I started the morning at Lakewood FP hoping to see some Common Redpolls in the vast stands of birch and alder, but my 4th try ended the same as my other three.....nada, zippo, zilch. Not a peep. Amazing. David Johnson had 10 at the Buffalo Grove Metra Station on Friday morning. Are you kidding!? A Metra station? I'm a little befuddled by those redpolls. I then wandered over to St. Mary's seminary in Mundelein to check the VAST supply of cones for crossbills. This is another conundrum. There are cones galore at this place, small ones at that, yet not a peep from anything but a chickadee, cardinal, or woodpecker. Unreal. Why are they only in Rockford?
At Independence Grove is a small open water pit with a surprising variety of waterfowl. I saw all 3 mergansers, AMERICAN BLACK DUCK, RING-NECKED DUCK, and a Scaup sp. with a peaked, taller head in the middle and duller white on the side. It was kind of a tweener for me, though, so I'm not counting that one.
Ring-necked Duck
American Black Duck
Adler Park had nothing. The boat launch had the standard fare, but I thought I heard a "peter-peter" call in the background a couple of times, but nothing definite. It still bugs me that I had that bird calling right across the river a couple of weeks ago and could not get a visual.
Heading to church west on Peterson Rd. I saw a hawk on top of a tree at roadside. I quickly pulled over (no traffic fortunately). Just as I got out of the car, the bird lifted off and instead of retreating, fluttered and hovered right in front of me for some awesome looks at an adult ROUGH-LEGGED HAWK. There was another hawk a bit farther down the road perched atop some feeble twigs that also looked like a Rough-leg.
Wish I could get a few finches somewhere, but the Rough-leg made up for it!
1 new year bird today.
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