Earth Day Weekend

Wasn't expecting a lot this weekend. We've had a lot of N/NW/NE winds the past few days so I wasn't thinking that there would be many migrants. Nevertheless, I headed down to Waukegan Beach and Ryerson Woods to try and nab a couple of birds before heading to my game at Highland Park.
  The beach at Waukegan had nothing on it, so the trip didn't start off well. I decided to take a walk through the blond grass in front of the beach parking lot before I left to try to find a Leconte's Sparrow given that my time was dwindling for this species. I kicked up a Song, a Swamp Sparrow, another Swamp, and then I kicked up a small bird that jumped into a very small bare shrub. I got my bins on it and was elated to see the golden face and gray cheeks of a beautiful LECONTE'S SPARROW! Bingo! These birds are extremely tough to find, and this bird was providing awesome looks, even though there were a couple of small branches in front of him.

These are the most beautiful of the sparrows IMO and my 2nd favorite bird. I drank in the long looks and then headed over to the pines to see what I could get there.
   Saw a few more kinglets, and white-throated sparrows, but also my FOY HOUSE WREN. It was only a quick glimpse, but good enough to ID. It also began singing which clarified matters.

   I then headed quickly over to Ryerson Woods to see if I could get a Louisiana Waterthrush. Unfortunately I whiffed on that bird. There were many birds singing, though, and I found a few new warblers. There were singing Nashville, Orange-crowned, Black-throated Green, and Yellow-rumped Warblers. I was able to get nice looks at NASHVILLE and BLACK-THROATED GREEN, but the Orange-crowned continues to elude me.

  Fast forward to Sunday. I was chosen to lead a COS trip at Rollins Savanna. The weather was a tad cold but pretty calm to start. We headed out from the Washington St. lot and immediately had a t'slicking Henslow's Sparrow. We couldn't find it, though. We ended up with 5 and finally got some nice scope looks at one. Our next target was a blackbird so we drove over to the animal hospital and tried to find the bird. Finally after a couple minutes of searching, a YELLOW-HEADED BLACKBIRD popped into view in my scope.

He didn't stick around long, though, and I wasn't able to get anybody on the bird, though one other person saw him as well.
  A trip to the north side didn't turn up much other than bluebirds and field sparrows, so we headed to the tennis court lot. There was a calling Cooper's Hawk in the small woodlot near the parking lot, but the best bird was a wheezing BLUE-GRAY GNATCATCHER.

So the trip ended and I headed over to COLSP to check the pines. I heard a Pine Warbler but no Yellow-throated. There were tons of gnatcatchers, RC Kinglets, and YR Warblers. Also saw a female WILD TURKEY, 3 FORSTER'S TERNS, and the Bird-of-the-day, a singing BLUE-HEADED VIREO! 144 baby :)