North Winds Ho!

 Yesterday, 11/1, Andy Stewart brought his Lake County Big Year with him to join Steve Bailey and me for round 23 of the Lake County Monthly Big Day Spectacle. And what a spectacle it was.....in more ways than one. The big challenge for me on this Big Day was trying to figure out how to deal with the wind. I really don't like wind...at all. It knocks my scope over, makes using my scope useless, makes otherwise beautiful days COLD, makes my eyes all blubbery, and makes birds hide. Unless, of course, they are WATER birds with a tail wind on Nov. 1. In that case, it's off to the races! So I had to suck up my dislike for wind and use this to our Big Day advantage. I wasn't sure how it would go, though.
  Usually on a Big Day, you start with nocturnal birds at some o-dark-thirty hour of the morning before hitting your best spot for birds at daybreak. This spot is usually a woodland or wetland area filled with vocalizing birds, but not on this day. Yesterday's gale force northerly winds blew a lot of birds out of here. BUT they also set the scene for great lake movement. So I decided to flip our Big Day and start at the lakefront for a 2hr. lake watch and hit the woodlands later. Also, since the winds Friday night were fairly horrific but were supposed to be calm Saturday night, I decided to do our owling at the end of the day instead of the beginning. I've never done a Big Day that way before so I was a little unsure how our energy level would be at the end of the day. Not sure that this strategy would be that great in May or June, but in November when you have 6 hrs to play with at the end of  daylight, that's plenty of time to find owls, so that was the plan for our November Big Day.
   I have to say that I'm pretty happy with the way our day played out except we should have hit Third Lake before we went to Almond Marsh. We started our Lakewatch at 7am at the yacht club of North Point Marina (awesome wind block!) and immediately had a few streams of small gulls flying by. The lighting was so bad, though, that we couldn't tell if they were Bonaparte's or Franklin's Gulls. Fortunately we had a BONAPARTE'S fly right into the yacht club harbor for great looks later on. The birds started slowly at daybreak but by 7:30 there was a steady stream all going NORTH!!?? Whaaaat? Why? Why would birds be flying north into a 25-30mph headwind in fall? If anyone can explain that one to me, I would love to hear it. Anyway, the birds kept coming. Mostly RED-BREASTED MERGANSERS, but we had some close flyby WHITE-WINGED SCOTERS, a RED-THROATED LOON just outside the harbor flying in slo-motion against the wind, a couple of COMMON LOONS, oodles of ducks too far away to ID and some dark-winged scoters that were also too far away to ID to species. This is probably the most frustrating thing to me about the lake watch.
Surf and Black Scoters almost NEVER seem to fly close enough to shore to get a decent look at them. I have only once been able to ID flyby Black Scoters, only because I saw the pale cheek patches on the female. So our day started off with some pretty nice birds. We then headed to Waukegan to see if we could find anything else and hopefully get the Laughing Gull and Harlequin Duck that had been around for a few days. The South Port Authority lot was locked (???) Another baffling phenomenon. Why the high security at the port authority? Never in past years have a noticed the gate locked here with the frequency of this year. So, we WALKED AROUND the gate, and checked the south pier for the Laugher to no avail. I don't think that bird was seen by anybody this weekend.
  The channel showed no Harlequin so we headed over to North beach to check for shorebirds.....but there was NO SHORE. The waves had swallowed the beach. Literally. The pier was similarly inundated with water and so began our first spectacle of the day....no shorebirds. We had 1 species, and that was because Andy was able to pick 3 KILLDEER out at Independence Grove as light was running out. Contrast this with the 7 shorebird sp. we had last year. Biggest bummer of the day for sure. Still we had no Harly, so we checked the pines and had a nice BROWN CREEPER to go along with the plethora of GOLDEN-CROWNED KINGLETS on the day. While we were there we also checked the channel and saw a suspicious brown bird sitting with a female GREATER SCAUP near Government pier. We walked closer and the bird dived, of course. So we waited, and waited.......and waited some more. Where the heck is this bird? It seemed like a good 10 minutes before we saw it pop up somewhere and then fly in right in front of us. Nice! So we had some classic looks at the female-type HARLEQUIN DUCK before taking off to the Bowen Feeders and Lyons Woods, where we got our necessary woodland birds. At IBSP South we had multiple flocks of PINE SISKINS totaling 150-200 birds and 1 of our 2 HERMIT THRUSHES on the day. We missed Purple Finch, however. The trails and beach were surprisingly dead. The North Unit gave us roadside WINTER WREN, HERMIT THRUSH, and FOX SPARROW but no shrike.
  We finished our day heading to Rollins, which has historically been good to us on many levels. We needed lots of ducks and Rollins gave us RUDDY DUCK, SHOVELER, a wheezing WIGEON, AMERICAN BLACK DUCK, LESSER SCAUP, GW TEAL, over a hundred HOODED MERGANSERS, a PALM WARBLER (our only warbler sp.), and our best bird of the day, a NORTHERN GOSHAWK that Steve Bailey saw stoop on a duck and miss and then get chased into a tree by a noticeably smaller NORTHERN HARRIER. We had some extended scope looks at the bird, but he only showed his backside and turned his head to look at us every few seconds. Finally he dove and disappeared into the woods. That's the first Goshawk that I have ever seen away from the hawk watch.

