Ducks Are Everywhere!!

Hi all,

This week and weekend has had one obvious theme, ducks! Since my last blog post, I have seen 22 species of waterfowl. To start off, I will tell you about my after school birding last week.

3/12:

We went to Douglas Park to do some monitoring. As soon as I walked up to the sanctuary lagoon, I saw the two male Redhead from last week along with 6 Northern Shovelers. The Shovelers are a new monitoring bird for the park, which means that we have seen them in the park, but only before I started monitoring.

The Shovelers were followed quickly by the flushing of an American Woodcock, which is a yearbird for me! To make the situation even better, I got my first ever semi-decent photos of a Woodcock.

114. American Woodcock

This got followed up by 2 more Woodcock, a Peregrine Falcon flyover, and an Eastern Bluebird.

3/15:

We unsuccessfully looked for a Harlequin Duck that was found at 63rd St Beach. It was also raining constantly. We did get 3 White-winged Scoters at 63rd St Beach and 3 White-winged Scoters and a Great Black-backed Gull at Rainbow Beach.

3/16:

First, this day was made possible by Ted Wolff who graciously volunteered to take us around the lakefront for the day. Thanks go to Ted and his generosity. My dad was busy out of the county which is why he couldn't take us. The day started off with Ted picking Ethan and me up at our house. We first went to our main target, the Harlequin Duck. This bird could not have been easier to find. The second we walked onto the pier, we saw it. The failure of the previous day made this success much sweeter, though.

115. Harlequin Duck

We then moved to LaRabida Harbor where we found some Horned Grebes and presumably the same 3 White-winged Scoters as yesterday. We then worked our way down to the Calumet area by way of Rainbow Beach and Calumet Park, both of which held nothing special. Our first stop that harbored something good wasn't really planned. On our way to Deadstick, we passed by Indian Ridge Marsh. I noticed two Ring-necked Ducks and decided to scan around the marsh. What I found were 30 Northern Shovelers, 3 Gadwall, and 4 Blue-winged Teal!

116. Blue-winged Teal

When we got to Deadstick, we didn't find much. There were some Ring-necked Ducks and Gadwall on the actual pond and 3 White-winged Scoters by the overlook to the river. We then wandered around for a bit before going to O'Brien Lock & Dam where the only highlight was a Thayer's Gull. I then read that Doug Stotz had found a Franklin's Gull only 5 minutes away from where we were! When we got there, nothing good was to be found. Oh well. We then moved on to 126th St Marsh the 5 Snow Geese were still present, but that was it. For our last stop of the day in Calumet, we went to Wolf Lake. We first went to State Line Road where we could see all of the ducks were in Indiana hundreds of Ring-necked, Canvasback, and Redhead were present in this raft. Only small numbers of these species were to be found on the Illinois side. What we did find on the Illinois side were 14 Horned Grebes, 13 White-winged Scoters, 7 Gadwall and 11 American Wigeon.

117. American Wigeon

We then left for Northerly Island because my dad would be picking us up there. As a bonus, we found 5(!!) Thayer's Gulls in the 60 Herring Gulls in the harbor. Also there was a cooperative Crow.

After my dad picked us up, we decided to go to Douglas Park. There we found the 2 Redheads, 5 Shovelers, 2 Horned Grebes, 2 Hooded Mergansers, 2 Wood Ducks, 1 Lesser Scaup, and 1 Greater Scaup! The sanctuary lagoon was packed! Horned Grebe was a new monitoring bird and Greater Scaup was a new park bird, so I am a very happy camper.

3/17:

The forecast for strong NE winds made me excited enough to lakewatch at Gillson, but I wanted to make a quick check at Douglas. At Douglas, everything was the same except for a male Bufflehead replacing 2 Horned Grebes and another Lesser Scaup joined the foray. When we went to Gillson, that provided only 1 White-winged Scoter, so we decided to move to Northwestern University, where we had a flyby flock of 17 Northern Pintails. Lastly, we went to Lighthouse Beach where we had 17 Mute Swan flyby.

3/18:

Today, we decided to bird the local parks after school. A quick stop at Columbus Park gave us 3 Ring-necked Ducks, which were a new bird for that park.

