October Sky.....and Frost!

 10/12/14
   It would be hard to beat an early fall day like yesterday. Though it was a little chilly in the morning at 37 degrees, there was little to no wind, and the sun was shining brightly throughout the day. It was truly a great day to be out looking for birds......and I was excited to be out there. I hadn't spent any appreciable amount of time birding since Sept. 28. I was literally going through "birding withdrawal."
I was a little cranky, twitchy, and suffering from even more ADHD-like symptoms than usual, which is saying a lot for me. My wife would try to talk to me, and I seriously couldn't remain attentive for longer than a couple of minutes without having to get up and move around. It was pretty sad. So yesterday I was pretty thankful to be able to reconvene with my birding compadres, Andy Stewart and Steve Bailey, for our October Big Day.
  Ideally one would do the October Big Day the first weekend of the month, but since I was visiting my kids at college last weekend, we were forced into the second weekend. Consequently, I wasn't expecting much, but yesterday proved to be a nice little surprise. It was a lot of fun.
  As we did last month, we started at Rollins. We started a little earlier this month, though, since I wanted to do an exhaustive search for saw-whet owls. So we started at 1:00am at the Discovery boardwalk and immediately had a responding VIRGINIA RAIL and not 1, but 2, keeking and whinnying SORA rails. At the same time we had an adult GREAT HORNED OWL calling in the background. So in the span of about 3 minutes, we had 3 birds! We later added WILSON'S SNIPE "Skype"ing as it flushed trailside, multiple KILLDEER, grunting GADWALL, whistling GREEN-WINGED TEAL, and CANADA GEESE before we left. We did miss Short-eared Owl, unfortunately, but still a nice start to the day.
   The owls were really the stars of the night, as they usually are, but they are also notoriously finicky at times. Not last night. We had 8 or 9 GREAT HORNED OWLS on the night, 1 EASTERN SCREECH OWL at COLSP, our BARRED OWL friend at Lakewood, and the star of the evening, a loudly whining (at about 10 ft. away) NORTHERN SAW-WHET OWL at Pine Dunes FP on Edwards Rd.
saw-whet whine

  This sound is always so cool because you never hear anything like it. I've had saw-whets making this whine right over my head before, looked up, and seen an owl staring at me. It's awesome. Very cool birds.
   We ended the owling with a nice Egg McMuffin/coffee stop in Waukegan and headed over to Daniel Wright to get our surprise bird of the day. We waited about 30 minutes before it started to get light out. Around 6:15 I played my iphone calls and songs for a WOOD THRUSH just in case some were still around. after a couple of minutes we heard the "eek calls" of 3 Wood Thrushes and I heard a distant "bup" volley to seal the deal as we added a tough bird to our list.

wood thrush eek calls and bhp volleys

We then scooted over to Ryerson to try our hand at some warblers. Make no mistake. It was COLD at 7am. The temp was below 40, and I was freezing......as well as having flashbacks of last winter. I was wearing long underwear, pants, 2 shirts, 1 hoodie, and an airtight jacket....and I was still cold. Needless to say I didn't think there would be much bird activity. Boy, was I WRONG. Having learned my lesson from last month, we concentrated our efforts on warbler alley, the north trail that runs alongside the river. In order to get there you have to walk either through vegetation or around the visitor center. We walked through the frost-covered vegetation to the trail and immediately had birds leaping, scurrying, and flying in all directions. As we walked to the river, we had 2 of our better birds for the day fly right over us as we looked at the dark bodies, tan heads, and white underwings of a pair of AMERICAN BLACK DUCKS, and then Steve heard a RUSTY BLACKBIRD that Andy and I missed. Things were definitely looking promising as we headed down the alley. And the gauntlet of birds continued. It was spectacular and frustrating at the same time. Spectacular because there were so many birds to look at, and frustrating because, well....., there were so many birds to LOOK AT! And most looks were fleeting and partially leaf-obstructed, as usual. We had TENNESSEE, multiple MOURNING, ORANGE-CROWNED, and NASHVILLE WARBLERS to go along with the numerous sparrows and HERMIT THRUSHES. This is the way birding should be ALL THE TIME! We were having a great time so it was really tough to pull ourselves away and head to the next stop, but we eventually managed to leave and head to Ft. Sheridan for RED-HEADED WOODPECKER and also pick up the loudly ringing chip of a NORTHERN WATERTHRUSH coming from the ravine. Alas, I was the only one to hear it, so that became our 3rd dirty bird of the day. It was also our last.
  Most spots we hit were very productive save for the South Unit at IBSP, which gave us only an unidentified flycatcher which was badly backlit and flew away quickly before we could get good details.
Other Highlights:
Most dangerous moment- At the North Unit we were looking at birds when a couple came up behind us and said, "coming through." What does that mean? you're riding down the middle? "Through" to me means between objects, so I stepped right to get out of the way and almost had wheels going up my back. I was just a little miffed by this, so I made sure to instruct the couple that you supply the direction you're riding on such as, "on your LEFT." This would make such accidents unlikely. In any case, all parties escaped without injury, so that was a small victory. Be careful out there.

Favorite birds:
The aforementioned Saw-whet and Wood Thrush, American Pipit and Black-throated Green Warbler at Waukegan, the 9 warbler species we had, Northern Pintail at American Way marsh, 7 Nelson's Sparrows on the day, and 6 Orange-crowned Warblers on the day, 12 Sparrow species, 4 finch sp.

Biggest misses:
Cooper's Hawk. I can't seem to find a convenient place to find this bird. Will have to solve that riddle soon; Harris' Sparrow was gone, Solitary Sandpiper (there at 7:30, gone at 8:30. Really????? Amazing), Lesser Black-backed Gull (see Solitary Sandpiper), Short-eared Owl (I know they're here, and if I could have gone back to Rollins at 6:45, I would have had them, but I had to chaperone the LHS Homecoming Dance from 7:30-10:30), all the ducks at Ft. Sheridan (big faux pas on my part; didn't even think to check there), no vireos AT ALL, marsh wren and sedge wren were AWOL, only 4 shorebird sp. ( we had 10 last year!)

  We finished with 99 species, which for the 2nd month in a row, put us in the top 3 for a N. IL Big Day. Thanks again to everyone for their ebird and IBET/IBF posts. These are invaluable resources.
Here's the list:

Big Day List