  At this point, light was running out and we still needed a lot of birds. Panic set in. Should I go to Third Lake or skip it and go straight to Almond Marsh? Hit Allegheny Ballfields first or last? There were too many questions to answer. In the end, we chose to go to Almond directly and skip Third Lake. This proved to be costly because Third Lake is a popular roosting spot for waterfowl and it was loaded with ducks when we came back to get short-eared owl (which we missed) a little later. Almond had nothing. Zippo. Nada. No Mute Swans, even, so for the first time ever, we missed Mute Swan on a Big Day. Yikes. Independence Grove proved to be a nice stop, however, as it gave us GREAT BLUE HERON, LESSER BLACK-BACKED GULL, and KILLDEER.
  Off we headed to Allegheny ballfields where we found.....a LOCKED GATE. Are you kidding? What's with locking gates to open fields and parking lots? you can WALK into these places. Why lock the gates? Incredible. So we crossed the street and drove down Sportsman's Dr. where we had at least 4 or 5 calling HORNED LARKS for our last daytime bird. After missing on Short-eared Owl but incredibly getting calling SORA AND VIRGINIA RAILS for the first time ever in November for me, we headed to the newest owl mecca of Lake County, Pine Dunes FP. In the span of about 10 minutes we had a cat-whining NORTHERN SAW-WHET OWL and 2 EASTERN SCREECH OWLS to finish of a 4 owl day for us.
  It was another fantastic day of birding with 2 great birders and some beautiful weather once we left the lakefront. The comparison between last year and this year is also a pretty amazing spectacle. We had 78 sp. this year and 79 last year but we had 19! species last year that we missed this year. Pretty amazing.
  Thanks again to Steve and Andy for a great day!
Here's the list:
 the list

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

The September Dirty Bird Debacle

  Steve Bailey, Andy Stewart, and I meandered our way through myriads of birds on Sunday, Sept. 14 for my 21st consecutive monthly Big Day. The weather was beautiful, though a bit chilly in the early morning hours as it dropped to 41 degrees! I'm definitely not ready for bone-chilling cold again.

  We started the day at Rollins Savanna at 2:00am and promptly ticked off both VIRGINIA and SORA RAILS. This was a big lift since these birds have been a tad difficult to get since May. We also heard a juvenile GREAT HORNED OWL doing a very high-pitched squeal that sounded rather odd to me, so I was hoping we would get another one. We heard 2 other juveniles during the course of the night, and had nice looks at 3 adults during the day/night. No adults were calling, though, which was interesting given the number we had last month (only 2 weeks ago).

  We then were off to Lakewood. Steve let fly with his famous Barred Owl call but we heard nothing initially. Then on about the 3rd try, we heard our buddy off in the distance. Definitely clearly audible but, also, definitely not close. He's been moving around quite a bit these days. At COLSP we had 2 calling EASTERN SCREECH OWLS, so the only bird left for us was the Whip. We arrived at IBSP around 4:30 and played the call. Shortly we had a nicely responding EASTERN WHIPPOORWILL behind the nature center. A great start to the day with all of our expected nocturnal species. We finished the evening at Middlefork trying for a Least Bittern or King Rail but no luck. We also had numerous calling SWAINSON'S THRUSHES flying over us during the night, but we could not hear anything else. A nicely silhouetted GREAT HORNED OWL in the wetland tree was our last bird of the evening hours.

  We started the day at Daniel Wright where we had no less than 4 calling WOOD THRUSHES and a kekking COOPER'S HAWK. We then headed quickly over to Ryerson where my first tactical error occurred. With visions of Warbler Grandeur dancing in my head on the heels of Doug Stotz's post yesterday about his 20 Warbler species, I figured we would head to the river where Doug had most of his birds. This probably would have worked well had it been May.....and the birds were singing. In September, when the birds are definitely NOT singing, however, this is a recipe for advanced frustration. There were definitely birds around us, but they were not visible and the leaf cover is too dense around the river to see much, so we ended up not being able to ID very many. We hurried back to the Brushwood parking lot and were able to get a couple of species, but nothing even close to what I was expecting, and our vireo count was a whopping 1....not the beginning I had hoped for. I should have done Warbler Alley on the west side of the preserve along the river. Birds congregate here in the morning sun and they are close. The leaf cover isn't nearly as dense either. Lesson learned. I also missed a HOUSE FINCH! while going to the bathroom. Really? That was only the beginning of the Dirty Bird Debacle.

  Stop #3 was at Ft. Sheridan which continues to be probably my 3rd favorite birding spot after Rollins and COLSP. We had the usuals although we missed orioles on the day. Best bird here was a MOURNING WARBLER that I unfortunately didn't get Steve and Andy on quick enough before it disappeared for our second dirty bird on the day. This was the challenge. Getting all 3 of us on quickly moving warblers, falcons, and kinglets proved to be a very frustrating endeavor during the course of the day. We also had 3 or 4 RUBY-THROATED HUMMINGBIRDS in the jewelweed tangle along the path. We then moved over slightly to the Openlands preserve where CHIPPING SPARROWS had been reported a couple of weeks ago on ebird. Andy did some stellar scouting on Saturday and found a small flock very close to the road which was still there Sunday morning. That was a great bird to get seeing as I missed it in August. Steve also found a nicely singing WHITE-THROATED SPARROW that Andy had also locate day before, so some timely scouting paid off for us early.

