Black-headed Gull = Birdwatchers Galore!

So, I was bored Thursday, March 23.  I was in the middle of an English paper, and it wasn't going well.  I was out of ideas on how to interpret the poem in front of me.  I was going birding with a local class at 3:45, so I had a little time to kill.   Idly, I checked my phone.  On Illinois Birders Exchanging Thoughts, an email group that generally notifies me of rare birds three hours or more away,
 there was an email from the greatest living birder in Illinois.  (Well, at least one of the greats.)

H. David Bohlen, the man who wrote the definitive guide to birds in Illinois, aptly named The Birds of Illinois, had spoken, or rather, written.  He birds Lake Springfield as part of his job, and I've occasionally encountered him.  I once asked to look through his scope at my lifer Sabine's Gull, but that's about it as our social interactions go.   Every month he lists what birds he's seen, usually long and full of rarities not seen by any of the other local birders.  I don't mean that as a criticism, that he's making them up. He isn't.   Bohlen seems to spend most of the day driving around Lake Springfield and environs birding, to the partial envy of the other birders in town.  Since he birds so much, he gets birds on Lake Springfield I could only dream about. That being said, he only emails in these lists once a month after the end of the month, and the February one had already been posted.

What on Earth was this email about?

I read the email- BLACK-HEADED GULL, offshore from Lincoln Greens Golf Course.  I rushed out the door immediately.  Now, for those who don't know what a Black-headed Gull is, I'll tell you.  Actually, I'll show you.  While I don't have great pictures, Colin Dobson, one of the best birdwatchers in my area, did get a photo and here is the bird:



For those of you who wonder what all the fuss is about, Black-headed Gulls (Chroicocephalus ridibundus) are from Europe, and rarely come over to the East Coast.  Finding one in Sangamon County is therefore an event.  This species has only been found in Illinois seven times.  I didn't know that at the time, or I would have tried for a good photo.  I only saw the bird in flight, and when there's four hundred Bonaparte's Gulls around it, it stands to reason that I might get them mixed up.

Above is the hot water discharge of the power plant, putting off steam due to the cooler air around it.  Almost all the gulls in these photos are Bonaparte's Gulls (Chroicocephalus philadelphia) or Ring-billed Gulls (Larus delawarensis).

I did take a few photos, however.  Now, I could be wrong, but I think the upper gull on the far left might be this gull.  I saw it in flight through my scope, and reported it.  The Black-headed Gull is hard to identify, since you have to see the dark underside of the wings for a conclusive identification.

On top, and if you don't see the head, it looks just like a Bonaparte's Gull, pictured above.  The white front edge of the wing, a hint of black on the tips, and a tendency to weave back and forth over the water- all these are characteristics of both Bonaparte's and Black-headed Gulls.

If that's not confusing enough, a few of the Bonaparte's Gulls, like this one, had already-darkened heads, and the lighting can make the underside of the wing appear darkened, as in this case, too. I'm frankly amazed I found the correct gull, to be honest.  Black-headed Gulls are a little bigger than Bonaparte's Gulls, so that helps.

I got bored of watching gulls, so  I watched Tree Swallows (Tachycineta bicolor), eighty or so of which danced about on the water in front of me, along with the four hundred Bonaparte's Gulls.

 It was a happening place!

Off to my right, a flock of gulls gathered around the American White Pelicans (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos) and Double-crested Cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus).

I then ran off to meet up with Tony Rothering and a Bird ID field trip through Lincoln Land Community College.  I was participating as a guest on this field trip, and I snapped several photos of all the good birds along the way, including the incredibly rare Killdeer (Charadrius vociferus), a bird I see or hear only about four times a day.  That being said, I'm not sure what's going on with its leg:

In similar fashion, this American Robin (Turdus migratorius) seems to have emerged from a war zone, and the barbed wires only accented that impresssion:

Still, all's well with the world, as the big draw here at the Lake Springfield Beach House was EIGHT Common Loons (Gavia immer), a new high number for me.  Only one loon came close:

It was about this point that I met Colin Dobson and Tony Ward for the first time.  Colin Dobson is an remarkable birder.  He's a bit younger than me, and I'm on the young side myself.  Despite that, he's found about double the number of bird species in Illinois that I have.  I envy Colin's discoveries, while at the same time often following them up to get new species for myself.  I did this Sunday... but that's for the next blogpost.

