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.

Today there was nothing. Just the usual suspects: robins, house sparrows, starlings, etc. The Magic Hedge is a pretty ugly spot, and without birds, it’s even uglier. A bunch of run-down dirt paths among unkempt hedges. Granted, it’s kept that way on purpose — if the birds come, why mess with it? But in spite of all my belly-aching, I have to admit the Magic Hedge is a magical place, and we’ve visited it frequently. There are probably more birds there than anywhere else within 100 miles.

We next made the trip north to the Chicago Botanic Garden. We’ve done a lot of birding here, especially when we first started out, but I’m starting to hate the place. They’ve just gone through a huge renovation that ruined much of it. Right near the entrance they plopped down a huge cement runway. The idea, I guess, is that they can then rent it out more easily to all the North-Shore cake-eaters who have their parties and functions here. But in the process, they destroyed trees and plants, and wiped out most of the bird garden. And they’ve removed many of the bird feeders, leaving the rest empty. I emailed them about the feeders to find out why they’ve been abandoned, but I’ve had no answer, just the runaround. That’s no way to treat a member.

They’ve also spent millions creating a berm next to the highway to make the area quieter and more bucolic. But as far as I can tell, the traffic is still as noisy as hell and berm hasn’t make a damn bit of difference. And if they want everything to be so natural, why the new cement banquet area? It’s all a poorly thought-out mess, and the people who run the place are obviously idiots. As for today, there were hardly any birds, which made the whole place even more irritating.