  Waukegan was interesting. We initially got there, picked up our AMERICAN KESTREL family,  and then saw only SANDERLINGS, SEMIPALMATED PLOVERS, and a SEMIPALMATED SANDPIPER on the beach along with some HOODED MERGANSERS. This actually proved to be pretty good seeing as we had none of these shorebirds anywhere else. We were definitely hoping for something rarer, like a Red Knot or Buffie or Whimbrel, but nothing like that ever appeared. The weather was probably too nice. The pines area was almost completely devoid of birds, with the exception of a small clump of shrubs behind the locked fence area of the water plant. This shrubby clump had 5 or 6 birds in it, that stayed very hidden for most of the time, but we eventually found a couple of warblers and what I'm fairly certain was a YB Flycatcher, but I never saw the back of the bird to rule out Least Fly so that bird remained UF. On the way out, Steve noticed a couple of birds on Government Pier to the south, so we  scanned them quickly and had nice looks at 2 RUDDY TURNSTONES just before someone flushed them. On the way back out we checked the fenced in prairie and had a juvenile BROWN-HEADED COWBIRD, our only one of the day. Near the parking area pavilion were some secluded warblers and sparrows. Andy was able to dig up a WILSON'S WARBLER but neither Steve nor I was able to get on it before it disappeared. Another dirty bird. So Andy decided to walk around to the back of the shrubby area to flush birds toward us. In so doing, he flushed an AMERICAN WOODCOCK. All I could see was some wings flapping as the bird disappeared. Another dirty bird. This was getting ridiculous.....and it would get worse. A BLACK-BELLIED PLOVER in the fenced in pond area was a nice gift on our way out. A trip down Clayton Ave. toward Bowen Park netted us a nice flock of RED-WINGED BLACKBIRDS and 2 COMMON GRACKLES, the only ones of the day. The main goal, though, was to find the Peregrine. We stopped at Doehringer Rd. to check out the stacks for the Peregrine. I don't know where those guys were looking, but right in front of me flies the PEREGRINE FALCON into the back of a tree. We could not find him, though, since he was on private property behind a closed fence. Another dirty bird. Amazing....and disturbing. On to Lyons Woods where we had a yanking RED-BREASTED NUTHATCH, a GRAY-CHEEKED THRUSH, and nice looks at a foraging PINE WARBLER that also responded nicely to its song by flying right in to a tree right in front of us. While watching the Pine, Andy Yells out that he has a MERLIN flying overhead. Steve gets on it but I couldn't see anything and the bird disappeared over the trees. ANOTHER DIRTY BIRD????!!! Seriously? This is killing me.

  We headed to IBSP hoping for some good warblers. It was now around noon and our warbler count was about 6 sp. Not real encouraging. No worries, though, because IBSP delivered the goods. We walked out and back along the middle trail beyond the locked gate and had literally flocks of birds moving all along the trail. We were here for 2 hours getting birds. Of course we also got more DIRTY birds. Andy found an OVENBIRD and a RUBY-CROWNED KINGLET but the birds were moving around quickly and both disappeared before I could see them. We saw a lot, though, and ended the day with 17 warbler species, most of which we got here between noon and 2pm. Pretty unbelievable.

  The rest of the day played out like this:
North Unit- Belted Kingfisher, Least Flycatcher, and Yellow-throated Vireo snagged by Andy at eye level in the clump near the gate.
Spring Bluff- Swamp Sparrow
Rt. 173- Bald Eagle
COLSP- Osprey
Rt. 59 and Grand Ave- Turkey Vulture
and then......ROLLINS! As always, Rollins came up huge. Even though the shorebird habitat is nonexistent save for a small, muddy island. We still got 3 shorebird sp. there. AND in the process of walking around the pond searching for our absentee Nelson's Saprrow, Steve flushes a beautiful AMERICAN BITTERN that EVERYBODY had nice looks at. Great bird. We then pulled out GREAT EGRET, BOBOLINK, SANDHILL CRANE, LINCOLN'S SPARROW, NORTHERN SHOVELER, NORTHERN PINTAIL, PURPLE MARTIN, GREEN-WINGED TEAL, GADWALL, and PIED-BILLED GREBE. On the way out we had nice looks at 4 or 5 MARSH WRENS. By now it was only about 45 minutes to sunset, so we quickly headed to Almond Marsh and picked up BC Night Heron and 2 female AMERICAN WIGEON, as well as a couple of cruising COMMON NIGHTHAWKS. With darkness creeping in, we headed to Allegheny ballfields and just had enough light to see and hear a small flock of HORNED LARKS in the bare dirt and scrubby weedy edges of the fields at the top of the hill.

  It was another stellar day birding with some great weather and great compadres. The dirty bird element was frustrating but not debilitating. We finished with 122 species and 8 dirty birds. The 5% rule only allows us 6 dirty birds so we had to take 2 birds off of our list to give us 120 species. This put us 3rd for a Northern Illinois Big Day. I've only been able to accomplish this 1 other time, last year in June with Jeff Sundberg, so Sunday was truly a great day. Thanks again to Steve and Andy for the laughs, the great stories, and some awesome birds. The next Big Day in October will find temps even cooler, so I'm a little sad at bidding the summer weather farewell. There were a lot of great birds, though. Thanks for reading and I'll see you in October!