And with that, let's get back to our feathered friends.  We said good-bye to Colin and Tony, and hello to a bird-on-a-tree-next-to-the-apartments,-black-and-white-with-a-red-crest-holy-smoke-that's-a PILEATED WOODPECKER! (Hylatomus pileatus)  Next to a Black-headed Gull, a Pileated Woodpecker near the Beach House is about the rarest thing we could have seen. These birds drill holes in the sides of trees that I could stick my arm into.  As a result, they need lots of big trees.  Center Park, where we were, doesn't have too many trees that big, so it was a shock to see this shy bird there.  I alone also saw a Peregrine Falcon fly by, and the day's good birds kept on going.

The main reason I went with Tony Rothering's field trip and didn't stick around with the Black-headed Gull was to see this, the local Great Blue Heron rookery, where dozens of herons build their nests together for communal protection.  I've never seen this before, and I was very impressed.

I can honestly say I've never seen this many herons up in a tree.  It reminds me of a story by my third-grade teacher, Mr. Morgan.  He used to go rollerblading through Washington Park in Springfield, and once he saw a Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) sitting far up in a tree.  Beneath it, dozens of people walked, not once looking up to see this amazing bird.  He had the bird all to himself to watch. No one walking by him inquired what he was looking at. They were all too focused on looking forwards to look around.  It's a story that I have remembered ever since, and it's just about the only memory I have of third grade.

Looking around ourselves while others drove, we found this Eastern Phoebe (Sayornis phoebe), one of five for me that day.  Then we found a bird I didn't expect... again!:

This is the world's most stereotypically Southern bird, the Northern (What?) Mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos).  We found two on the drive.  Their population seems to be increasing here, I think.  There's another somewhat Southern bird that's also expanding its population in Sangamon County, but I'm not going to reveal what it is yet, and I'm never going to say where it lives.  It is hopefully going to be the subject of an upcoming blogpost, and I don't mean the same one as I teased earlier...

Back at the Beach House, I met Joe Phipps, another birder I'd never met before.   Several of the Common Loons from earlier remained, and they swam about the lake in front of me.  It was a fine conclusion to a very full day!

At the Beach House the following morning, I found a gull that was a bit bigger than the rest, as well as another Herring Gull (Larus argentatus smithsonianus).  The local herons have been giving these a wide berth since the Herring Gulls will chase down herons and try to steal their fish:

Over at Lincoln Greens Golf Course, a crowd of Bonaparte's Gulls remained, with no Black-headed Gull.  This was much to the disappointment of the large crowd of birders gathering that day.

I met Ron Bradley, Kevin Richmond, Keith McMullen, Susan Zelek, Ted Wolff, and Phil Doncheck for the first time, as well as Joe Gardener and Jim Mordacq, local birders I already knew.

We fell to small talk and watched the cormorants fly by, which reminded me of this photo, taken several days ago during the Lesser Black-backed Gull hunt:

In the upper left, the smaller bird was flying alongside, not behind, this group of cormorants.  It "might" be a rare Neotropic Cormorant, or it could be a gull that I happened to catch in the same frame.  Either way, it's interesting that it flew with the cormorants around it, and this bird warrants further investigation around the lake.

The local pelicans flew up at the same time.  At this time of year, American White Pelicans develop a knob on their bill.  It's something or other with breeding.

I decided, when the Lincoln Greens birders weren't having any luck, to drive down the lake and scout out any other Bonaparte's Gulls and possibly the missing Black-headed Gull.  I ran into an American Tree Sparrow (Spizella arborea) alongside a Chipping Sparrow along the way.  The Chipping Sparrow, a bird of summer that's migrating into our area, hid, while the wintering American Tree Sparrow flew down a little ways and watched me from a perch.

Further down still, at Lincoln Memorial Gardens, a Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus) posed for me on a branch.  The Northern Flicker's patterning resembles a person with no fashion sense, mixing spots and stripes and various tan shades.  Yet, for some reason, there's some fascinating quality to it.

Emerging Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) flowers indicated that it was high time I went out in the woods looking for flowers and gave up all this bird nonsense.  Still, I was a man on a mission.

No angry Cardinals (Cardinalis cardinalis) would deter me from my quest.

I took several photos of the nearby mass of ducks trying to avoid boat traffic on the lake, when a family walked up with a dog.  Dogs are not allowed at Lincoln Memorial Gardens, and I was about to tell them this, when the mother asked,  "Do you have a yellow car?"

Huh?  "It's beige."

She gave me a confused look, which probably matched mine.

"Beige is sort of tan."

"From the 90s?"  (Oh, it definitely is.  Beige is the most 1990s car color ever invented.)

