Warblers, Waders, and Western Kingbird

Fortunately for me my in-laws live in Collinsville, IL, which is just outside of St.Louis and is midway between Carlyle Lake and the Shawnee National Forest. My wife and I, and sometimes our teenage kids, make the trip about twice a year usually- once in the summer and once around Christmas. Each summer my goal is to find all the southern breeding warblers that are really difficult to find in Lake County (Kentucky, Prairie, Worm-eating, Yellow-throated, Cerulean, Louisiana Waterthrush) and to see the waders that also are tough to get in N. IL (cattle egret, YC Night Heron, Snowy Egret, Little Blue Heron). In addition, there has been a nesting WESTERN KINGBIRD in Granite City that I try to find each year as well.
  This year I was pretty lucky and got all the birds I was looking for with the exception of Louisiana Waterthrush. I started on Monday morning 6/11 at 5:45am on a side street in the Shawnee that sounded good for warblers. I was right. In a few minutes I had nice looks at a YELLOW-THROATED WARBLER and a beautiful KENTUCKY WARBLER.

                                   Kentucky Warbler

                                 Yellow-throated Warbler
Also in this area were many WHITE-EYED VIREOS, CAROLINA WRENS, and a couple of SUMMER TANAGERS.
I then headed toward the Cache River and Michael Wolff wetlands to check for Anhingas. On the way I stopped at a shrubby area on Eden Rd. where I heard then saw a nice male PRAIRIE WARBLER.

Unfortunately the Anhingas were a no-show, but they don't usually come in until mid to late afternoon and it was still mid-morning so it wasn't totally unexpected for them to be AWOL. A nice day nonetheless.
  Tuesday morning I tried to hit Larue-Pine Hills, which is supposed to be a great place, but I turned on the wrong road and was driving a gravel road to nowhere for 30 min. Once I recovered from that mishap, I headed to Pomona and Natural Bridges Rd. This place is superb. There were warblers singing everywhere and this has been my most reliable spot for seeing WORM-EATING WARBLERS right next to the road.

Also singing here were Yellow-throated, Cerulean, Kentucky, and Prothonotary Warblers.
  Wednesday was wader and kingbird day. I started at Cahokia Mounds State Park which is also an amazing place. It doesn't really look like much of a natural area. It has a couple of ponds and a lot of open grassy areas. If the grass is being mowed, however, these grassy areas become egret magnets. CATTLE EGRETS love following the tractor around and eating the insects chopped up by the tractor.

Other than cattle egrets, there was also a SNOWY EGRET and a LITTLE BLUE HERON in the back pond.

From here I headed to Granite City to find the WESTERN KINGBIRD waiting patiently for me on a telephone wire right at the Niedringhaus 7/11 store.

It vocalized briefly, then flew down to a post:

 Nice! I still needed Yellow-crown, though, so I headed to Wilson Park to check on the nests. I saw none, so I decided to head back to Cahokia since that it is the only place that I know of to find them reliably. I drove in a checked the ponds. Nothing. I walked around a bit, took some NORTHERN MOCKINGBIRD photos, then checked the ponds again. There next to the road was a beautiful YELLOW-CROWNED NIGHT HERON!

Gotta love S. IL!