Lake county big day, Lake, US-IL
Sep 14, 2014 2:00 AM - 10:30 PM
Protocol: Traveling
200.0 mile(s)
Comments:     w/steve bailey and andy stewart
122 species 

Canada Goose  1
Mute Swan  1
Wood Duck  1
Gadwall  1
American Wigeon  1
Mallard  1
Blue-winged Teal  1
Northern Shoveler  1
Northern Pintail  1
Green-winged Teal  1
Hooded Merganser  1
Pied-billed Grebe  1
Double-crested Cormorant  1
American Bittern  1
Great Blue Heron  1
Great Egret  1
Green Heron  1
Black-crowned Night-Heron  1
Turkey Vulture  1
Osprey  1
Cooper's Hawk  1
Bald Eagle  1
Red-tailed Hawk  1
Virginia Rail  1
Sora  1
Sandhill Crane  1
Black-bellied Plover  1
Semipalmated Plover  1
Killdeer  1
Spotted Sandpiper  1
Lesser Yellowlegs  1
Ruddy Turnstone  1
Sanderling  1
Least Sandpiper  1
Pectoral Sandpiper  1
Semipalmated Sandpiper  1
American Woodcock  1
Ring-billed Gull  1
Herring Gull  1
Caspian Tern  1
Mourning Dove  1
FERAL PIGEON     1
Eastern Screech-Owl  1
Great Horned Owl  1
Barred Owl  1
Common Nighthawk  1
Eastern Whip-poor-will  1
Chimney Swift  1
Ruby-throated Hummingbird  1
Belted Kingfisher  1
Red-headed Woodpecker  1
Red-bellied Woodpecker  1
Downy Woodpecker  1
Hairy Woodpecker  1
Northern Flicker  1
American Kestrel  1
Merlin  1
Peregrine Falcon  1
Eastern Wood-Pewee  1
Alder/Willow Flycatcher (Traill's Flycatcher)  1
Least Flycatcher  1
Eastern Phoebe  1
Eastern Kingbird  1
Yellow-throated Vireo  1
Red-eyed Vireo  1
Blue Jay  1
American Crow  1
Horned Lark  1
Purple Martin  1     juvenile bird; dark, large swallow, long periods of gliding, brownish-gray throat on otherwise white underside.
Tree Swallow  1
Barn Swallow  1
Cliff Swallow  1
Black-capped Chickadee  1
Red-breasted Nuthatch  1
White-breasted Nuthatch  1
House Wren  1
Marsh Wren  1
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher  1
Ruby-crowned Kinglet  1
Eastern Bluebird  1
Gray-cheeked Thrush  1
Swainson's Thrush  1
Wood Thrush  1
American Robin  1
Gray Catbird  1
European Starling  1
Cedar Waxwing  1
Ovenbird  1
Northern Waterthrush  1
Black-and-white Warbler  1
Tennessee Warbler  1
Nashville Warbler  1
MOURNING WARBLER 1
Common Yellowthroat  1
American Redstart  1
Cape May Warbler  1
Magnolia Warbler  1
Chestnut-sided Warbler  1
Blackpoll Warbler  1
Palm Warbler  1
Pine Warbler  1
Yellow-rumped Warbler  1
Black-throated Green Warbler  1
Wilson's Warbler  1
Eastern Towhee  1
Chipping Sparrow  1
Field Sparrow  1
Savannah Sparrow  1
Song Sparrow  1
Lincoln's Sparrow  1
Swamp Sparrow  1
White-throated Sparrow  1
Northern Cardinal  1
Rose-breasted Grosbeak  1
Indigo Bunting  1
Bobolink  1
Red-winged Blackbird  1
Common Grackle  1
Brown-headed Cowbird  1
House Finch  1
American Goldfinch  1
House Sparrow  1

Bring on the Warblers!!!

8/31/14
  Yesterday ace photographer, Nat Carmichael, and I embarked upon my August Big Day for 2014. Last year August proved to be a troubling month for me. I had some time management and planning issues due to less sunlight time that I forgot to take into consideration. So this year I fixed the route planning, but not the time management issues.....though for a different reason. I haven't been out birding in 6 days, which is an eternity for me. Since I started school on the 18th, it's been very busy around my house, so I haven't been able to get out much. So yesterday I was basically chomping at the bit to just get out and see some birds. Consequently I spent WAY too much time gawking at my favorite birds, the warblers. Yes, THEY'RE BACK! Woohoo! As we all know, finding warblers is challenge number 1 as they dart back-and-forth willy nilly through the foliage. This requires time. Challenge number 2 is ID'ing them after finding them. Some first year female birds can have odd color variations, usually muted but sometimes bright yellow, which make birds look very confusing, indeed. For example, I had a first year female ORANGE-CROWNED WARBLER (early, I know) that looked like the bird in The Warbler Guide (Peterson) p. 50, except the the throat and chest (which is all that I saw) were the brightest yellow I have ever seen on an Orange-crowned. The head was gray-green, but hooded, with a nicely-broken bold eye-ring. So I'm thinking, Is this a MacGillivray's Warbler!?! I don't think it was, but I had to search repeatedly for the bird, which never sat still long enough for a pic. This was definitely a time suck. I also wanted to get some nice pictures for the blog and take advantage of Nat's photo skills. This also put us behind a bit. But, whatever. It was fun. So anyway, it was a great day, as always, but we missed going to 4 spots that would definitely have added birds, and we missed.....this is really embarrassing......a ROCK PIGEON! Are you kidding me!? Yes, that's right, I didn't get to either of the 2 good spots in Lake County for Rock Pigeon. That's the kind of day it was.

