–Sage

I stil haven’t figured it out.

It has been forever since I have posted here. I apologize, and hope to get this blog back up and running. This spring has been very interesting. Last year, I missed so many Warblers and other spring migrants, and this year, I am only missing 5 of the 37 usual Warbler species expected in Illinois. Well, onto the great birds!

On May 1st, I attended the Illinois Young Birders walk to Waterfall Glen in DuPage County. We had an extraordinary day with fantastic birds, such as this very early Black-throated Blue Warbler,

Overall, it was a great day, with a huge amount of migrants and overall fun with old friends.

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The next weekend, May 14th and 15th, I joined Craig Taylor and Tim Kuesel for some birding in Gallatin County for the Spring Bird Count, which is about 6 hours from Chicago in Southern Illinois. I was ready for an adventure, which is exactly what I got. We were prepared for vast flooding, but definitely not the amount there actually was. About 80% of the County was unbirdable. This made species few and far between, since we couldn’t even get to them. We were at about 40-50 species at 10:00 in the morning, and we were preparing to go to another county and see some other birds that we would miss on the trip. One area we really needed to get to was the Shawnee National Forest. All of the roads we knew into there were closed, which was very saddening and was costing us a huge amount of birds. But then, we happened to find a road. It was a private road, but open to the public during that time due to the flooding. It ventured into the hills, which was prime habitat like the Shawnee. YES! We got out of the car at the base of the hill, and had some birds like this beautiful Male Summer Tanager

We also ran into a pocket of migrants, which contained about 10-15 new species of Warblers. At the top of the hill, we ran into some farmland, containing a Vesper Sparrow, about 15-20 Dicksissels, and a beautiful Lark Sparrow

At the end of the day, we got 103 Species, and had one of the weirdest days of birding I have ever experienced.

The next day, we traveled West to Williamson County, and entered Crab Orchard NWR.

Then, on our last stop of the trip, we stopped in Coles County on our way home, and ventured to the Douglas-Hart Nature Preserve to try to find some migrants for Craig and Tim to add to their county list. We did find a few migrants like this Scarlet Tanager

Overall, Southern Illinois was very strange, but also amazing. We had some fantastic birds, and this was a trip I would never forget. Thank you Craig and Tim for letting me tag along and experience some great birding.

Lastly, I went birding at Montrose and along the lakefront Sunday, May 15 with Geoff Williamson. We had a quirky day to say the least. The wind was 25-35 MPH strong, and was always blowing. At Montrose we had a Lesser Black-backed Gull and a flock of Terns which contained some Caspian Terns, about 200 Common Terns and 4 Forester’s Terns. There was one Common Tern with a broken wing, which we called the Bird Collision Monitors and alerted them. They quickly came to pick it up, which you can see here

Later, we came to North Pond, and found a few birds, including this Lincoln’s Sparrow

This was one of the most horrid days of birding to be on the lakefront, due to the powerful winds and rain mixed in. Thanks Geoff, for staying with it, and helping me find some more birds for my year list. My total stands at 193 species for Illinois at the moment, and should grow with time and effort.

Thanks for reading, I hope to post soon about my upcoming trip to Palos with the Chicago Ornithological Society.

‘Till next time,

Nathan

We need someone who knows our breeding birds by sight and sound at a spot in Crabtree in NW Cook County, and may also need someone at a spot in the Palos or one in Lake County.

People can feel free to email of call me with questions.

Thanks!
Judy Pollock
Director of Bird Conservation, Audubon Chicago Region

1718 Sherman Avenue #210; Evanston, IL 60201
Phone: 847-328-1250; Fax: 847-328-4146

species. our counted highlights included Golden-winged Warbler, Blue-winged Warbler, Swamp

Sparrow, Blackburnian Warbler, and Orange-crowned Warbler. our most numerous bird was

Palm Warbler, finding fifteen. we counted seventeen warbler species. there were two birds we did not count. one because we expected it to be released, an Ovenbird. the other one was the best bird of the day

was not on the list and we were not able to document it. a singing male Connecticut Warbler. I was able to glimpse it for about half a second, just enough to identify it. It was my second ever. my first was last fall at the Morton Arboretum.

