cackle cackle [277]

We headed off to Miller Beach in Indiana today to see if we could find the scoters and other such hard-to-find avifauna that people reported seeing yesterday. Of course, we saw squat, because squat is what we see at Miller’s. The beach always has plenty of gulls, but the oft-reported rarities are never there when we are.

The good news, though, is that we stopped at a few places on the south side of Chicago and managed to find a lifer at Calumet Beach: a CACKLING GOOSE. It’s a fairly new species that was split off from the Canada Goose in 2004, and we’ve been scouring flocks of Canadas for years looking for them. They’re supposed to be a little smaller than Canadas, but truth is, they’re a lot smaller. The one we saw looked like a toy Canada goose. So in the end, it was an easy ID. And, as luck would have it, it’s the third little year bird in a row to be a lifer.

after many a summer comes the swan . . . [276]

We went to Horicon Marsh in Wisconsin today, not looking for any lifers (not really), but to see the great mass of Canada geese that supposedly congregate there each fall. The geese are supposed to number in the hundreds of thousands, and we wanted to experience the wildness of a sky black with birds that Audubon and others have described. Of course, we didn’t.

Continue reading →

after three months, another lifer [275]

A good day at the Chicago Botanic Garden, for once. It was a nice day, and there were lots of birds. One of them — a WINTER WREN — was a lifer for us both. We saw this dark brown bird with a short, stubby tail dash in front of us, and Pole immediately guessed what it was. We saw it a couple of more times flitting through the shrubbery, and so her hunch was confirmed.

We also so a huge number of golden-crowned kinglets in the deep grasses beside the one of the paths. (I guess that many birds means it was an official flock.) Working a nearby tree was a chubby brown creeper. We then walked the prairie, which was mostly chest high and full of goldfinches and sparrows. And a solitary snipe. Oh, and I don’t want to neglect mentioning the great blue heron that landed about twenty feet away from us, turned its back, and relieved itself prodigiously. We’ve never be so close to a heron before, which I now realize is a good thing.

a thrush in the bush [273 – 274]

A quick trip today to the Magic Hedge immediately turned up an OLIVE-SIDED FLYCATCHER. It’s an easy bird to identify because of its sides, which are — um — olive, I think. The bird we went to see, though, was the SWAINSON’S THRUSH. We saw some kind of thrush as soon as we got there, but it disappeared into the hedge before we got a good look at it. So we decided to walk around a little and see if it would come back to the same place. When we returned to the hedge, Pole saw the bird right away. But just as I spotted it, it disappeared. I was pissed.

Pole wandered off happily, but I sat in the same spot, waiting for the bird to show itself again. I saw a thrush hidden behind some greenery, so I was just hoping it would pop out into the open. After about 20 minutes, it did. Pole was back by then, and we were able to make a slow, careful ID. A good thing, too, because it would have given her an even bigger lead in the count.

more dead turtles than birds [269 – 272]

Today was my birthday, and so we made it a day with a trip to Horicon Marsh in Wisconsin. The most vivid memory is going to be all the dead snapping turtles on Rt. 49, the road that runs right through the marsh. Fresh kills, too, in pools of blood. Most of the carcases were on the side of the road, which means the killers are probably birders who aren’t paying attention. It’s a gravel road, so they probably don’t even notice the sickening crunch. Though Pole was kind of freaked out, these senseless deaths bug me in particular because I have a special affinity for turtles. (You see, I keep my innermost self hidden deep inside an emotional shell. Oh, and I have a scaly, reptilian tail.)

Four new birds for Little Year, all of which we saw along the side of the turtle-strewn Rt. 49: a SORA, a SEMIPALMATED SANDPIPER, a PECTORAL SANDPIPER, and a single female YELLOW-HEADED BLACKBIRD. The best sight for me, though, was a Ruddy Duck, which I missed back in March. So now I’m only 11 birds behind Pole. Still sucks.