   Nat and I began our BirdQuest at 2:00am at Rollins. Have I ever said that I love this place? I do. Got a whining juvenile GREAT HORNED OWL for bird #1 followed closely by a bird we missed last month, a SORA, squeaking from the east trail marsh. Interestingly we had 3 Soras on the day. I'm guessing these were juveniles exercising their calling capabilities or running around in plain sight because juveniles think they're invincible. Wait, are we talking people or birds?

  Next stop was our Barred Owl spot.....and our first disappointment of the night. Alas, my Barred Owl friend, who has been with us all year so far, failed to come out and play last night. We were a little downtrodden after this unfortunate event. To add insult to injury we got no new birds at either Volo or COLSP either. These places have both been money in the past so this was especially difficult to swallow. Next stop was our favorite private residence, which has an incredible cattail marsh, and also has delivered for us on our Big Days. Fortunately, today was no exception or I might have quit and gone home......just kidding. We had a grunting VIRGINIA RAIL and a distant whinnying EASTERN SCREECH OWL to give us two big birds for the evening. High fives were exchanged and an immediate lifting of the spirits commenced. The last nocturnal bird we were hoping for was a whippoorwill. We missed this bird last year in August, so I wasn't confident of our chances, but as soon as we got out of the car at IBSP we had a roadside calling WHIPPOORWILL, no taping required. How 'bout it! So we ended our nocturnal sojourn with all the owls, including an amazing 12 Great Horned Owls, save our Barred Owl, all the rails, a spontaneously calling Whippoorwill, and some nice mojo coming into daybreak.

  Usually I start on the Des Plaines River for songbirds and then hit the lakefront. This time, however, I decided to start at Waukegan. The thing about Waukegan is that if you're not the first person there, the birds often flush and sometimes are not seen again. I was determined to get there first, so Nat and I were there ready to go at 6am.....and we STILL weren't first. People were there before sunrise for cryin' out loud. We didn't miss anything, though, and had nice looks at an adult BLACK-BELLIED PLOVER as we walked down the beach.

                                      (all photos in this blog post courtesy of Nat Carmichael)

 Also had some SANDERLINGS and a SEMIPALMATED SANDPIPER but no Ruddy Turnstone or Red Knot. Walking the beach takes time, though, so we were pushing to get to the pines and check for songbirds. As we were walking back to the parking lot a pair of BREWER'S BLACKBIRDS flew by us given away by the all black male and gray female combination. Nice bird. In the pines the best birds were a group of juvenile BROWN-HEADED COWBIRDS foraging on the lawn and our only dirty bird of the day, a RED-BREASTED NUTHATCH which Nat saw but would not show its face for me. There were warblers in the air but the only one we could ID in a tree was a BLACKPOLL.

  We headed to IBSP South next which was the most time-consuming stop of the day other than Rollins. We were at the South Unit for close to 2 hours. We checked 3 places along the beach for Buffies but were shut out. We had a nice pocket of warblers, though, along with multiple SWAINSON'S THRUSHES and a VEERY. We definitely had lots of nice birds but the loss of time hurt us in the end. Other highlights:

Best warbler spots: IBSP South and the south ravine at Ft. Sheridan. We ended with 12 sp. of warblers. The best being the aforementioned Orange-crowned at Lyons Woods. Lyons also gave us a nice BLACK-BILLED CUCKOO.

Best Shorebird/waterbird spot: Rollins as usual, though we got PIED-BILLED GREBE at Almond Marsh. Here's a few shots from Rollins:

                                  Female Northern Pintail and juvenile Short-billed Dowitcher

                                  2 Stilt Sandpipers (bottom birds) with Lesser Yellowlegs

                                  Lesser Yellowlegs with Baird's Sandpiper

                                 Great Egrets, Great Blue Heron, and Northern Shoveler

Most People- COLSP and Fairmont Shores. The goldfinch trail literally had a person come by every 30 seconds to a minute for the first 5 minutes we were on the trail. OK that's an exaggeration, but it SEEMED like it was that many. We got the LAST parking spot at Fairmont Shores to check for Bald Eagle, which we whiffed on, but I've never seen that place crowded on a Sunday night before, though I guess Monday being Labor Day would make a difference. Here's a couple of nice shots from COLSP.

                                                   Not-so-Common Nighthawk

                                                                       Osprey

Unleashed dogs- only 2. both at Ft. Sheridan. We had good luck with dogs.

Constant Companions: American Goldfinches. They were everywhere and in most spots were the only vocalizing birds. Cedar Waxwings were a close second.

