Bird concentration

It was almost hard to concentrate on golf on Sunday at Marovitz Golf Course, located at 3800 North along Lake Shore Drive. A storm cleared just as we hit the first tee, and the weather wound up being ideal. On the second hole, a red fox, chased by two or three american crows, sprinted across the fairway. Many birders speak of seeing this fox(es?), and I have seen it once before at Jarvis Bird Sanctuary, about a half-mile away.

On the beautiful fifth tee, which is right next to the blue waters of Lake Michigan, a northern mockingbird was flitting between a thicket and the rough before the fairway. While range maps indicate the "american nightingale" lives throughout the Lower 48, it still is an oddity to see one north of the Butternut region of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. Mockingbirds, of course, are really common in the South, but growing up near Cleveland, I remember seeing only one. Now, they are fairly common there. Some would say this is a harbinger of climate change. Other observations at the course included black-crowned night-heron, chestnut-sided warbler and warbling vireo. No sign of the beavers on the sixth hole pond.