First off, let me say that our team was AMAZING. There was me, a hairy, nerdy birder from a Chicago suburb. I also happened to be the only public school person there, meaning my personality had a few differences (namely swearing and getting some jokes quicker than others). Next up in the line-up is Sarah Toner, a Michigan birder who was the youngest of the bunch. She was amazing at spotting hawks, and was also the first to fall to the temptation of sleep on the big day and the only young birder who I hadn’t met before the event. Then we have Maia Paddock, a Pennsylvania birder who had plenty of extracurricular activities and interests. Somehow through all of the distractions she finds time to bird, and was a great addition to the Tropicbirds. The last member of the young birder team was Galen Frank-Bishop from Massachusetts, who also happens to be amazing with cards (of course, I still won every time at the official young birder card game, BRS) as well as great with birds. Then we have the mentors, who drove us around and provided support when needed. First up is Chip Clouse, a slightly redneck but extremely funny guy who put his hair on the line to give us an incentive to win. He is the Education Director for the ABA. Then is Jen Brumfield, a artist/birding tour guide/awesome birder who has a constantly positive attitude that made sure none of us ever got sluggish. Finally, we had somebody to document our conquests, the ABA President Jeff Gordon who was instantly dubbed our “red tail” due to his awesome red car that was either following us or sitting somewhere with Jeff sleeping in it. We may be a bit of a motley crew, but we were an awesome team! Photos and bios for the team can be found here: http://www.aba.org/yb/tropicbirds/photos.html

Now, stories of scouting. We started off slowly working our way down towards the coast from our HQ in Beaumont, TX. We stopped at assorted fields as a means of scouting for the big day, and found a few good ones. We then went to Anahuac NWR, where we found plenty of marsh birds, including my first lifer of the trip, Seaside Sparrow! Anahuac had marsh birds that actually let you look at them, including this bittern:

After that, we headed down to Rollover flats to try to scout out some nice terns and shorebirds. We ended up getting all 9 terns, with a Caspian being only by me (I hate it when falcons scare my terns). There was also an odd Marbled Godwit and a plenty of other typical shorebirds. Oddly enough, there was a Red-breasted Merganser. My favorite sighting there was a Franklin’s Gull, which is somewhat rare on the coast, specifically at that location. We then headed to the famous High Island for some awesome gumbo. The gumbo was very, very good, and fairly spicy. Of course, it was a time for us to goof around, resulting in a photo war (taking pictures of people with no intention of posing the people of the people looking good. We did decided to do one group pose, resulting in this AWESOME photo.

From left to right: Maia Paddock, Sarah Toner, Galen Frank-Bishop, Ethan Gyllenhaal. Photo by Maia Paddock.

The next day we scouted the pineywoods, which was fairly successful (Prairie, Prothonotary, and Worm-eating Warbler; Brown-headed Nuthatch; Bald Eagle nest). We had a good time cruising around seeing what we could find. On the way back, Sarah managed to find an epic Swallow-tailed Kite that was in a town whose name shall live on forever in young birder legend. Fred. The Swallow-tailed Kite (named Fred) cruised around above us, giving amazing views. I would like to introduce you to Fred:

Fred!!!

We then had a very brief night’s sleep before the Big Day. If we had had time to dream, I’m sure they’d have involved WINNING.

The start to any proper Big Day is the night. We started at an amazing marsh that we had Sora at during the day before. It was silent. Despite our best efforts, we failed to get any rails to call. We did, however, see a Great-horned Owl perched on the horizon. We eventually gave up, and headed for the Pineywoods. We got to a main Pineywoods stop (Boykin Springs), and heard tons of Chuck-will’s-Widow’s after finding a dead one. We even paused for a minute and watched two having fun in the headlights of our van. We then failed to find much of anything in the way of night birds.