Wader Heaven- At Almond Marsh, we had all 4 waders, which isn't big news, but it's still cool. Here's a nice Black-crown shot:

  Unfortunately, the big misses were glaring:

Rock Pigeon, Chipping Sparrow, Dickcissel, Purple Martin, Brown Thrasher, Horned Lark, Barred Owl, Solitary Sandpiper, Bald Eagle, Cooper's Hawk, Belted Kingfisher, Scarlet Tanager, Yellow-throated Vireo, Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Henslow's Sparrow, Hooded Merganser, Sedge Wren, Eastern Meadowlark, Common Grackle........yikes.

 But it was great to be out birding with Nat, the weather was fantastic for a change, and the warblers are back. We finished with 105 sp. which was 6 better than last year, so I reached goal #1. All is good with the world.

  See you in September!

Here's the List:

105 species

Canada Goose  1
Mute Swan  1
Wood Duck  1
Gadwall  1
Mallard  1
Blue-winged Teal  1
Northern Shoveler  1
Northern Pintail  1
Green-winged Teal  1
Wild Turkey  1
Pied-billed Grebe  1
Double-crested Cormorant  1
Great Blue Heron  1
Great Egret  1
Green Heron  1
Black-crowned Night-Heron  1
Turkey Vulture  1
Osprey  1
Red-tailed Hawk  1
Virginia Rail  1
Sora  1
Sandhill Crane  1
Black-bellied Plover  1
Semipalmated Plover  1
Killdeer  1
Spotted Sandpiper  1
Lesser Yellowlegs  1
Stilt Sandpiper  1
Sanderling  1
Baird's Sandpiper  1
Least Sandpiper  1
Pectoral Sandpiper  1
Semipalmated Sandpiper  1
Short-billed Dowitcher  1
Ring-billed Gull  1
Herring Gull  1
Caspian Tern  1
Mourning Dove  1
Black-billed Cuckoo  1
Eastern Screech-Owl  1
Great Horned Owl  1
Common Nighthawk  1
Eastern Whip-poor-will  1
Chimney Swift  1
Ruby-throated Hummingbird  1
Red-headed Woodpecker  1
Red-bellied Woodpecker  1
Downy Woodpecker  1
Hairy Woodpecker  1
Northern Flicker  1
American Kestrel  1
Eastern Wood-Pewee  1
Willow Flycatcher  1
Least Flycatcher  1
Eastern Phoebe  1
Eastern Kingbird  1
Warbling Vireo  1
Philadelphia Vireo  1
Red-eyed Vireo  1
Blue Jay  1
American Crow  1
Tree Swallow  1
Bank Swallow  1
Barn Swallow  1
Cliff Swallow  1
Black-capped Chickadee  1
Red-breasted Nuthatch  1
White-breasted Nuthatch  1
House Wren  1
Marsh Wren  1
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher  1
Eastern Bluebird  1
Veery  1
Swainson's Thrush  1
American Robin  1
Gray Catbird  1
European Starling  1
Cedar Waxwing  1
Black-and-white Warbler  1
Tennessee Warbler  1
Orange-crowned Warbler  1
Common Yellowthroat  1
American Redstart  1
Magnolia Warbler  1
Blackburnian Warbler  1
Chestnut-sided Warbler  1
Blackpoll Warbler  1
Palm Warbler  1
Black-throated Green Warbler  1
Wilson's Warbler  1
Eastern Towhee  1
Field Sparrow  1
Savannah Sparrow  1
Song Sparrow  1
Swamp Sparrow  1
Northern Cardinal  1
Indigo Bunting  1
Bobolink  1
Red-winged Blackbird  1
Brewer's Blackbird  1
Brown-headed Cowbird  1
Baltimore Oriole  1
House Finch  1
American Goldfinch  1
House Sparrow  1

Ya Just Never Know What Ur Gonna Get.....

