Every now and then, a teacher will reach out to us asking for help leading a bird walk. How can we refuse? But what if physical help isn’t easy to come by?
The 18 participants on the Sept. 15 COS-Sierra Club nature and birding tour of Montrose Beach and bird sanctuary hit the jackpot in terms of weather and cooperative local breeding birds.
A dozen birders explored prime sparrow habitat finding singing Henslow's and Grasshopper Sparrows, as well as a number of more common species, like Field, Song, Savanna and Lincoln's Sparrow.
This Earth Day Bird Walk was not too springy but very birdy! We spotted 53 species, including a Merlin, Eastern Meadowlarks, a Virginia Rail, Rusty Blackbirds and a leucistic Winter Wren.
It felt like summer Saturday morning with temps in the 70s and 80s early on, but a group of 15 met to explore the marsh and woodlands of Eggers Grove in Chicago's far south side.
A small but enthusiastic group of birders met yesterday morning to explore these under-birded preserves. The weather was perfect and a singing Blackburnian Warbler greeted us in the parking area ...
Eleven birders explored parts of Orland Grasslands on Saturday, April 29, a cloudy, chilly day. Led by Pat Hayes, a volunteer steward at the site, we followed trails through prairie areas...
What a great spring birding day! We spotted over 30 Wilson's Snipe, a Short-eared Owl in flight, an early Marsh Wren, Eastern Meadowlarks and some Rusty blackbirds.
A group of 15 birders led by Andrew Aldrich beginning at McGinnis Slough and then stopping at Saganashkee Slough and Maple Lake. Among the highlights were great looks at Common Loons ...
A group of 16 birders met at McGinnis Slough in the Palos Area this morning, Sunday, November 20th, to look for waterfowl and any other interesting birds that crossed our paths. We were fortunate to have local expert Wes Serafin join us to navigate and give a bit of history about the different areas. McGinnis was partially frozen this morning, but we still managed some decent flocks of waterfowl here. Most notably the dozens of Bufflehead and Hooded Mergansers, Coots, and Pied-billed Grebes. A couple Great Blue Herons were hunkered down among the cattails.
Join one of Chicagoland’s most active Christmas Bird Counts on December 18, 2016. Nearly 100 people volunteer their time on a wintery Sunday to count birds. The count circle includes a wide variety of habitats from the forests of Palos to the pine plantations of the Morton Arboretum to the open grasslands of Green Valley. The Lisle Arboretum Count is part of the National Audubon Society’s national Christmas Count program.
Nine birders met in Burnham Park just south of the McCormick Place on Saturday, 10/22 bright and early at 7am.
This area has been restored into stretches of native prairie to benefit migrating birds. It is known for the large number of migrants, especially sparrows, that feast on the seeds of the various prairie plants.
Although we did have 7 species of sparrows including American Tree, Fox, Dark-eyed Junco, White-crowned, White-throated, Song, and Swamp, the most abundant birds were Golden-crowned Kinglets. They flitted and hovered around every tree and shrub, and sometimes were even hopping on the ground looking for insects. We tallied well over 100 kinglets for the morning.
Christine and Geoff Williamson led a bird and nature hike at Deer Grove East Forest Preserve in northwest Cook County.
At the start of the walk, we had the opportunity to enjoy two parents and one young Sandhill Crane. This species has been nesting at Deer Grove for a few years now. Read the full trip summary in the post.
Many thanks to Shawn for leading an excellent field trip to the Palos area. The 10 of us who attended all enjoyed very large numbers of waterfowl--thousands of American coots, and great views of all three merganser, shovelers, buffleheads, green and blue winged teal, redhead, canvasback, gadwall, wigeon, pied bill and horned grebes, among others, plus great views of two nesting osprey. . I really appreciated Sean's great eyes and ears in finding all the birds in the reeds on the far sides of the sloughs, and great patience in making counts of the more numerous species.
This year the Forest Preserve District decided to establish birding competition teams in every preserve that provides a leader and a team. The competition starts March 1 and is designed to get birders into the Forest Preserves and record their data on e-bird. Learn more about the competition here: Forest Preserve District Big Year
The 67th Lisle-Arboretum Christmas Bird Count was held on Sunday, 20 December 2015. There was only a brief freeze in the weeks prior to count day, so that we had a lot of hope for a good count. The 90 field observers and nine feeder watchers also had reasonably warm weather to work with, without any snow on the ground. Despite this, most field parties bemoaned the lack of birds.