Finally, we started to see some light! We staked out a Red-cockaded Woodpecker nest, and after listening to a chorus of Bachman’s Sparrows and Brown-headed Nuthatches for a while, we heard the excited yelps of Red-cockaded Woodpeckers. They gave great views, but we soon had to leave these awesome woodpeckers for other targets. After turning up a few basic Pineywoods birds as well as a couple migrant (Blue-headed Vireo, Nashville Warbler, and Yellow-breasted Chat were the best). We then headed off to various other Pineywoods spots, picking up most specialties, including Swainson’s Warbler. Then, at an overlook of a lily pad filled bay at Martin Dies Jr. SP, we saw two Swallow-tailed Kites! We made a stop at Jasper Fish Hatchery too, producing many herons and a few surprises (Hooded Merganser especially). We then sped away to our shorebird fields, picking up a few raptors including ANOTHER Swallow-tailed Kite!!! The fields had lots of stuff, including Whimbrels, Golden-plovers, Upland Sandpipers, and Buff-breasted Sandpipers.

We finally arrived at High Island, which started off with some warbler activity, but I soon realized that although it was somewhat active, it was far from the legends I’ve heard before. I started to get worried, and we only picked up about a dozen species (way less than we should have…). Evidently it was a good day there, but the warblers were few and far between or us. We then headed to the coast, hitting up Rollover Pass on our way to the famous Bolivar Flats. It was low tide! The water level had receded, as has shorebird/tern diversity. We did manage to pull out a few tougher species, including the Red-breasted Merganser found during scouting. Then it was time for Bolivar Flats. We instantly found Wilson’s Plovers, which we soon learned were everywhere. There were tons of great shorebirds, which we quickly processed then moved on from. We found such great birds as Baird’s and Buff-breasted Sandpipers, Piping Plover, Long-billed Curlew, and Red Knot. I spotted a very interesting 1st cycle gull that had Lesser Black-backed like plumage but had the wrong structure. It was most likely a life hybrid (LBB x Herring Gull). Sadly, we had to leave it, and headed out to a couple more stops of White-tailed Kite and Clapper Rail. With the last photons of light, we sped on to High Island, visiting the Smith Oaks Rookery. We picked up Barred Owl and Swainson’s Thrush, and were able to barely make out the bright red shoulders of spoonbills at the rookery. We then spent a while exploring various marshes for our day nemesis: SORA! We couldn’t find any, but did find a King Rail we hoped would be a Virginia Rail. We were at 179 species. Desperate to get to 180, we picked a random park and went there. Our Red Tail pulled over and took a long nap on the side of the road, but we were able to hear 2 Screech-Owls!!! We went to the park (Double Bayou), and Maia was able to hear a Screech-owl over the wind! We then entered our totals at an IHOP (as well as ate a lot). We also decided to try double windmill high fives and made a top secret high five as well.

The morning after, we got up hoping to go swimming, but the hotel pool was down, so we just chilled waiting to head to the awards ceremony. We then headed to Orange to have a great breakfast and see if our winning attitude matched reality.

From left to right: Sarah Toner (looking away), Maia Paddock (looking down), Galen Frank-Bishop (partially blocked). Note the Red Tail in the background.

We met up with other teams there, included a team of Texans and big day beasts like Andy Bankert. Luckily they were in the adult 5 day category, because we’d have some trouble winning if they were in our age group. When they finally got to the Gliders (14-18) category, we waited in suspense as they slowly read off the results. When they got to 2nd place, we waited to see who it would be. They named a different team, and said they had 147 species. Smiles instantly erupted from everybody at the table, and as they read off our names and how we got 180 species, we proudly walked up to the front, and got our awards, including a great framed version of the 2011 GTBC logo and the new Kaufman Advanced Birding. Just because we are so winning, Jen and I both won $25 Visa Gift Cards in a door prize raffle. WINNING!!!

Next up was the stage of goodbyes and one last chance to see birds and get team photos. This was at the Shangri La Botanic Gardens. Their rookery included tons of Great Egret, Neotropic Cormorants, and Spoonbills. We also found some nice skinks by the viewing blind. After some bird watching and final interviews, we shaved Chip’s head! We each took a shot at it, and did an OK job save a few hairs here and there. Here is the work in progress:

We then headed out, talking about random stuff. Maia left the van first, as she was going to a different airport. Next was Galen and Jen. After some quick birding (Cerulean Warbler and great views of Summer Tanagers), Sarah left as well. Because my flight had to be rescheduled, I had another half hour with Chip. We checked a few ponds, finding a few common things as well as some Black-bellied Whistling Ducks in a random small town.

Now, for one last photo of the Tropicbirds:

Overall, it was EPIC and WINNING. Yeeeeeeeeaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!