7/14/14
  Yesterday Andy Stewart and I journeyed forth on my 19th straight monthly Big Day, 18 of those in Lake County. As always it was filled with surprises and frustrations, but it ended up being my 2nd most rewarding Big Day (after May) of the year.
  The day started rather bleakly and with a great deal of uncertainty. I have never started a big day in the rain before, and I wasn't about to this month, but at 12:00 midnight it was raining and only a few minutes earlier there had been some nasty thunderstorms and wind. We were currently under a tornado watch until 1am. Not exactly ideal conditions for nocturnal forays to hear birds. I was ready to cash it in right there at 11:30pm and go back to bed, but the radar showed the storms to be moving fairly quickly. Sure enough the rain was all but done by 1:00am. I called Andy and picked him up at his house at 12:45. After loading the car up, we headed to our first stop, Bowen Park. Bowen has since been ousted by COLSP as my favorite place for EASTERN SCREECH OWL, but I wanted to go east to west and start daybreak at Grant Woods. This necessitated starting at Bowen to maximize our chances for screech owl. Cue the first major frustration of the Big Day: powerless iPod. I made sure to check my iPod for power before leaving the house and it showed a full green battery. So I THOUGHT I was good to go. However, no sooner did I pull said iPod out of my pocket and turn it on, than the "charge battery" light went on. NOOOOOO! This ticked me off quite a bit, but I still had my iPhone which WAS powered up. It's not very loud, though, which is why I like the iPod w/speaker. Anyway, I played the tooting and whinnying calls a couple of times with no response. After about 5-10 minutes, I decided to play the "squeals and bill snaps" choice from the Sibley App. I didn't even get through half of it before a screech owl flew right over our head squealing. I had never heard this call from a screech owl before, so it scared the bodily fluids right out of me momentarily, but then became probably the coolest birding moment of the day. Pretty nice bird #1 at 1:27am.
  From here we headed to the South Unit where we had a juvenile GREAT HORNED OWL  making begging calls not far from the visitor center, and a distant, but clearly audible EASTERN WHIPPOORWILL calling. 2 great birds, but we were disappointed with 0 rails. IBSP is always a great rail spot, so getting none was a little disturbing. We then headed to Spring Bluff where we had our only Sora in June. Today we got nuthin except a nicely hooting adult GREAT HORNED OWL, which was a bird that Eric Lundquist and I missed last year. So we had 2 owls and 1 whip but 0 rails as we headed west. Our private residence for Common Gallinule gave us no gallinule but it did give us a nicely grunting VIRGINIA RAIL. No Sora, though. Deja vu. In June we struggled to get this bird, as well. Since when is Sora a tough bird? I had them through September last year with no problem. I wasn't liking our Sora-less landscape in Lake County right now. Sure enough, neither COLSP nor Volo Bog, another great rail spot, surrendered a Sora, which became our first big miss of the day. Big Disappointment soon became Jubilant Elation, however, as our ever-faithful BARRED OWL took all of 1 second to respond to my "who-cooks-for-you" call at Lakewood FP. Love that bird. So we ended the night with all 3 owls, which was 2 better than last year. Nice.
DAYBREAK:
  Friday and Saturday this week I put in a lot of time into scouting, and I found some pretty nice birds, so I wanted to maximize my chances for getting them on Sunday obviously. I thought that the best way to do this would be to hit Grant Woods first and then Daniel Wright before heading to the lakefront. This strategy added a couple of birds, but should have given up more. At Grant Woods, we heard/saw our only BROWN THRASHER and OVENBIRD of the day, but the Alder Flycatcher and Pine Warbler were silent and invisible. I knew the Alder would be tough, but I thought we would get the Pine. As it turned out, we missed 5 birds yesterday that I had on Friday. That was incredibly frustrating. It makes me wonder what the actual point of scouting is???? Scouting for habitat and probability is useful, I suppose. I need to realize, though, that birds are fickle. Just another of the challenges of Big Day Birding. So on to Daniel Wright which gave us our only HOODED WARBLER as a "good" bird. Off to the lakefront where we got nothing of note at Waukegan except CASPIAN TERN, a beautiful buffy-chested juvenile PEREGRINE FALCON at the Midwest Gen, a calling YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOO in the woods at Lyons Woods (we had another YB fly in right in front of us at Middlefork), LARK SPARROW, BREWER'S BLACKBIRD, and a calling BELTED KINGFISHER at IBSP South (Andy also spotted one fishing from a wire off of 173), BLUE GROSBEAK at the North Unit, and a pair of HOODED MERGANSERS in the slip at NPM. Biggest miss at this point was Grasshopper Sparrow. Not sure how we missed that bird. We were there around 10:00am. Maybe they were siesta-ing by then? Who knows. Anyway we headed west to Kelly Rd. and Crawford Rd. where, at 1:00pm, I was not hopeful of getting a Vesper Sparrow. However, joy-of-joys, our last stop on the way out I heard a singing VESPER SPARROW off the road by a farm building. Woohoo! Andy missed hearing it, though, so that was our 2nd dirty bird of the day (I heard a couple of Yellow Warblers earlier as well). At East Loon Lake we had 2 BLACK TERNS (we had 5 at the boat launch at COLSP) but our golden spot for Yellow-headed Blackbird, which I had on Friday, gave us nada after looking for 15 minutes. That was probably the toughest miss for me because I know that bird is there. We headed to COLSP hoping for a bundle of birds that we needed.....and we got most of them, which was awesome. COLSP is a great place to bird and consistently gives you SCARLET TANAGER and YELLOW-THROATED VIREO, which it did yesterday as well. It was the only spot for these birds as well as ROSE-BREASTED GROSBEAK, and OSPREY. Best bird here, though, may have been a low-flying flyover PECTORAL SANDPIPER- our first migrant shorebird of the day.
  After leaving Chain-O-Lakes I played my Shot-in-the-Dark Card and strolled over to Sullivan Lake to check for swans. We saw 1 bird on the lake, but it was a good one, a beautiful adult TRUMPETER SWAN. Hadn't seen that bird for a few months so that was a big pick-me-up. Over at Lakewood the CLAY-COLORED SPARROWS were still buzzing away at 3:30 in the afternoon, which was awesome as well.
  The Make-or-Break spot for us has always been Rollins, though. It's by far the best waterfowl spot, and this year, the ONLY shorebird spot in the county. And today it did not disappoint. We had 6 shorebird species here with the best being 2 SHORT-BILLED DOWITCHERS. We also had 2 RUDDY DUCK males and a calling PIED-BILLED GREBE. The big question I have, though, is "where, o where, have the Blue-winged Teal gone?" I have not seen one of these birds since the beginning of July. Don't ever remember them being tough to find in July. I had 8 of them last year. Hope this isn't a nasty harbinger of some sort, along with the dearth of Soras.
  With a couple of stops left we headed to Almond Marsh for BLACK-CROWNED NIGHT HERON and GREEN HERON (also another HOODED MERGANSER), to Independence Grove for PURPLE MARTIN, and then to Fort Sheridan. We still needed Baltimore Oriole and Red-headed Woodpecker. Strangely enough, we had probably 5 or 6 ORCHARD ORIOLES but no Baltimores, so we hopped on our bikes and slowly rode around the wood-chip trail near the south ravine by the parking lot. In about 5 minutes we had a great look at a head-high male BALTIMORE ORIOLE followed by nice looks at an adult RED-HEADED WOODPECKER.
  We finished off the day at Middlefork looking at a YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOO and then sipping gatorade on the patio of a friend while we watched her hummingbird feeder to no avail.
  I stopped at Rollins on the way home for 2 HENSLOW'S SPARROWS which had eluded us on the day, so that gave us 3 dirty birds: Vesper Sparrow, Yellow Warbler, and Henslow's Sparrow.
 It was a pretty awesome day, and we did pretty well, but I'm always thinking how it could have been better. We missed 3rd place for a Northern Illinois Big Day by 1 bird and 2nd place by 7. I can't help thinking we had a good shot at 2nd place if we would have gotten the 5 birds I had on Friday. Those plus a coot, Bw Teal, and grasshopper sparrow give us a tie for 2nd which would be spectacular. I'll take 108 for a July Big Day in one county, though. A day which beat our June Big Day of 104.
  Thanks again to my compadre, Andy Stewart, whose good-natured temperament and patience even out my spastic personality, and whose sharp eyes always pick up a good bird when we need it (can you say distant turkey vulture?). Thanks also for hauling that heavy scope through vegetation for an hour and a half! Thanks also to all the people who responded very quickly and clearly to my many emails. Your help is greatly appreciated.
  As always, Good Birding!

