So, A Year of Lake County Big Days Book II began rather frigidly but with great anticipation at 2:45am this morning as intrepid souls and diehard birders, Nick Minor and Andy Stewart, joined me
at my house to load up the car. The thermostat read -9. It was flat out cold. We were lucky, though, in that there was no wind to speak of for most of the morning, and even though there was a blizzard watch for later in the afternoon, the winds were not overwhelming until we were virtually finished on the day.
The day started very nicely at COLSP with quick responses from both GREAT HORNED OWL and EASTERN SCREECH OWL. Unfortunately that was it for the owls. It was partly my fault, though, because I bailed on heading south to the Des Plaines River area, since we had gotten all other river area birds....or so I thought. Barred Owl is certainly not a given on any day, but I didn't give us the best chance for success there. This will be fixed next month.
The White-crowned Sparrow seen a couple of days before was AWOL from Todd Anderson's feeders, so we headed to the Canoe Launch on Oak Spring Rd. Winner. Almost immediately we had 3 YELLOW-RUMPED WARBLERS, and as we climbed the trail bridge over the river, we flushed both a BELTED KINGFISHER and a GREAT BLUE HERON! Nice. I should have checked Butler Lake for Swamp Sparrow, though. We missed that bird basically because I thought it would be a slam dunk at Volo. No such luck. So we headed next to Middlefork Savanna where we whiffed on Shrike...again. At this point, I chose to slog through the snow toward the woodland area where the woodpeckers hang out. We picked up a NORTHERN FLICKER here, and had a couple of them at COLSP, but the main target was a RED-HEADED WOODPECKER that I had found a couple of times in the past week. It took a few minutes, but I finally saw it fly in right above my head. Unfortunately Nick and Andy were still out on the main trail so the RH Woodpecker was our first of 2 dirty birds on the day (CACKLING GOOSE was the other since I was the only one who could see it mixed in with the other hundred Canadas). I then decided to try to go to Fort Sheridan for a possible bluebird, titmouse (reported yesterday), or a rare sparrow. We did pish up a SONG SPARROW but that was it. Faye Groh's elaborate feeder setup yielded a couple of WHITE-THROATED SPARROWS but nothing else we needed, so we headed to Waukegan. The Harbor area was completely iced in and we didn't feel like slogging through the snow down to Gov't pier, so we checked the south pier and headed to the north swimming beach area. There were some COMMON GOLDENEYE and a small flock of COMMON MERGANSERS but that was it. The lack of gulls was disappointing as was a big whiff on the very reliable, American Kestrel.
The day had many high points but the best was the trip to the Coal-burning plant in Waukegan. The warm water discharge pond was filled with basically the same birds that we had on the CBC on Wed.
At least 11 sp. of waterfowl were present including TUNDRA SWAN, WHITE-WINGED SCOTER, both SCAUP sp., CANVASBACK, AMERICAN BLACK DUCK, and RUDDY DUCK among others. This place saved us since there was virtually no other waterfowl anywhere. We also had nice looks at a juvenile BALD EAGLE flying along the lakefront.
Big thanks to Faye Groh and Todd Anderson for letting us traipse through your yards and look at your feeders. Also thanks to Richard Biss for his many updates on the RED-WINGED BLACKBIRDS at his feeder and the neighbors feeder. We finally got that bird!
Some other highlights:
Best AHA! moment: Nick Minor, "AHA! those are BREWER'S BLACKBIRDS!" (it didn't exactly come out like that, but it was close). Found at the farm on State Park Rd. leading to COLSP. Nick promptly did an about face after finding the Brewer's and found a cruising SHARP-SHINNED HAWK looking very headless and square-tailed as it fluttered past us and gave us all nice looks.
Best Aesthetic moment:
Catching a great look at 3 EASTERN BLUEBIRDS against the snowy landscape along the main park rd. at COLSP. Gorgeous birds!
Biggest misses:
Swamp Sparrow (a gimme every day I've been at Volo in the past 2 weeks), Barred Owl (not a good enough effort).
Best snag:
On our way to Richard Biss' feeders, and while lamenting the miss of a harrier on the day, Andy cries out, "Raptor....and I think it may be a harrier!" Sure enough a male Gray Ghost floats right over us along Cedar Lake Rd. in Round Lake Beach for our 6th raptor of the day. Beautiful.
Another great day birding! Thanks to Andy for his great jokes and to Nick for teaching me that a gallinule is a rail. No lie. We ended the day with 64 species.
