It was finally here. No more freezing to death looking for birds. Praise God. It was a balmy 65 degrees for much of the night and 90+ on Sunday, June 1 when Andy Stewart and I did our Lake County Big Day for June 2014. Unfortunately what I thought would be a great blessing turned out to be a great source of frustration and consternation. I also made a bad logistical decision that cost us a few birds. As always, live and learn.
We started at 12:11 at our favorite Barred Owl spot at Lakewood Forest Preserve. As we opened the car doors, we immediately heard what sounded like a big party in the woods. Whaaa?! It was not deafening but definitely loud enough to wonder how nobody had called the cops at 12:15 at night. Andy and I looked at each other like "yeah, this isn't good." In the past, our Barred has called almost immediately in response to my call, but today I called a good 4 times and got nothing. We gave up at that point and started driving away. I hate giving up, though, so I thought we would just pull down the road a little further from the racket and try again. It worked. I called and My Boy called back. Beautiful. Failure averted, but it was close. Unfortunately this theme of failure and working hard for birds would be a recurring theme for the next 19 hours.
One of the things, besides the exciting possibility of finding uncommon and rare birds, that I enjoy about monthly Big Days is that you can see how bird populations change, not only from month to month, but from week to week, and day to day. I did about 6 hours of scouting on Saturday to find some breeders. I thought I had 3 good ones, Pine Warbler, RB Nuthatch, and Green Heron, as well as other birds that I had seen for months, and others had seen recently like Vesper Sparrow, Lark Sparrow, Grasshopper Sparrow, Black Tern, and Blue Grosbeak. These were all absent from sight and sound yesterday. It was both disturbing and interesting at the same time. There must have been a reason why ALL of these birds were no shows. Part of it might be that some of the sites were hit later in the day, but I had a number of them in the morning that were AWOL as well, so there must be something else. I know the warm south winds had sent migrants packing, but it must have been other things as well since breeders don't care about south winds. And just 2 weeks ago, the area was crawling with birds. Yesterday, most everyplace we went, save for Daniel Wright, places were very quiet. Could it be that breeding territories were already established so birds were silent? Maybe, but last year Jeff Sundberg and I had 123 species and had 12 warbler species and 7 shorebird species on JUNE 2. We had 7 and 3 of these respectfully yesterday. Some points to ponder.
After getting My Boy, the Barred Owl, we headed to COLSP to see my favorite gate ranger who still asks me what I'm doing there at 12:45am even though I've seen and chatted with him at least 10 times in the past 2 years. It's like Groundhog Day for this guy. It's amazing. We got EASTERN SCREECH OWL at our favorite spot then headed west into the marsh. The number of calling MARSH WRENS during our nocturnal forays was astounding. 15-20 would be a good estimate. Even better, though was that we had multiple (3) calling SEDGE WRENS which had been virtually absent from the county so far this spring. Changing marshes, we headed east and tried for our rails. There was a ton of noise, most of it from Blarney's Island, the floating bar and nightclub in Grass Lake. However, there were also deafening Marsh Wren calls. We seriously had no rails for like 5-10 minutes before we finally heard a single grunting VIRGINIA RAIL. Seriously? I've rarely had trouble getting a Virginia during breeding season. Something weird was going on. AND we got NO SORA. That's even more ridiculous. They're usually the first birds to call. Incredible. We next visited a private residence we have permission to bird on and were welcomed with a PIED-BILLED GREBE (our only one of the day) and another SEDGE WREN, but no common gallinule which breeds here.
As we hit the lakefront our luck changed a bit. At NPM we drove along the entrance road and immediately heard multiple WHIPPOORWILLS and a peenting AMERICAN WOODCOCK. We tried for Least Bittern to no avail, but while doing so we heard a hooting GREAT HORNED OWL. So we did get all 3 owls yesterday, which was nice. Still no Sora, though. At the South Unit we had more Whips and Marsh Wrens, and, FINALLY, 2 SORAs. Whew! That was another close call.
We still felt good about our night birds as we headed into daybreak despite missing gallinule.
My plan for daybreak was to start at Waukegan for late shorebirds, gulls, terns, and waterfowl of any type. I knew Waukegan would be useless soon after the hordes of beachgoers arrived, so we had to hit it early. Then I wanted to hit Ft. Sheridan for grassland sparrows, RH Woodpecker, possibly some migrant warblers like the 10 sp. Jeff Sanders had on Friday, or some cuckoos before heading west and getting all the woodland birds at Ryerson and D. Wright. After that it was "play it by ear" depending on how it was at Waukegan and Ft. Sheridan.
Well, suffice it to say, it didn't go well. Waukegan was dead as a doornail. 2 gull species, Mallards and Canadas, and 0 migrant shorebirds. The retention pond had nothing but swallows, Killdeer, and a Spotted Sandpiper (breeder). Yikes. We got out of there quickly and headed to Ft. Sheridan where we biked the trail loop. I think that may have been a mistake. I think we may have missed birds, like RH Woodpecker because we covered ground TOO FAST. Biking is good in some situations, but bad in others. I will change this next time. Anyway, we stopped at the traditional Grasshopper Sparrow spot and got nothing, though we did hear at least 3 HENSLOW'S SPARROWS. We saw nothing in the air, nothing on the beach, and heard only common birds. No migrant warblers to speak of, though I think biking would hurt there as well. So we left Ft. Sheridan with not much from the lakefront. I had pretty much made my decision to go west and get birds, which probably was a big mistake and the reason for missing Lark Sparrow and Blue grosbeak for sure, as well as others probably.
I've already droned on about our difficulties yesterday but we did see some nice birds and finished with 104 sp., which was honestly way more than I thought we had. Our best birds:
RYERSON- GREEN HERON (only one of the day), and a LINCOLN'S SPARROW showing its buffiness nicely. 0 migrant warblers......again.
D.WRIGHT WOODS- best spot; singing VEERY behind south washrooms, a singing BLACK-THROATED GREEN, 2 OVENBIRDS, a WOOD THRUSH, and a "peet-SAH"ing ACADIAN FLYCATCHER near the parking lot. Also a calling YB CUCKOO doing its accelerating cow-cow-cow call.
St. MARY'S- no RB Nuthatch which I had Saturday and the previous week; HAIRY WOODPECKER
LAKEWOOD- CLAY-COLORED SPARROW, PURPLE MARTIN
GRANT WOODS NORTH- BLUE-WINGED WARBLER, ALDER FLYCATCHER, no pine warbler which I had Saturday.
FAIRMONT SHORES- BALD EAGLE
COLSP- OSPREY, no pelican, no turkey
PRIVATE RESIDENCE- YH BLACKBIRD
CRAWFORD RD.- no vesper, HORNED LARK
ROLLINS- HOODED MERGANSER (thanks, Al!), WB NUTHATCH (only one!)
ALMOND MARSH- BLACK-CROWNED NIGHT HERON
Lakefront- BREWER'S BLACKBIRD, no Lark Sparrow, CASPIAN TERN (NPM)
Biggest misses:
There were many but other than those previously mentioned were:
Belted Kingfisher, American Kestrel, Cooper's Hawk
The weather was great, the jokes were great, and it's always good to be birding. Thanks for all your ebird lists, IBET posts, and for returning my emails, phone calls, and texts with lots of helpful info. It wouldn't be that much fun without all your help. See you in July!
the list
