Breeding Bird Survey #2 Lakewood

Summer is the time of breeding bird surveys. For the most part there is little migration in June so the focus is on breeding birds. There are lots of interesting birds breeding here in Lake County and for the past couple of summers I have been helping out my friend, Gary Glowacki, the wildlife biologist for the Lake County Forest Preserve District, with doing the summer surveys. This year I was assigned Lakewood Forest Preserve in Wauconda. Lakewood is a great place to bird mostly because it has a wide variety of habitats, though the woodland areas are rather sparse and disturbed. There are a nice variety of wetland, scrubland, and grassland species, however. I do 2 surveys a summer. One at the beginning of June and one at the end of June/beginning of July. So today was my 2nd survey. I did my first on June 3rd and had 67 sp. which is pretty awesome for 1 forest preserve. Today it was a little less mostly because birds are singing less and the morning was pretty foggy early. Of note in its absence was Sedge Wren, which I had multiple numbers of earlier. However, taking its place was the HENSLOW'S SPARROW. I had 4 singing in various spots and got looks at 1 of them:

They're very small sparrows, and can be tough to find. Fortunately they sing pretty persistently even through July. Another highlight was multiple GRASSHOPPER SPARROWS:

I had 7 sparrow species on the day, which was cool. Here's a Savannah:

Aside from sparrows there was also the ever-present DICKCISSELS:

Other less common birds were 3 ORCHARD ORIOLES and 2 BLACK-CROWNED NIGHT HERONS.
  Another great morning of birding. Tomorrow out to look for some shorebirds!