We then went to Douglas to see if anything new popped by. The 5 Shovelers, 2 Lesser Scaup, 1 Greater Scaup, and 2 Redhead were still present, but new this time were Ring-necked Duck and American Coot. Ring-necked is, again, a new bird for this park, bringing the list up to 160 species. Right after I started to photograph the ducks, they all (except the Coot) flushed for some unknown reason.

Unfortunately, only the Redhead and Shovelers came back. We the went to Garfield Park where we got 3 Shovelers and 2 Redhead. Our last stop of the day was Humboldt Park, where we got 1 Common Goldeneye, 7 Bufflehead, 3 Coots, 4 Lesser Scaup, and 1 Ring-necked Duck.

That is it! Again, thanks to Ted Wolff for his generosity in giving us a ride around Chicago. I will be birding every day except Thursday this week, and next week is SPRING BREAK!!!!!! See you all soon.

Migration's Murmurings

Hi all,

I feel like I am starting out every post like this, but sorry for the lack of updates. Nothing too good was seen in the past two weeks. Last weekend (3/2-3/4), I got two yearbirds. One was Sandhill Crane from Bartel Grasslands and one was Horned Grebe from Powderhorn Lake. We had huge numbers of White-winged Scoters during last weekend. On Monday, we had over 50 total! Various photos are here:

3/2:

 Common Redpoll, Spring Valley Nature Center

  Common Redpoll, Spring Valley Nature Center

Red-tailed Hawk, Douglas Park

3/3:

1 Canvasback, 3 White-winged Scoters, 2 Bufflehead, Random pond in south Cook County

1 Canvasback, 2 White-winged Scoters, Random pond in south Cook County

White-winged Scoter, Random pond in south Cook County

Lesser Black-backed Gull, 126th St Marsh

107. Sandhill Crane

108. Horned Grebe

3/4:

Great Black-backed Gulls, Deadstick Pond (had 2 Glaucous Gulls ad 31 White-winged Scoters here)

This past weekend (3/9-310) was a bit more eventful yearbird wise, which is as expected, given that migration is speeding up.

3/9: 

We started and ended the day at Bartel. We have been searching for a Rough-legged Hawk there for so long. All trips down to south Cook County have been based on Bartel just to try for this hawk. Again and again we failed, and this day was no different. Something special about Bartel is that even though we constantly miss the hawk, I almost always get a consolation yearbird. Today was no different. As we patrolled for the hawk in the morning, I had a Turkey Vulture flyover. We also had two flocks of 7 cranes pass over.

109. Turkey Vulture

We went around to the ponds which amassed about 2000 total Canada Geese last weekend. This time, no more than 20. The White-winged Scoters and Canvasback left too. We decided to then head to Calumet, where things got much better. Our first stop was Deadstick Pond, where the scoter flock was still present, and has grown. While White-winged are awesome, there is so little diversity in these scoters we keep on running into. It is frustrating. But, who can be too sad when you get a show like this:

A passing boat flushed all of the scoters right past us. It was awesome! We then moved on to 126th St. Marsh. 5 blue morph Snow Geese were reported from here, and they still were there.

We moved to the river portion where we amassed a total of 3 Thayer's and 2 "Kumlien's" Iceland Gulls. Here is one of the Thayer's:

After a few unsuccessful stops, we moved back to Bartel to do an evening vigil for the hawk. While unsuccessful again, I did manage to eek out two yearbirds:

110. Common Grackle

111. Eastern Meadowlark

Overall blackbird totals were crazy. Probably around 10,000 total but most were unIDed.

3/10:

We started at Douglas Park, which rewarded us with our first park record of Redhead. This is the first first park record of the year! Our monitoring list is at 158 species now, which is very respectable since we have only been seriously monitoring for a bit less than a full year. 

We then headed to the lakeshore. After a failed attempt at lakewatching at Gillson Park, we moved to Montrose. Here, I got my final yearbird of the weekend, Eastern Phoebe  This is my first insect eating migrant of the year, which means gnat swarms and mosquito bites aren't far away (yippee).

112. Eastern Phoebe

And this Hairy Woodpecker, an uncommon bird at Montrose, posed very well.

