Happy Friday the 13th! It was an awesome day today as it was yesterday. After not getting a new year bird for a week and a half, I
was greeted with #242 yesterday and #243 today. Pretty nice.
So yesterday the plan was to go to the lakefront and check the beach for shorebirds and then go to IBSP to look for the mythical Black-billed Cuckoo. I started at Waukegan Beach and found a weird-looking hybrid duck of some sort.
No shorebirds other than the resident Spotted Sandpipers, though, so I headed over to IBSP South and walked the trails there looking for the cuckoo. No luck, of course, but there were scads of Field Sparrows and Eastern Towhees. I then headed to IBSP North and Sand Pond Rd. This is a road behind a locked gate which is only locked to cars. It's perfectly OK to take your bike or walk around the gate, which everyone does. So I rode my bike down the road looking for Blue Grosbeaks, Lark Sparrows, cuckoos, and any other rarity I could find. As I was approaching the lake, there was a corridor of oaks on my right. It was from this corridor that I heard the characteristic "peer-peer" call of a CAROLINA WREN! Now the Carolina Wren is very common in southern Illinois and even in some of the southern suburbs. However, it is very rare in lake county. So rare that I have NEVER seen one in this county. I heard the call, then played the call on my iPod. No response. So I just stood on the trail waiting. At this point a walker came up to me and asked what I was looking for. On cue, the Carolina called again, and I said "That bird!" The walker, now intrigued, asked about the bird as the wren flew right into the tree I was standing next to! Alas, I couldn't get my bins on the bird, though, because it kept moving. My new birding friend followed the bird as I kept losing it in binocular transition until it finally sat in a shrub for a second so I could get a diagnostic look. Once I saw the bird, I had to get a photo:
#242!
Today my goal was to look for Snowy Egret at sunrise at Red-wing Slough and then head to Rollins Savanna and hike around the main pond and cover every interior pond looking for shorebirds. No Snowies today but at Rollins things were hoppin'. I saw 8 species of shorebirds: KILLDEER, SPOTTED SANDPIPER, LEAST SANDPIPER, LESSER YELLOWLEGS, GREATER YELLOWLEGS, STILT SANDPIPER, SHORT-BILLED DOWITCHER, LONG-BILLED DOWITCHER.
Stilt Sandpiper
Long-billed Dowitcher
Lesser Yellowlegs
Long-billed Dowitcher was year bird #243! Now, dowitcher ID is very difficult- one of the most difficult ID challenges in birding. Though there are subtle differences in plumage characteristics and structure, the only way that I can truly be sure of their differences is to hear them call. The call notes are very different:
I actually had 5 Long-billed Dowitchers fly in and land in front of me for a couple of minutes WHILE CALLING, so it was easy to ID them. The Short-billeds were calling also.
To see all these shorebirds, I had to hike off-trail through some very tall plants, patches of thistles, and navigate the many potholes which you can't see due to plant growth. It was a good workout, especially in the 90 degree heat! It was a great morning to be out, though, and Rollins didn't disappoint.
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