Summer Comes Early...

  Now that baseball season has started, I pretty much have only 1 day a week to go birding, which is kind of a bummer, but I do enjoy coaching baseball with my buddy, Sean Ferrell. After reading all the sightings this week, my game plan was to get a Rusty Blackbird this weekend. I started the morning at the Russell Rd. entrance to Van Patten Woods. I scoped the river from the top of the hill and found a total of 0 waterfowl. Not real promising. I put the scope back and headed down the DPRT. There were numerous sparrows flitting about and I had some nice looks at SONG, AMERICAN TREE, FOX, and 1 SAVANNAH SPARROW. There were also 6 HORNED LARKS in the cornfield and 7 GREEN-WINGED TEAL in a fluddle.
  From here I detoured back around to the 173 entrance and parked at the first lot near the yellow trail. Almost immediately upon walking onto the trail I heard a persistent "fee'-bee, fee'-bee, fee'-bee". Could only be an EASTERN PHOEBE which I was able to get nice looks at a moment later.

 I continued down the trail for about another 30 ft. when BAM! out exploded 2 female WILD TURKEYS!!! from the woods. A Lake County lifer for me and Lake County year bird #109.

I was so excited that I texted Jim right away and forgot to follow the birds. Bad etiquette. Sorry, Jim. I'll pick ya up next time or find you some turkeys at the Chain.
  Nothing else of interest was noticed so I headed to the North Unit to check the North loop trail for Rusties. No dice. Feeling a little frustrated after going 0-2 at 2 good Rusty spots, I headed back to Rollins. As I was heading west, Jim called me to tell me he was looking at 3 Rusties in Gurnee Woods on the DPRT. I bolted over and eventually had nice looks at 2 male and 1 female RUSTY BLACKBIRD Lake County Year Bird #110.

  We also heard probably another 10 birds calling in the wet woods along the river. Thanks to Jim for my target bird!

  Today on the way back from practice I decided to see if the pelicans reported by Peter Grant were still around, so I headed over to Addison Ln on Lake Catherine. The road is no parking, but I pulled over at a couple of spots and scanned the lake. I saw 12 COMMON LOONS and way off to the west on the edge of the cattails were 4 AMERICAN WHITE PELICANS (LCYB #111). Another good bird for Lake County.

  The title of my post is due to the incredible weather we've been having. For the past 2 weeks the temps have been in the high 70's-low 80's. More like May than the end of March. It's been awesome. Tons of south winds and a bunch of early migrants. Bring on spring!

The Winter Wren!

  This weekend I got 3 new birds to put me at 106. I'm a little perturbed that I've missed both Snow Geese and Greater White-fronted Geese. Jim had both of those on flyovers. I haven't seen hardly any geese in the air at all this spring and they have all been Canadas. Frustrating but that's birding.
  Saturday morning after returning from the grocery store at 5:30am, I passed an area in Old Mill Creek on Rt.45 just north of Grass Lake Rd. that had some wet meadow near a forest edge. Seeing as there was no traffic here at this time. I pulled off the road, turned my car off and rolled the window down. Almost immediately heard 2 distinct and separate "peent"s and the twittering noise of a display flight. AMERICAN WOODCOCK! Awesome. Unfortunately, I had to get home and didn't have time to see if I could get a visual on the performers. Here's a great youtube clip on the mating call and display: American Woodcock
   This morning, Sunday 3/11, I headed out to the lakefront to try and find geese or Black Scoters on the move. I started at Van Patten Woods where I saw some waterfowl in the distance but they weren't geese so I didn't bother with them. I then went to the Point at NPM and scanned the lake for birds. The regulars were there along with 2 female-type WHITE-WINGED SCOTERS. Also at NPM was my first flock of BROWN-HEADED COWBIRDS this spring. The weather was beautiful with temps in the 50's and light south winds, so it was a great day to be out.
   The next stop was the South Unit of IBSP where a marsh wren was heard yesterday. I checked the pond where the bird was heard, but I got nothin'. Tons of SONG SPARROWS were out and about.
  The bird of the day, though, was identified by its twinkling flutelike song: Winter Wren
  The Winter Wren (#106) is a little brown fluffball of a bird but it has a beautiful voice! I heard this bird while walking on the road at the South Unit near the lodge. It was singing in a small woodlot with many logs and shrubs. I could never get a visual, though. It just kept moving away from me.

Pulaski Day weekend 3/3-3/5

After a beautiful week of balmy 60's and upper 50's, Friday brought with it the promise of a 3-day weekend combined with the din and numbness of winter winds. For the 2nd week in a row we got significant snowfall accumulations on a Friday right before the weekend followed by a series of days with cold NNW winds. Not good for spring migrants, so my hopes weren't very high Saturday when I left practice around 11:45am to head west and hopefully find some geese. I headed out to Dowell, Neville, Darrell, and Fisher roads in far NW Lake County but saw nil except for a couple of HORNED LARKS. I continued north toward Volo Bog and stopped at Sullivan Lake when I saw what looked like a dark-billed non-Mute swan. I got out of the car into the stiff 20mph winds and was
able to get nice looks at a beautiful TRUMPETER SWAN (#99).

Trumpeter Swans have a large black bill that completely encloses the eye as you can see above. The similar Tundra Swan has a smaller bill that pinches off the eye:

There's also usually a yellow spot near the eye which you can kind of see in this picture. Anyway, that was a great bird and only my 3rd in Lake County. From here I headed over to COLSP to look for a Turkey Vulture. I headed down the Goldfinch trail and lo-and-behold there was a TURKEY VULTURE (#100) soaring right along the trail!

From hear I headed home quite pleased with the day's findings.

  Sunday I had trouble deciding where to go, as usual, so I started on the lakefront at 6:30 am hoping to find a Black Scoter. I saw a few birds moving north around 7am that were definitely dark-winged scoters. Unfortunately, as is usually the case with me, they were too distant to accurately ID. Other than that nothing was moving on the lake, so I headed to Van Patten Woods where I also had nothing. I had gotten a call earlier from Jim that he had some birds behind the citgo station on 41, so I decided I would head over there. I took a detour by way of Delaney Rd. so I could scan the skies for any passing Golden Eagle (one can always dream :). Never saw any raptors, but I flushed a group of sparrows on the road as I drove past, so I pulled over to check them out. Good thing cuz #101 WHITE-CROWNED SPARROW was playing right alongside the American Tree Sparrows.

There were 2 juvenile birds along with a beautiful adult. As I finally pulled into the Citgo Station I could see that the wetland area had a few birds. There were 6 NORTHERN SHOVELERS, 2 NORTHERN PINTAIL, and #102 GREEN-WINGED TEAL

Nice! Last stop was Rollins Savanna where I added namesake SAVANNAH SPARROW (#103) along with the Song and Tree Sparrows. Ended up the morning with 21 sp. of waterfowl which is not too shabby!

3/1/12 Independence Grove

It's been a rough week for birding. I started coaching baseball on 2/27 and haven't had a lot of time to get out. I went out Wednesday 2/29 but the wind was blowing at 35mph and it was about 30 degrees and raining. Needless to say, I didn't stay out long. I went out for about an hour yesterday and had my first new bird in over a week, a Killdeer. Woohoo!!!!

Starting to feel like my chances for a Greater White-fronted Goose are slipping away. Hopefully I'll be able to get out and see some good birds this weekend!