAST SANDPIPER, LESSER YELLOWLEGS, GREATER YELLOWLEGS, STILT SANDPIPER, SHORT-BILLED DOWITCHER, LONG-BILLED DOWITCHER.

                                  Stilt Sandpiper

                                Long-billed Dowitcher

                                  Lesser Yellowlegs

Long-billed Dowitcher was year bird #243! Now, dowitcher ID is very difficult- one of the most difficult ID challenges in birding. Though there are subtle differences in plumage characteristics and structure, the only way that I can truly be sure of their differences is to hear them call. The call notes are very different:

long-billed dowitcher

short-billed dowitcher

I actually had 5 Long-billed Dowitchers fly in and land in front of me for a couple of minutes WHILE CALLING, so it was easy to ID them. The Short-billeds were calling also.

   To see all these shorebirds, I had to hike off-trail through some very tall plants, patches of thistles, and navigate the many potholes which you can't see due to plant growth. It was a good workout, especially in the 90 degree heat! It was a great morning to be out, though, and Rollins didn't disappoint.

One More Time!

So today, July 7, Jim Solum and I took another canoe trip out to the Tube in Grass Lake. The Ring-billed Gulls weren't nearly as numerous or raucous as last week. It was a warm morning but pretty calm. A cold front is coming through later today, so I thought some new shorebirds may show up today. Unfortunately that wasn't the case but we still had great looks at GREATER YELLOWLEGS, LEAST SANDPIPERS, SHORT-BILLED DOWITCHERS, and 1 STILT SANDPIPER. On the way back in to the dock we had 7 or 8 BLACK TERNS flying around us as well, which was cool.

                                 Short-billed Dowitcher

                                       Least Sandpipers

                                       Stilt Sandpiper

July 2: Shorebird Season Begins

July is pretty much a month of decreasing activity on the songbird front. Though they're still pretty active with feeding fledglings, they don't sing much, so it's tough to find them. It's also the month for "post breeding dispersal" where juveniles and non-breeding adults spread out and occupy new areas. I'm hoping this will give me a better chance to find a Black-billed Cuckoo this month.
  Mostly, though, July signifies the beginning of shorebird season when shorebirds start heading south toward wintering grounds. Shorebird migration will last from July to the end of October. I love shorebirds. I mean I love ALL birds, but looking for shorebirds is especially fun for me probably because they are so difficult to find and challenging to ID at times.
  So today, my lovely wife, Michelle, and I headed out to our favorite shorebird spot in Lake County, the Geotube in Grass Lake. This place is the closest thing to Emiquon in Northern Ill. Absolutely awesome mudflats unless we've had a ton of rain and the flats are flooded. Obviously not the case these days, so the habitat was excellent. It's still a little early, so I wasn't really expecting much but, once again, the Tube failed to disappoint.
We saw 7 shorebird sp. as well as a few other nice birds.
  The trip began with a nice sighting of a 1st yr. FORSTER'S TERN.

Then we headed toward the island where you are immediately met by screaming RING-BILLED GULLS.

After adjusting to the gulls, we checked out the mudflats and saw LEAST SANDPIPERS

Killdeer, SPOTTED SANDPIPERS

GREATER YELLOWLEGS

 Lesser Yellowlegs, SHORT-BILLED DOWITCHER

and STILT SANDPIPER (#241)

Also had some nice looks at CASPIAN TERNS

and an AMERICAN WHITE PELICAN!

A truly great place :)

Breeding Bird Survey #2 Lakewood

Summer is the time of breeding bird surveys. For the most part there is little migration in June so the focus is on breeding birds. There are lots of interesting birds breeding here in Lake County and for the past couple of summers I have been helping out my friend, Gary Glowacki, the wildlife biologist for the Lake County Forest Preserve District, with doing the summer surveys. This year I was assigned Lakewood Forest Preserve in Wauconda. Lakewood is a great place to bird mostly because it has a wide variety of habitats, though the woodland areas are rather sparse and disturbed. There are a nice variety of wetland, scrubland, and grassland species, however. I do 2 surveys a summer. One at the beginning of June and one at the end of June/beginning of July. So today was my 2nd survey. I did my first on June 3rd and had 67 sp. which is pretty awesome for 1 forest preserve. Today it was a little less mostly because birds are singing less and the morning was pretty foggy early. Of note in its absence was Sedge Wren, which I had multiple numbers of earlier. However, taking its place was the HENSLOW'S SPARROW. I had 4 singing in various spots and got looks at 1 of them:

They're very small sparrows, and can be tough to find. Fortunately they sing pretty persistently even through July. Another highlight was multiple GRASSHOPPER SPARROWS:

I had 7 sparrow species on the day, which was cool. Here's a Savannah:

Aside from sparrows there was also the ever-present DICKCISSELS:

Other less common birds were 3 ORCHARD ORIOLES and 2 BLACK-CROWNED NIGHT HERONS.
  Another great morning of birding. Tomorrow out to look for some shorebirds!