Annual report

It was a great birding year, starting with a late migrating american pipit at Montrose on Jan. 2. One thread throughout 2011 was my use of the eBird tracking tool. For no reason in particular, I embarked on a slow-speed chase to be one of the top 100 eBirders in Illinois. I fell short on my quest, ending up 113th with 119 species at the time of this writing. But I can count strange achievements like being the 73rd-ranked eBirder in the state of South Dakota, because of our week-long trip there, and 47th in the Bahamas.

I added seven birds to my life list: Bell's vireo, Henslow's sparrow, american dipper, upland sandpiper, mountain bluebird, plumbeous vireo and snowy owl. A snow-less winter, ironically, capped by a snowy owl sighting. Our trip to the Bahamas yielded a number of island specialities and a tally of 33 species, including LaSagra's flycatcher and thick-billed vireo--both common in Eleuthera but resident only on a couple of other islands.

The birding adventure starts over again tomorrow, starting at zero species for 2012. Should be fun.

Snowy haven

A snowy owl is a good reason to end a blog hiatus. Snowy owls are invading the Midwest this winter, with perhaps the largest surge in more than a decade. Two weeks ago, two were photographed at Montrose Point. I went out to search for them the next morning. I saw a couple of photographers who helped point me to an owl on the end of the fishhook pier. It was several hundred yards away, but I had an okay look at my first-ever snowy owl.

Then, this past weekend, an even better look. The owls had continued to hang around the point for days. We went Saturday afternoon. We didn't see the owls in the dune area, or near the pier. As we walked toward the beach house, a passerby said the owl was just ahead. Just a few yards away, the owl was sitting atop a light post in plain view. One needn't binoculars to make out many details. A small crowd had gathered, photographing the bird from every angle. Amazing stuff and a great way to cap an eventful 2011 of birding.

Big dipper

I have a report from South Dakota for the 501st post on this blog. Our trip took us to the Black Hills and Badlands. We recorded 48 bird species and eight mammal species. The birds included two additions to the North American life list--upland sandpiper and american dipper.

We found the sandpiper, pictured below, near the dusty grassland town of Buffalo Gap. We had left the highway at Buffalo Gap to catch a road to the Badlands. When we discovered that the 40-plus mile trip to the park would be on a dirt road, we decided to head back to the highway. On the way there, we saw a strange bird sitting on a hay bale. It took some research on the web to confirm that this indeed was an uppie. It was the big eye and relatively long neck that gave it away. Ironically, I had looked for this bird here in Illinois in July and came away empty.

The american dipper is a plump thrush-like bird that lives only in high mountain streams. It reaches the Black Hills at the eastern extent of its range. So we traveled to the northern Black Hills to find the bird, at Roughlock Falls near Spearfish Canyon. We walked down to the falls but didn't see a dipper on our first try. We walked downstream a ways and decided to go back for one last attempt. And there it was, sitting on a log in the water. The ouzel sat there for a long time, and we took many pictures. We never did see its peculiar behavior--plunging into streams and walking on the streambed in search of food--but that was OK. (The dipper is a gray dot in the bottom right of the first photo below.)

There are many more photos from our trip here.

Prairie companions

Today I visited the largest prairie restoration east of the Mississippi River. Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie is near Joliet, Ill., on the site of the former Joliet Army Ammunition Plant. The 19,000-plus acre preserve was created in the 1990s.

I went seeking three life birds and came away with two of them(!). I saw a Bell's vireo at the parking lot at the Explosives Road trailhead and later recorded a Henslow's sparrow along the Henslow's Trail. Both are uncommon and elusive, most often heard and not seen in their very specific habitat. Alas, I did not see an upland sandpiper, which are apparently even more scarce at Midewin now than ever. I also missed out on loggerhead shrike, at the northern extent of its range.

Still, it was a beautiful morning, with lots of singing dickcissels (above) and many other prairie birds. Other highlights included: about 30 bobolinks on the Henslow's Trail, grasshopper sparrow most everywhere and a male orchard oriole. I also encountered a number of ticks and managed to (mostly) keep them at bay.

Online birding

Fickle weather is one reliable aspect of a Midwest spring migration. Since March, we've seen cold, heat, cold again, heat again and now cold once more. My birding this spring has been inconsistent, too, in terms of number of species and the number of days I've spent in the field. One constant has been my enjoyment of eBird, the real-time online checklist program. EBird makes it easy to keep track of birds, and ensures that sightings are added to the scientific record. Birders can compare their sightings with other birders in their community and sort their lists by hotspot and species. So I know I've seen 91 total species this year while submitting 13 lists. I'm tied for 50th in Cook County with 77 species.

Among the highlights this spring: three singing blue-winged warblers at Indiana Dunes' Heron Rookery Trail (above). No Swainson's thrush and nary a vireo all spring, but nice sightings of orchard oriole, tennessee warbler and black-throated blue warbler. And two more species for the yard list: least flycatcher and american goldfinch. And in a non-avian note, I saw a white-tailed deer at Montrose this week, a first for me there.

Bahamian birds

It's been a lot of fun to learn more about the birds of the island of Eleuthera in the Bahamas. Island geography limits the number of species, though there are several birds that are only found on Eleuthera and a few other islands that stretch to Cuba. Most are distinct from the birds found in Florida a couple hundred miles away. I've seen about 60 species on Eleuthera; it's possible to see 60 species in a day regularly on the American mainland.

On this trip, we found two birds that were not supposed to be in Eleuthera according to bird guides. First, two brown pelicans in the harbor at Governor's Harbour and another flying over the ocean at the house; second, a red-legged thrush, above, which inhabits other Bahamian islands but not Eleuthera. Last trip, also contrary to the guides, we saw an anhinga that spent several days on Darnot's Pond.

A nice find also last month was a Cuban pewee along Banks Road. It's readily identifiable by its call, which is a cheery whistle not unlike an Empidonax flycatcher. The tiny pewee also is known as the crescent-eyed pewee for its thick white eye ring. It inhabits just a few Bahamian islands and pockets of Cuba.

Many species look a little different in the Bahamas and the Caribbean than on the mainland. This juvenile osprey, being harassed by a mockingbird, has much more white on its head and neck than a mainland osprey. (Great views of this youngster from the deck.)

Other firsts on the trip were: white-cheeked pintails, a pair on Darnot's Pond; and a LaSagra's flycatcher, with nesting material, on Banks Road. The pintails' range stretches from the Bahamas to the Caribbean, South America and the Galapagos Islands. The flycatcher only some islands of the Bahamas, Grand Cayman and Cuba.

April was a little lighter on migrants, particularly shorebirds and waders, than our last trip in March--the total trip tally this time was 33 species.

Snipe hunt

When I was in Cub Scouts, the Cubmasters and Den Leaders took us on a Snipe Hunt one evening at camp. The adults played up the mystery of the snipe and kept warning us to look for them. Well, we never really saw anything--I think we wound up at a bonfire or something--and eventually someone said there's no such thing as a snipe.

This isn't true, of course, and really the traditional Snipe Hunt seems a missed opportunity for ornithological education. Wilson's snipe is a medium-sized shorebird that frequents mudflats, fluddles and wet meadows. I hadn't seen one for years until last weekend. It was in a fairly unusual place at Montrose--the lawn north of the Magic Hedge. Even on the green grass, the snipe's plumage blended in amazingly well. We had a few good looks at it before it flitted off, and we declared our snipe hunt a success.