A Tale of Two Outings

   Last night we had SSE winds and all week various birding prognosticators were saying that we should have our first big push of migrants this weekend. So, needless to say, expectations were high. This is the kiss-of-death in birding. Expectations are rarely met in my birding world and today was no different.
   I started the morning at Waukegan Beach hoping to find some gulls or shorebirds. Well, there were no shorebirds and the only gulls were Herring and Ring-billed, as usual. A walk through the grass yielded no Leconte's Sparrows, though one was found at Montrose today. In other words, Waukegan was dead as a doornail. Unreal. So I headed to my next destination which was Ryerson Woods to look for Louisiana Waterthrush, which has been fairly regular there the past few years. I spent the next 2 hours walking around at Ryerson. Not only did I miss the waterthrush, but I found no new birds at all. Lots of robins, cardinals, and Yellow-rumped Warblers. The time came for me to go to my baseball game, so I left for Evanston with 0 new birds for the year. Very disappointing.
   As the games progressed, I kept getting texts about the new birds Jim Solum was finding in various locations. It was a little frustrating knowing that I made bad choices this morning. I should have gone to Middlefork Savanna instead of Ryerson.
   Bring on outing #2. On my way home from the games, I had just enough time to stop at Middlefork and Independence Grove on my way to church.
  Middlefork is the only spot I know of in Lake County to have produced any shorebirds yet this year, so I stopped there and, thanks to Jim and Michal Furmanek, was able to locate 2 GREATER YELLOWLEGS and 4 PECTORAL SANDPIPERS.

                                  Greater Yellowlegs

                                 Pectoral Sandpiper

While looking at the sandpipers, I heard the rough buzzing sound of a swallow and was able to see 2 NORTHERN ROUGH-WINGED SWALLOWS.

Also heard a calling SORA RAIL right next to the trail.
Listen here: sora.
   My last stop of the day was Independence Grove. Jim had 2 Forster's Terns there earlier. I didn't see any Forster's, but I did see a full PURPLE MARTIN house.

So the day went from 0 new birds to 5. Turned out to be a pretty nice day after all. We'll see what happens tomorrow with storms coming tonight.