3/11:

Today, we decided to do some after school birding at Miller Meadows. We wanted to find a flock of Rusty Blackbirds that Jill Anderson found the day prior.When we got there, we immediately found an American Black Duck in a fluddle with some Mallards. That is a good bird for here. When we got to where Jill had her blackbirds, only Killdeer were to be found. We decided to walk into the meadows. It was raining so I decided to leave my camera in the car, so that means that we had to find something good. We first walked to a patch of cattails that harbor snipe typically. What we first found was surprising,  23 Eastern Meadowlarks in the grasses. That is a great number for the county. Soon after, a snipe did flush, giving me my yearbird dose for the day. We started walking to the second part of the meadow, getting a Sharp-shinned Hawk along the way. I spotted a blackbird flock clear across the field, so I started to walk towards it with my brother and my dad. While walking, I heard a strange noise. It reminded me of a Canada Goose getting strangled. I look up and see a goose flying southwest alone. I am able to discern an odd body shape immediately and a few seconds later, I can see black markings on the underside. That is when I called out Greater White-fronted Goose! My dad and my brother both saw it well. It was clear, to my disappointment, that it did not want to stop down. Another Greater White-fronted, another awkward situation for me when I tell people I saw a desirable bird but it is not chasable. It seems almost like bragging, but the knowledge that these birds are out there somewhere will hopefully provide inspiration for more people to look. My blackbird flock had nothing special  and the only other highlights were a Peregrine Falcon flyover and another Eastern Meadowlark. Birding, while relying on skill, also relies on luck. A lot of my sightings come from me being in the right place at the right time, so getting out as much as possible is, in my opinion, the best way to find the best birds.

113. Wilson's Snipe

Looking forward, I will probably go to Douglas Park Tuesday or Wednesday. I also am in contact with Susan Szeszol about her Eurasian Collared-Doves, which she had back on Sunday, but not today. Spring break in 2 weeks!

The Goose

Hi again,

This is the story of the Greater White-fronted Goose. After a long day yesterday, we wanted to keep today's birding simple. Right as we were leaving our last local park, we got a call from Brett and Eddie Kasper. They told us that they had found a Greater White-fronted Goose at Northerly Island. They also told us that it had a broken wing. We rushed over there. When we got there, we immediately saw Brett and Eddie standing with their dad. I jumped out and hurried to them. There was no need to hurry though, because the goose was standing right there.

The wing was badly drooping and its feathers looked ruffed up. After saying thank you to Brett and Eddie, they left, but we decided to stay. My dad called Flint Creek Wildlife Rehabilitation Center and it turns out that they had been looking for this bird this morning, but had left about 15 minutes before we arrived. Apparently, they got a call last night from some people who saw the goose and they gave the description of a duck-goose-turkey-like-thing, but beige. The caller said it had a broken wing, too. Anyways, the volunteer from Flint Creek doubled back to where we were. I wanted to keep a constant eye on the bird, so my dad did all of the talking to Flint Creek. The bird constantly was slowly walking back and forth along the small grass patch it was feeding on.

As I watched the bird, a lady with her dog came up and flushed the goose into the harbor. It ungracefully flew/dropped down onto the ice and skidded about 20 feet. It slowly waddled its way back to the side of the harbor, where there was a boat ramp that it used to get in and out of it. It slowly but surely made it way back up. It plopped itself down right behind some newspaper stands right next to the side of the yacht club building. After a group of people walked right past it, it decided to waddle around the side of the building and out of my sight. I looped around and saw it hunkered under some bushes. About 5 minutes later, the Flint Creek volunteer, named Kate, arrived. She jumped right into action and circled around between the bird and the harbor. The next 5 minutes were a wild goose chase that ended right where it started.

The goose was hunkered under some bushes right along a metal fence. We had it cornered. It slowly moved along the row of bare bushes until it wound up in a dense evergreen bush that ended the row. We surrounded the bush, trying to make sure it didn't escape. We kept on trying to develop a plan of attack, but nothing worked out. The bush had too many twigs too low for us to get the goose. About 10 minutes passed by. We alternated positions multiple times, to see if we could find a good way to get the goose. Then, the goose started shuffling to one side of the bush. My dad was stationed right at the end of the path it was following. Suddenly, it burst out of the bush, right into my dad's hands. Kate then took the goose from my dad and held it delicately.

My dad pulled the car around and we drove to the center that was, luckily, just across the harbor from the goose. We dropped Kate off and sent our well wishes to the goose. As I was watching the Oscars, Dawn Keller sent me this email regarding the goose,

"The goose has no fractures. It has soft tissue injuries to the left wing and the primaries are on the left wing sheared off probably from getting hit by a car. The goose is also exceptionally thin. We will have to run a fecal to see if it's got parasites that are causing it to be so thin. At this point, I would say the prognosis is good."

