Super day

Highlights from the past two mornings of birding included lots of goldeneyes, mergansers, buffleheads and redheads.

Check out the patternless area for a live blog of Super Bowl XLIV, beginning at about 5 p.m. Central time.

Ice birding

I'm not proud to admit this, but I don't know anything about gulls. Last weekend, a 12-year-old took a glance at a gull and pronounced it a glaucous gull, a visitor from the Arctic. I can hardly tell a herring gull from a ring-billed gull.

I've done relatively little winter birding, having focused mostly on spring migration and its showy warblers. But perhaps winter is the best time to go birding, especially here in Chicago. The lakefront feels wilder, with its bizarre icy formations and frigid winds. It's absolutely quiet along the lake now, nothing but ice cracking and the wind's howl. In other seasons, there is plenty of human activity to remind you that you're in a big city.

So this morning I began an exercise in improving my winter birding skills. Montrose Point was mostly icebound, but there were a few pockets of water harboring diving ducks and gulls. I saw a huge flock of gulls (mostly ring-billed with a few herring), common mergansers, one male red-breasted merganser, common goldeneyes and buffleheads. The above photo shows buffleheads, the male red-breasted merganser and common goldeneyes, near the fishhook pier at Montrose.

The positive side of winter birding is that there are fewer geographical possibilities so the list of birds is substantially narrowed. And the Great Lakes are filled with wintering gulls and ducks, so it's a great opportunity to live near Lake Michigan. The winter tallies aren't gaudy--just 11 species today--but satisfying nonetheless.

Coastal storm

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There's a low pressure system spinning in the Atlantic today. It's sending a light, fine snow into coastal Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine. There was a stiff wind in our face--and stinging snowflakes--when we walked toward the mouth of the Merrimack River at Newburyport, Mass, this morning. The Atlantic was stirred up, and visibility was low. The wide expanse of grasses, sand and driftwood was empty except for a couple other hearty walkers.

We drove inland toward the marshy Joppa Flats refuge, where about three dozen mallards were huddled on the ice. We continued to a lookout point along the south side of the river closer to the center of Newburyport. About a dozen buffleheads dove between ice floes as they moved east on the river. Then a common loon surfaced nearby before swimming and diving in the direction of the ocean. Other birds seen included a northern harrier and great black-backed gull. Lots more snow expected today in bucolic New England!