May 2015...The Biggest of the Big Days

 5/17/15

   As I've mentioned before, I began doing Big Days in January of 2013. There were many things about the Big Day that appealed to me. As a former college athlete, I'm pretty competitive, so trying to see more birds than other people was inherently attractive to me, and the challenges were many which made it even more appealing. Thus began the string of Lake County Big Days that brought us to yesterday, May 16, 2015. It was indeed a Big Day.
  Weather is always the key for Big Days during migration, or any Big Day, really, so yesterday was wrought with anticipation. There were Sw-Se winds predicted to some degree or another overnight along with possible rain. South winds combined with rain always present the chance for a fallout of sorts, so that thought was in the back of my mind as we headed out at 12:15am. Amazing how soon I forget this. One personality flaw that I'm still working on is that I'm a big baby when it comes to poor weather. My philosophy has always been if the weather is good, its a great day no matter how many birds we see. If the weather is brutal, then mental anguish sets in. This was the scenario yesterday around 4:30am. I seriously was considering calling it quits at 7:00am because I was tired of dealing with rain for 2.5 hrs....and the rain wasn't even bad. My teammates, Andy Stewart and Eric Lundquist, were especially resilient and without saying much, just continued to bird like nothing was happening, so I just followed along and tried to enjoy the birds. The rain eventually stopped and it became fairly nice for a time. As it turned out, I believe the rain did bring some birds down. It's really interesting to me how Joe Lill's team had such a different experience than we had. There must have been a short window of activity in the morning that we benefitted from and they missed. Don't know how else to explain it.
  So our sojourn began at 12:15 at Rollins where it was much harder than expected to get both rails. Eventually we had multiple SORAS and 2 VIRGINIA RAILS at one marshy spot along the trail. We also had many peenting WOODCOCKS (yes, they were woodcocks and not nighthawks), and at least 10 singing HENSLOW'S SPARROWS. We ended the night with all 3 expected owls, WHIPPOORWILLS, and the best bird, a COMMON GALLINULE on private property that "sang" its ascending whinny loud and clear about 50 ft. from us.
gallinule call

  We finished the nighttime hrs at Daniel Wright Woods when Eric deftly picked out a silent, staring BARRED OWL from the trees. I never would have seen that bird. Eric easily nabbed at least 4 birds on the day that I would have completely missed. Love teamwork. So as the rains began around 4:30 and we continued to try to get a response from the Barred Owl, the thrushes began singing/calling. We had a singing WOOD THRUSH almost immediately and a VEERY sounded off a little later. My favorite, though was the wiry song of a Gray-cheeked Thrush followed by ascending "weer" calls.
gray-cheeked thrush call, song

 We later saw a trailside SWAINSON'S THRUSH to knock off the expected thrushes. As sunrise began, it was still raining but apparently the birds didn't mind too much, though the song was definitely at a minimum. Activity was brisk, however, and with Eric and ANDY's sharp eyes and ears we were able to nab many of the easier warblers. Actually the only notable warbler misses we had on the day IMO were Golden-winged, Pine, and Cape May. We also had visuals on all of them except HOODED, PROTHONOTARY (had 3 of them singing at close range), and  CONNECTICUT which were heard only. The Connecticut was especially frustrating because it sang repeatedly in a shrub right in front of us but wouldn't respond at all to pishing and when I played its song, it shut up permanently. Eric was the only one to hear the Hooded, so it became 1 of our 3 dirty birds for the day.
Our 3 heard only warblers:
hooded warbler
prothonotary song
connecticut warbler

  More about the warblers. The best spot was the south ravine at Ft. Sheridan. It was crawling with birds. Best were a singing BLACK-THROATED BLUE, CANADA, and a bird I'm 90% sure was a Kentucky Warbler, but I only saw it naked eye at about 20 ft. My eyes aren't great so I tried to get bins on it and it dove never to be seen again. It definitely was all yellow with a black mask and no white that I could see. The 3 of us actually commented on how many birds there were. We saw, and heard,  A LOT of birds Saturday. That was the only thing that made the poor weather bearable to me.
My top 4 seen warblers on Sat:
1. 3 BLACK-THROATED BLUES (a personal record for 1 day)

2. 3 CANADA WARBLERS- always tough for me to see.

3. CERULEAN- story forthcoming

4. Yellow-throated- only seen 2 other years in Lake County by me.

                                     internet photos

We ended the day with 27 Warbler sp. which ties a personal best for me in one day.

  So stage 1 for the day was the warblers. Stage 2 was the lakefront itself with associated beaches. This portion of our trip began at Waukegan and really was pretty good. Things didn't get poor until we reached the South Unit at IBSP. At Waukegan we had most of our shorebirds with 6 sp. at the Pershing Rd. mudflat. This is possibly the most productive shorebird spot in the county other than the beach itself. We also had the Connecticut warbler singing along this road in a shrubby clump. From here we ventured to Midwest Gen to look for the PEREGRINE FALCON. I saw nothing after looking hard and neither did Andy. As we were pulling out to leave, however, Eric snags the bird soaring and we all get on it in time to see it glide slowly in to the nest box. Very nice.

  Lyons was good (a BTB Warbler and 3 visual PINE SISKINS) but the greatest potential for "good stuff" was the South Unit.....and the beach was totally fogged in....and the temp had dropped about 10 degrees. No shorebirds....except a DEER-DEER-DEERing GREATER YELLOWLEGS, No RB Merganser, No Chat seen by 2 people in the past 2 days, and I was only able to hear the LARK SPARROW sing once. We did have a good amount of activity along the middle trail though including scads of flycatchers. Traill's (none here were singing, though we did add Willow later), the yellowest YELLOW-BELLIED FLYCATCHER I've ever seen, and many LEAST FLYCATCHERS. The campgrounds surrendered a gorgeous YELLOW-THROATED WARBLER and a very vocal RED-BREASTED NUTHATCH.

  The North Unit gave us BLUE-HEADED VIREO for all the expected vireos and 2 good ducks, 3 RING-NECKED DUCKS and 3 RUDDY DUCKS. North Point Marina was completely fogged in so no water birds here at all.

  We then headed west where we nabbed VESPER SPARROW, BLACK TERN, YELLOW-HEADED BLACKBIRD, AMERICAN WHITE PELICAN, WILD TURKEY, TRUMPETER SWAN, BALD EAGLE, and LESSER YELLOWLEGS.

  Best Had-to-be-there moment:
We were driving through COLSP when I heard a singing CERULEAN WARBLER.
cerulean song  This was in the middle of a crowded campground. We quickly pull over and 3 guys fly out of the car like the A team. The people in the campground thought they were being raided. It was pretty funny. Great bird. Had some nice looks also.
  We finished the day in near dark at Rollins with Gadwall and a tu-tu-tu -ing SHORT-BILLED DOWITCHER  short-billed call.

  It was wild. Thanks again to my teammates Andy Stewart and Eric Lundquist for a lot of great birds and good laughs. We ended the day with 164 sp. which, I believe, is a new Lake County record. Pretty exciting stuff!

Here's the list:
Big Day list