Today we made our first trip to Northerly Island, which was formerly Miegs Field, Chicago’s lakefront airport. I used to like Miegs because is was fun to watch airplanes landing only a few blocks from a skyscrapered downtown. But Mayor Daley loves his parks, so he used 9-11 as an excuse to plow over the runways and plant this greenery. I don’t want to sound like a nature hater, but I’m a friend to all birds, including the big silver ones. I’m not losing any sleep over it, mind you. My cube faces west so I can’t see the damn lake anyway, and hizzoner has given us another place to bird.
Category Archives: challenges
no magic today
Today we made our first trip this year to the Magic Hedge, the most famous birding spot in all of Chicago. It’s a green spit of land at Montrose Harbor that serves as a migrant trap. Birds often migrate by flying south along the lakeshore. It’s an exhausting business, and in an urban world of high rises and asphalt, this little tongue of green is the only inviting place they see. So they land here in the thousands. At least they’re supposed to.
first hoosier expedition [81 – 92]
Today we made the year’s first trip to Indiana. We went to Willow Slough Fish and Wildlife Area, which is an old favorite, though we haven’t been there for over a year. It’s a 80-mile drive south of Chicago, through miles and miles of flat cornfields. Very dull. Very Midwest. In the past, we had luck at the area’s Salisbury Rookery, a large marsh that was often full of ducks. But when we drove by today, all the water had gone: the rookery had become a soybean field.
finally, the owl [79 – 80]
Once again, we decided to search for the short-eared owl at Glacial Park. But our first stop today was the Chicago Botanic Garden in north-suburban Glencoe. We don’t come here much anymore, but we did a lot of our early birding here. Today we just stopped by so I could renew my membership. But in the pond next to the parking lot we did see a pair of TRUMPETER SWANS. They were only about ten feet away, so it was no problem distinguishing them from the similar tundra swan. We then continued north and made a brief stop at the Wadsworth Wetlands Demonstration Project, which is in north-suburban — you guessed it — Wadsworth. We didn’t see any birds, but we did identify what we think was a Nazi.
saved by ducks [65 – 78]
The Illinois bird list said there were some short-eared owls at Rollins Savannah, so we decided to give it a try. The savanna is a new preserve located in a northern Chicago suburb called Grayslake. An ugly, mall-filled suburb. Unfortunately, since the savanna is flat, you always know you’re in the middle of an ugly mall-filled suburb. We only saw a few birds and left after half an hour. Jesus, Mary, and St. Patrick, do I hate birding ugly places. Does that make me a bad birder?