We wanted to make Day One of The Quest for 500™ special, so we headed to Milwaukee. We never birded there before, but a Snowy Owl had been sighted at the Coast Guard Impoundment, so we decided to check it out. There’s been a irruption of Snowies this year, but in spite of several attempts, we dipped every time, so we were in serious danger of losing our Birder Creds, which, though lousy, are hard earned.

We didn’t see it when we first arrived, so we set up beneath an underpass and managed to see some good birds, such as RUDDY DUCKS, NORTHERN PINTAILS,and BUFFLEHEADS. The big catches were WHITE-WINGED SCOTERS and a LONG-TAILED DUCK, the first male we’ve seen. Then I checked the Wisconsin list on my phone and got detailed instructions on the SNOWY OWL. We found it immediately.

"It's no taiga, but the rats are delicious."

It’s always a bit sad when Snowies are so far south, castaways in an urban environment. This setting was particularly bleak, as the crummy digiscoped photo shows. But who knows what the Snowy felt? There are plenty of critters in the city, and brat-fed rat isn’t the wurst you can do.

IBET, the Illinois birding email list, alerted us to the presence of an ORANGE BISHOP at Montrose Beach. It was there all right. All the way from Africa maybe? No, all the way from some moron who released it from its cage. Since it’s almost certainly an escape, we can’t claim it as a lifer, bitchin’ as it was. Apparently, the same poor fella showed up the last year or two, but he’s just a cipher in the birding community until he hooks up with some of his kind and starts a breeding flock. But what do we care if he counts? We’ve got the His Eminence the Northern Cardinal who is just as bitchin’ and outranks our foreign ecclesiastic to boot.