The Challenge of the Lakewatch

  Last night while doing my night-before-birding prep of checking the weather forecast and reading the latest IBF/IBET updates, the prevailing thought was that today would bring NE winds and provide a nice opportunity for seeing some birds moving over the lake (a.k.a. a lakewatch). The NE winds theoretically blow the birds closer to shore. The challenge with the lake watch, for me, anyway, is twofold: 1.) the wind is blowing right in your face, is cold, and makes your scope and binoculars shake like a leaf; and 2.) the birds are distant, the sun is in the background, and ID is difficult. I've been looking at bird silhouettes quite a bit this fall, and I feel like I have a better, albeit still rudimentary, grasp of some of the shapes of the waterbirds. So today I was ready to find some good birds. I started the morning off at Ethel's Woods looking for a Greater White-fronted Goose but came up empty for about the 56th time in the past month. I've scanned more goose flocks than most hunters. I then headed to North Point Marina to check for Purple Sandpiper, which also was AWOL. I did, however, get some nice looks at my FOS (first of season) SNOW BUNTINGS.

    I then headed over to IBSP South to the concession stand on the north end of the park which blocks the wind pretty well. From about 8:45-10:30am I scanned the lake from this point. There were a large number of birds moving over the lake, but as is usually the case with a lake watch, most of the birds are backlit and too far away to ID. I did get too see a fair number well enough to ID, though, including #257 BLACK SCOTER! Black Scoters are all dark birds with paler underwings. The female has a distinctive pale cheek, while the male has an orange knob on his bill. I've only seen 1 male ever. He was a cool bird, though. Mostly it's the females that show up in Illinois for some reason. Today was no different, though I may have had a first year male with a dull bill. I had 1 bird that was darker than the other two which were grayish-brown. They did fly close enough for me to see the pale cheeks on 2 of the birds and ID them as female-type Black Scoters.

                                        INTERNET PHOTO
Other Highlights:

Black Scoter-3

Surf Scoter- 10 (ID'd by their thick bodies and block-shaped heads in silhouette at 30x. They were at about 300-400 yds)

White-winged Scoter-21 (easy ID. All black birds at about 200yds. flying with the water behind them. Easy to see the white secondaries)

Red-throated Loon- 2 (ID'd by the thinner, seemingly longer neck and smaller body but still the hunchbacked shape and slower wingbeats of a loon. Too silhouetted to see the coloration)

Common Loon- 9
Loon sp. 34
Red-breasted Merganser- 150+
Horned Grebe-1
Common Goldeneye-5

A great day to see some uncommon lake birds!

The Return to the Hawkwatch

    Today's forecast was for WNW winds following the passage of Friday's cold front. This is the usual recipe for a pretty good day at the Illinois Beach State Park Hawkwatch at the north unit on 17th St. and Sheridan Rd. I got to the hawkwatch around 10:00am after stopping at Waukegan Beach to look for Franklin's Gull and Purple Sandpiper (no and no), IBSP South to check for scoters and grebes (saw none), and NPM to check for the same. Nada. Best birds I had on the morning before the hawkwatch were flyover AMERICAN PIPIT, LAPLAND LONGSPUR, PURPLE FINCH, and HORNED LARK along with 21 CANVASBACK off of Stateline Beach.
  I had a small catastrophe at Waukegan Beach where I saw Al Stokie, Adam Sell, and Nate Schirmacher. Somehow my scope fell off my tripod and into the sand. I didn't think it would be too bad because it was sand, but when I tried to look through it, all I saw was eternal blackness. The lenses were knocked off kilter, so now I have to send it in for repairs. Bummer. So I had no scope for the rest of the morning which made looking for waterfowl on the lake pretty futile.
   So I headed to the Hawkwatch where Paul and Janice Sweet, Adam Sell, and Nate Schirmacher were busy logging the day's eyeful of raptors. I got there around 10:00am and things got progressively better for the hour or so that I could stay. Normally, the hawkwatch is an incredibly frustrating experience for me. I can rarely stay very long, else I completely neglect my family, so it always seems that the real gems are seen right after I leave. This happened to some degree again today as 2 Goshawks were seen after I left and 1 flew by us while we were watching another bird! (really?), but I did get to see the real beauty of today's Hawkwatch extravaganza, my county lifer SWAINSON'S HAWK! #256. I'm not sure who saw it first. It seemed like Paul and Adam were on it at the same time exclaiming how this could be something "good." They made the Swainson's call shortly thereafter, but I needed the bird to fly almost directly over us and give us some sweet looks before I could absolutely tell that it was a Swainson's. Fortunately, Adam was nice enough to let me use his scope since mine was kaput, so I was able to get great looks. Unfortunately, I was so engrossed in the bird that I forgot to give the scope over to Nate. Sorry, Nate! It was a 2nd yr. immature bird and a real beauty!

