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?

For me, much of the pleasure of birding has nothing to do with birds. Birding gives me a reason to get out of the city, to travel to places I’ve never been, to see other wild animals, and to be in nature. Sure, I’ll go to the occasional shithole to see a rarity, but I’d rather spend time in a place that’s enjoyable, whether or not I see any birds. This probably means I’ll always be a second-rate birder, but that’s OK by me.

Anyway, after Rollins, we went back to Glacial Park (which I do like). Right away we saw an AMERICAN KESTREL on a phone line. We had seen our first kestrel two years back in the same place, so maybe it was the same animal. We also saw our first KILLDEER of the year. There were two of them, and it looked as if they were building a nest. One of them kept rubbing it’s butt in the ground and kicking up the grass. We also saw SANDHILL CRANES. There were hundreds of them, and their eerie honking was ever present throughout the day.

I had previously thought the owls were behind the park’s learning center, a restored barn. While we walked around it, a man came out of a greenhouse with a beer in his hand and gave us a friendly wave. A few minutes later he came up to us on the path and was apologetic. “I know that must have looked strange,” he said, “but I’m a biologist here, and it’s my day off.” He gave us lots of info on the owls, and told us they could be found by taking the dirt road past the Powers-Walker house, another farm building undergoing restoration. That explains why I came up empty-owled twice before.

Before looking for owls, we saw a lot of new birds, most of them ducks we found in a marsh below the Powers-Walker house:

EASTERN BLUEBIRD
SONG SPARROW
NORTHERN PINTAIL (lifer for us both)
GREEN-WINGED TEAL
NORTHERN SHOVELER
AMERICAN WIDGEON
RING-NECKED DUCK
GREATER WHITE-FRONTED GOOSE (another lifer 2x)
BLUE-WINGED TEAL
EASTERN MEADOWLARK (heard it sing, too)

We eventually ran into some other birders parked on a side road. One of them had seen short-eared owls the week before at this very place. We scanned the fields together, and finally spotted a bird flying low. It was hunting, and it was pale with a uniformly gray head. We were all tracking it together, and I think everyone just assumed it was the owl. After it disappeared, we saw two more on the other side of the road that looked more or less the same, though when one landed far away, it looked a little buffy. The other birders left, happy that they had seen the owl.

When Pole and I drove off, we noticed a very similar bird flying low over a different field. We had a long, close look this time, and once it landed, we realized it was a NORTHERN HARRIER. And so, we think, were the birds we saw before. The gray head should have been a giveaway. But who knows? Maybe one of the birds we saw was an owl. I did see the buffy plumage, and Pole saw a wrist patch. But I know for sure that when we were tracking birds with the other birders, we were often looking at a harrier. So we can’t claim an owl this time. As for the other folks, who knows or cares? It’s between them and their field guides.

Still, all in all, a very good day, and thank God for the ducks. We added 14 birds to our Big Year, two of them lifers.