Here's the List:
lake county big day, Lake, US-IL
Jul 13, 2014 1:30 AM - 9:30 PM
Protocol: Traveling
200.0 mile(s)
Comments:     w/andy stewart
108 species

Canada Goose  1
Mute Swan  1
Trumpeter Swan  1
Wood Duck  1
Gadwall  1
Mallard  1
Hooded Merganser  1
Ruddy Duck  1     male, non-breeding w/white cheek patches
Pied-billed Grebe  1
Double-crested Cormorant  1
Great Blue Heron  1
Great Egret  1
Green Heron  1
Black-crowned Night-Heron  1
Turkey Vulture  1
Osprey  1
Red-tailed Hawk  1
Virginia Rail  1
Sandhill Crane  1
Killdeer  1
Spotted Sandpiper  1
Solitary Sandpiper  1
Lesser Yellowlegs  1
Least Sandpiper  1
Pectoral Sandpiper  1
Short-billed Dowitcher  1
Ring-billed Gull  1
Herring Gull  1
Caspian Tern  1
Black Tern  1
Rock Pigeon (Feral Pigeon)  1
Mourning Dove  1
Yellow-billed Cuckoo  1
Eastern Screech-Owl  1
Great Horned Owl  1
Barred Owl  1
Eastern Whip-poor-will  1
Chimney Swift  1
Belted Kingfisher  1
Red-headed Woodpecker  1
Red-bellied Woodpecker  1
Downy Woodpecker  1
Hairy Woodpecker  1
Northern Flicker  1
American Kestrel  1
Peregrine Falcon  1
Eastern Wood-Pewee  1
Willow Flycatcher  1
Eastern Phoebe  1
Great Crested Flycatcher  1
Eastern Kingbird  1
Yellow-throated Vireo  1
Warbling Vireo  1
Red-eyed Vireo  1
Blue Jay  1
American Crow  1
Horned Lark  1
Northern Rough-winged Swallow  1
Purple Martin  1
Tree Swallow  1
Bank Swallow  1
Barn Swallow  1
Cliff Swallow  1
Black-capped Chickadee  1
White-breasted Nuthatch  1
House Wren  1
Sedge Wren  1
Marsh Wren  1
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher  1
Eastern Bluebird  1
Wood Thrush  1
American Robin  1
Gray Catbird  1
Brown Thrasher  1
European Starling  1
Cedar Waxwing  1
Ovenbird  1
Common Yellowthroat  1
Hooded Warbler  1
American Redstart  1
Yellow Warbler  1
Eastern Towhee  1
Chipping Sparrow  1
Clay-colored Sparrow  1     continuing
Field Sparrow  1
Vesper Sparrow  1     continuing
Lark Sparrow  1     breeding at this site; singing
Savannah Sparrow  1
Henslow's Sparrow  1
Song Sparrow  1
Swamp Sparrow  1
Scarlet Tanager  1
Northern Cardinal  1
Rose-breasted Grosbeak  1
Blue Grosbeak  1     continuing
Indigo Bunting  1
Dickcissel  1
Bobolink  1
Red-winged Blackbird  1
Eastern Meadowlark  1
Brewer's Blackbird  1     continuing
Common Grackle  1
Brown-headed Cowbird  1
Orchard Oriole  1
Baltimore Oriole  1
House Finch  1
American Goldfinch  1
House Sparrow  1