                                               internet photo
   Thanks to Paul and Adam for this awesome bird today!

The Dark

   I don't like the dark. Never have. I have just never outgrown the horror movie mentality that the dark holds all manner of rotten things. Consequently, looking for owls in the early morning before sunrise is especially stressful since every creaking limb or rustling leaf freaks me out. So this morning I thought I would head out to my favorite owl spot in Lake County, Lyons Woods, to look for my favorite owl, the saw-whet. I packed myself with iPod, iPhone, flashlight and headlamp and headed into the forest preserve about 5:30am. There was actually a fair amount of moonlight so it wasn't too bad. Yesterday there were some NW winds before they turned south last night, but the early morning this morning was one of the few times that it hasn't been windy in the past 2 weeks, so I figured I had a decent shot at hearing an owl.
   I found my first spot and leaned up against a large spruce tree to the side of the trail. I played the barking calls and cat whine calls from my iPod and waited. 2 minutes. 5 minutes. Nothing. I played the toots, and some more whine calls. More waiting......and more nothing. Then I hear a very clear bark...right in front of me. I scan with the flashlight but couldn't see anything. Branches were too dense. No doubt it was a saw-whet. It was too brief a call for me, though. I needed something more diagnostic, so I kept trying. I walked farther down the trail to another spruce stand and played the bark and whine calls again. After waiting a few minutes, I thought I heard some sounds coming from farther ahead on the trail so I walked down further and moved off trail under another spruce. I played the combo of calls again and waited. The next sound I heard nearly gave me a heart attack. It was a PERSON walking along the trail! What the heck is a person doing here in the darkness? There can't be another crazy owl-watcher out here.....can there? Two thoughts immediately went through my head. Either this guy is some creep looking for an innocent victim or coming back from some drug party somewhere OR he's going to see me and freak cuz he thinks I'M some kind of lunatic. In either case, I don't want to be seen, so I scrunch up next to the tree and hope he walks right by. As it turns out, there are 2 guys who are out walking their dogs. NOW I'm hoping that the dogs don't sniff me out and start barking or anything. I rotate around the tree as the four of them walk by me. No sound from the dogs. I wait until they're out of hearing distance and let out a deep sigh. That was close! I then play the calls 1 more time. Almost immediately I hear a loud whine come from right above my head!
whine

I look up with my flashlight and see nothing. I move to a different angle and try again. This time, about 15-20ft up I see a white form with a roundish head. The brightness of my flashlight and the large number of branches made it tough to see, but I saw the owl look down at me and move his head a couple of times before flying off. A NORTHERN SAW-WHET OWL! #255. Very cool.
 

The Search for the Needle in the Haystack

  It's October so it's peak time for Sparrows, the beginning of waterfowl migration, and peak migration for most raptors and owls. Having checked reports from Wisconsin, and seen large numbers of geese moving, I decided that my best chance for a new bird would be to scan flocks of Canada Geese for a Snow Goose or a Greater White-fronted Goose, both of which I still need for the year.
  Scanning goose flocks is a painstaking and potentially dangerous activity. Most of the time you only see hundreds of Canadas and usually the flocks are adjacent to busy roads, so getting hit by someone is a real possibility. Once in a while, though, you get lucky and find that diamond in the rough...that needle in a haystack, so the risk pays exciting dividends.
  Last Sunday was one such day. I had finished checking out the lakefront and was on my way home. I usually take 9th Ave. to 173 when I'm returning from North Point Marina as I was today. On the corner of 9th and Lewis is a small church with a small pond. This pond often has geese in it. This day was no exception. As I passed by and glanced at the flock, something white caught my attention. I quickly pulled into the church parking area and glassed the pond with my bins. Walla! Right in front of me was #254, a SNOW GOOSE!

  Another benefit to searching through the goose flocks is that you may find some other good birds. Tuesday I was at Independence Grove for lunch and happened to see a large group of loafing Canadas on the swimming beach. I went down to take a look at them and again saw something white. I figured it was another Snow Goose, but after I got my scope on it, I saw that it was actually the much rarer ROSS' GOOSE! Not a new bird for me, since I had Steve Bailey's bird in the spring, but a great bird nonetheless, and the first time I had ever seen two Ross' in one year in Lake County.