I am so glad that the goose seems to be doing well. Hopefully it will be a success story. As for my year, this is a great bird with an even better story that I am hoping will have a happy ending. Who knows, maybe this story will be made into a movie.

Migration's Beginnings

Hi all,

I write this blog post about this whirlwind of a weekend with the Oscars playing in the background. Reflecting back on this weekend, much has happened. Great birds were seen and great stories were lived. But before anything of that is told, I will go over last weekend.

2/15:
We started at Spring Valley to look for White-winged Crossbill. We dipped on that, but we got a bonus Yellow-rumped Warbler.

99. Yellow-rumped Warbler

We then went to the Calumet area, where the highlight was at 126th St Marsh.

100(!!). Snow Goose

2/16:
We went to the Gull Frolic at North Point Marina in Lake County and had many good birds. Some are pictured below.

2/17:
We decided to go to Crabtree Nature Center which had a White-winged Crossbill at it the day before. No dice there, but when we went to Penny Road Pond, we not only found my yearbird Eastern Bluebird, but we found a great hawk watching spot where we saw a Bald Eagle, Sharp-shinned Hawk, Northern Harrier, and a multitude of Red-tails. This spot will be revisited later in the year.

101. Eastern Bluebird

After that we went to Susan Szeszol's house because she has been having Eurasian Collared Doves recently. We struck out, but she just told me today she briefly had one, so I might go back for them soon.

2/18:
Today, we had a quick jaunt into Calumet with Nathan Goldberg. It was unsuccessful. We then went back to the crossbill as it was relocated. After 20 minutes or so, it appeared at the feeder at closing time for the nature center. The feeders there are very active as they also had Fox Sparrow, Red-winged Blackbird, and a Brown Creeper was hanging around them too.

102. White-winged Crossbill

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So back to this weekend.

2/23:
This day was focused around an Illinois Young Birders trip to Bartel Grassland in southern Cook County. We also decided to look for Greater White-fronted Goose which has been showing up near Cook County. We wanted to scavenge each little body of water for any geese or ducks we could find. At 2, we then would go over to Bartel Grasslands for the ILYB field trip. We started our search to a slow start. Everything was frozen or inaccessible. We eventually found an open and accessible pond and in it was a White-winged Scoter and Snow Goose!

We then found another pond in close proximity to that one that held another two White-winged Scoters! It also had 8 Canvasbacks.

A while later, we drove by some mall ponds, one of which held 200 Canada Geese and 2 blue-morph Snow Geese. While driving closer to them, we got stuck in a deep spot in the snow. After a while, we pushed ourselves out. Crisis averted.

 Right after, we found another pond that held 600+ geese but all were Canada. We then went to Bartel where we got a Great-horned Owl and a few Harriers. We looked for the geese again but were unsuccessful. We returned at sunset and found 3 Short-eared Owls.

A Savannah Sparrow was spotted by Matt Cvetas and my brother managed to determine the blackbird flocks consisted of both Red-winged Blackbirds and Brown-headed Cowbirds.

103. Savannah Sparrow
104. Brown-headed Cowbird

As we were leaving, I called Matt Cvetas and he told me that they found a Barred Owl in a place given to him by Wes Serafin. When we got there, we immediately got the owl.

105. Barred Owl

For those who don't know, it is illegal to stay in Cook County Forest Preserves after dark. We did, and a policeman stopped by and gave us $35 tickets. The lot was still open, but whatever. Still got the owl.

2/24:
Today, we thought we would take it easy and just bird the parks we monitor. Columbus Park didn't have many birds, but the Coyotes cooperated well.

We then went to Douglas Park, which was highlighted by the singing Red-winged Blackbirds and the long staying Red-shouldered Hawk. The hawk finally cooperated and it gave me decent photo-ops.

While we were leaving Douglas, we got a call from Brett and Eddie Kasper, fellow young birders. They told us that they had a Greater White-fronted Goose at Northerly Island. They also said it had a broken wing. We rushed over and saw the bird. We called Flint Creek Wildlife Rehab Center and they came and picked it up. Read more about the goose and see photos here:
http://birdingbynumber.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-goose.html

106. Greater White-fronted Goose

My next blog post will probably be next weekend. See you then!