                                                      internet photo

    The main difference, aside from the fact that the Ross' is Smaller, is the bill. The Ross' Goose has a small, cute, pink bill with an obviously purple base to it while the Snow Goose has a big honker of a bill with a black "grin" or line separating the upper and lower mandibles. Pretty sweet bird!
  Since I still need A GWF goose, I continue to search through more flocks. Yesterday I saw a sizeable group on the east side of Rt. 45 in Lindenhurst, so I pulled off the road, which fortunately has a large shoulder, and scoped out the birds. Off to the left, at the top of a ridge, I again saw something white. I trained the scope on the birds and was treated to the sight of my 2nd TRUMPETER SWAN of the year.

There were actually 4 birds. So I, once again, find a nice bird but miss my target. Such is birding. Today the weather is pretty horrible, so hopefully I will be able to find something nice tomorrow. Good Birding!

The "Grass" Plover #253

  This morning I had a birding appointment with my good friend, Jim Solum. Since we had west winds overnight we decided to hit the lakefront and hope for some good sparrows or shorebirds. We headed first up the beach which looked incredibly vacant save for some gulls. The habitat on the beach looked great, however, with a few small sandbars and some nice algae mats. Unfortunately, we saw no shorebirds as we headed north. Jim is very adept at hearing flight calls and picking up flying birds. Usually I just stand there in awe as Jim calls out all these birds flying over us. I've gotten pretty good at picking them out over the last couple of years, though, and I was right with him today as we heard LAPLAND LONGSPURS and PINE SISKINS flying over us. Felt pretty good about that :) We continued to the small beach pond where we saw the ever-present juvenile Black-crowned Night Heron and a juvenile Pied-billed Grebe. While we were standing there a MERLIN flew right by us. We were lucky enough to see a second bird later in the morning, so that was pretty cool. Nothing else noteworthy, though. We decided to head back to the pier and parking lot. As we walked down the beach talking, I was paying minimal attention to what I had already determined to be "nothing on the beach." I should know better, though. At Waukegan there can be nothing one minute and something amazing the next minute. As we're walking Jim suddenly exclaims, "Plovers ahead flying along the beach!" Plovers were our target birds for the day, specifically AMERICAN GOLDEN PLOVER and BLACK-BELLIED PLOVER. These birds can be tough to ID in juvenile plumage since they look very similar. The one easily distinguishable feature is the color of the axillaries, or "armpits," in flight. Black-bellied Plovers have black armpits and Golden Plovers have gray armpits.

                                              American Golden Plover

                                       Black-bellied Plover
                                          (internet photos)
As our birds turned and flew away from the beach and then came toward us, we could see that 2 of the birds had black armpits and one of the birds had pale armpits. The paler bird was also slightly smaller than the other 2, another characteristic of American Golden Plover. So, even though we didn't get extended looks, we saw the bird well enough to ID it as an AMERICAN GOLDEN PLOVER #253!
  I was doubtful about getting a chance to see this bird as it is normally found on sod farms along with other "grasspipers" like Upland Sandpipers and Buff-breasted Sandpipers. Amazingly, there are 0 sod farms in Lake County, so I thought my chances were slim of seeing any of these 3 birds. I know they show up on the beach at times, but that's always iffy, so I'm really happy I was able to see 2 of the 3 of these birds this year (missed Upland).
  On the way out we stopped in the pines and along the parking lot to look for sparrows. We had 1 GRAY-CHEEKED THRUSH, and 3 LINCOLN'S SPARROWS as highlights.
Thanks to Jim for another great morning of birding!

Ammodramus Slam

  Today I had the day off for Yom Kippur, so while my wife was working out at the gym, I headed out to Rollins to look for a Red-necked Phalarope and some sparrows. In the past week, Bob Hughes, Fran Morel, and Steve Bailey have seen a number of Ammodramus sparrows. These are some of my favorite birds and definitely my favorite sparrows probably because they are so difficult to get good looks at but also because of their rich orange, yellow, and ochre colors. There are 4 species of these found in Illinois: Henslow's Sparrow, Grasshopper Sparrow, Nelson's Sparrow, and Le Conte's Sparrow. Henslow's and Grasshopper both breed at Rollins so I have seen them a number of times this year. Nelson's and Le Conte's migrate through at the end of April and September. Nelson's is very difficult to find in spring but much more common in fall. By the time Nelson's and Le Conte's come through in the fall, though, Henslow's and Grasshopper are usually gone. I have never seen all 4 of them on the same day......until today :) I had a great time this morning watching sparrows pop up all over the place as I walked around the main pond. Nelson's were very common with 8 of them being seen. I never had great photo ops with them, however, and only managed 2 mediocre blurry shots:

                                        Nelson's Sparrow
  These sparrows love the Bidens plants which border the lower wet spots around the main pond.
  Le Conte's Sparrow has always been a difficult bird for me to find. They have this terribly frustrating habit of waiting until you almost step on them in the grasses and then fly about 3 feet and dive back in the grass. Then they run. Seriously. You see them go into the grass and think you have them, but they are nowhere to be seen. Evaporated like a whisp of smoke. Unbelievable. So today when I saw, not 1, but 2 of them sit right up for pictures, I snapped about 30 shots to make sure I got a couple of good ones.

                                         Le Conte's Sparrow
Le Conte's is similar in appearance to Nelson's, but Nelson's are grayer and more orange with a gray nape and crown stripe. Le Conte's are buffy yellow and more faded in coloration with a white crown stripe and subtle purplish streaks in the nape that you can vaguely make out in the above photo. A truly beautiful bird as is the Nelson's!
  The Grasshopper Sparrow is the one that I thought would be the toughest to find, since I haven't seen them in a while. As I was walking along the east side, though, I heard the tinkling call, and managed to pish one out of the grasses for a nice pic.

                                         Grasshopper Sparrow
The ochre color on the face, the flat forehead, and the bright eye ring are diagnostic for Grasshopper.
  The Henslow's Sparrow was, unfortunately, a heard only bird, with it's distinctive t'slick call. Would have been nice to get pics of all 4, but so goes it. My first ever Ammodramus Slam. Gotta love it.
  Another great bird for the day was the RUSTY BLACKBIRD. Only the second Rusty I've seen this year.

                                         Rusty Blackbird
Related to our more common Red-winged Blackbird, the Rusty is jet black in the summer and difficult to tell from Brewer's Blackbirds. In the fall, however, they turn the color that gives them their name. Very cool. They don't breed around here and are declining in number, so it's always good to see one.
  Another great day at My Favorite Place to Bird!

Another Nemesis No More!

  The last 24 hrs. have been wrought with moderate to fairly strong NW winds. This usually bodes well for fall migration along the Lake County lakefront. So today I headed to Waukegan Beach and both units of Illinois Beach State Park to see if I could find some thing interesting. Unfortunately there was only 1 shorebird at Waukegan, a SANDERLING. The prairie grasses and dogwoods abutting the parking area were alive with sparrows and warblers, however. I had 9 sp. of sparrow, and could have gotten more if I worked at it. Here's a few of them:

                                      Lincoln's Sparrow

                                      Savannah Sparrow

                               Chipping Sparrow

 Also had a PHILADELPHIA VIREO and a BLACK-THROATED    GREEN WARBLER.
    From Waukegan, I headed to IBSP South. My goal was to walk the Dead River trail to look for two birds, Lark Sparrow and Black-billed Cuckoo. Both are birds that I have never seen in Lake County. My chances of seeing a Lark were pretty slim, but I thought I had a decent chance of seeing a cuckoo. There had been a large number of BB Cuckoo reports in the past week, so I was thinking that they were on the move and more visible at this time.
Remember, if you will, that I have been looking for this bird since May.....and all of last year. It has truly been a nemesis bird for me in Lake County. In fact, the only place I've ever seen BB cuckoo is at Montrose where they practically sit out in the open. No such luck in Lake County. Today was to be a different day for me....though it didn't seem so in the beginning.
   As I headed down the trail I saw a couple of FOS (first of season) birds. I had 3 HERMIT THRUSHES and 2 BROWN CREEPERS. Creepers winter here and Hermits sometimes do, so a definite cold weather flavor was in the air. As I neared the end of the trail I entered an open area in between woodlots. In this area are a couple of willow shrubs and a dogwood thicket along the Dead River. I saw a couple of Lincoln's Sparrows here and as I entered the opening, a bird flew out of a willow and buried itself in an oak tree. I knew immediately that it was a cuckoo based on its brown color, slim body, and long tail. I couldn't tell if it was a yellow-billed or a black-billed, though, and that was frustrating. I walked up to the oak and the bird flushed above my head. I saw it fly to the next tree but couldn't make out any details. I looked into the tree but could see nothing so I walked up closer. The bird flushed again into the dogwood thicket where it buried itself. I was really frustrated at this point, because I had 3 chances to see the bird and missed them all. I finally gave up and continued around the bend to take the woodland trail back to the parking lot. I had walked about 1/4 of the way down the trail when I started thinking. What's my best chance to see a cuckoo, continue on or go back and retrace my steps along the Dead River? I decided to head back, hoping the bird had returned to the open after I left. Sometimes I make good decisions...this was one of them. I walked back to the same clearing and as I approached , the bird flew out of some dogwoods across the path to the edge of another thicket where it incredibly sat out in the open! I had great looks at the buffy throat of a juvenile bird and the black bill. A BLACK-BILLED CUCKOO!!! #252 and Nemesis No More!

                                     juv. BLACK-BILLED CUCKOO
    It's a good feeling when you finally find a bird that you've worked very hard to see. A very cool bird, indeed.