"Yes.  Why?"

"You left your lights on."  I thanked her, said nothing about the dog, and after snapping a couple more photos, high-tailed it back to the parking lot.  The mission to refind the Black-headed Gull was temporarily put on hold.  I did find my car's lights on. Thankfully my car started!

A quick stop further down the road at Cotton Hill Park yielded a surprise female Canvasback (Aythya valisineria), a duck I rarely ever see on Lake Springfield.  I then heard the chattering of another local lake bird, the Belted Kingfisher (Megaceryle alcyon), which thankfully posed for me:

A train then raced by, and I took the photo back at the beginning of this blogpost, before looking down the tracks.  Crossing the tracks yielded about four hundred cormorants on one of the lake islands.  However, as I went further down the lake, the numbers of Bonaparte's Gulls kept decreasing.

Near sunset, I ended up in the Chatham Wildlife Sanctuary, with American Coots (Fulica americana) skipping across the water on amusingly oversized feet.  There was no Black-headed Gull, there were few Bonaparte's Gulls, and I had reached the end of the lake.

After the first Thursday, no one ever saw the Black-headed Gull again.  I'm glad I raced out there when I did, although in the future I'm going to try and get better photos of such a rare bird!  It was a lot of fun, however, meeting so many birders, including some of the best in Illinois.

After two frenetic days of birding, I went back and finished that paper Saturday.  Then came Sunday.

TO BE CONTINUED-ISH

Meeting People Online for Golden Eagles

Well, it's been too long since I posted on here last.  First there was a lack of time, and then there was a lack of subject matter with which to print, resulting from the lack of time.  Now there's a lack of health (a minor cold, I assure you).  I'm not sure if somebody upstairs is trying to tell me something or not, but I'm stubborn enough to work on this blog regardless.

I was originally planning to go to Emiquon.  I ended up asking in a Facebook group (Illinois Birding Network, I believe) if there were good numbers of Snow Geese, my target species. There were. At the same time, a couple of reports online mentioned two to four Golden Eagles downstate just north of Pere Marquette State Park, as well as two Harris' Sparrows in a nearby part of Calhoun County.  A fellow birder, Vaughn Suhling, messaged me about the Snow Geese, and we both decided to go after the Golden Eagles. (That makes perfect sense, right?)  Obviously, this led to our joining forces.

I told a few friends beforehand that I was meeting up to go birding with someone I'd met online.  They all (and I do mean all) told me that they were glad to see me one last time, before I died.  Seriously, y'all read too many news horror stories.  I met up with Vaughn just north of Winchester.  Within ten minutes, we'd seen a Great Horned Owl on our way south, and were getting along splendidly.  We discussed birds and many other things on our way down to Stump Lake Fish and Waterfowl Management Area, where the latest Golden Eagle sightings had occurred.

We saw quite a few birds at Stump Lake, mostly ducks, but also this Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis).  It may be Illinois' most common hawk species, but I rarely get satisfactory photos of it.  I'm still not sure why it has one foot raised up.  It held that foot up for several pictures.

Massive flocks of Mallards (Anas platyrhynchos) and Northern Pintails (Anas acuta) hid in a flooded cornfield nearby.  They were flushed by a Golden Eagle just before we arrived, according to another birder.  We exchanged phone numbers with that birder, in case one of us saw the Golden Eagle again.  A few minutes later, down the road, we saw this shape circling above the bluffs:

We pulled off, looked at it, and just behind us, we could see the other birder, Craig Taylor, looking at it.  It was about this time our phone rang, and it was Craig calling to let us know that he saw the eagle we were seeing.  All three of us watched as the Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) circled above.  Yes!  It wasn't even 9:00 in the morning, and we had our target species of the day.  Unfortunately, it remained behind the branches before slipping out of sight, so this is my best photo. The ongoing curse of bad pictures of 2017 lifer birds is continuing, with this being the seventh.

Golden Eagles are a very good bird for Illinois, since they are usually birds of the Rockies and other western mountain ranges.  They wander more in winter, and I'm glad a few wandered this way.

The three of us talked for a bit more, before realizing that there were twenty-four Eastern Bluebirds (Sialia sialis) sitting on the powerlines behind us.  True to their nature as birds, they all flew off once we pulled the cameras out.  Still, that was quite an impressive number of bluebirds!

We hung around for a bit, hoping that the eagle would reappear. Craig Taylor had told us that there was a second Golden Eagle that had flown by before we showed up, but we never saw it.  I took a few photos of the bluffs.  Neither Golden Eagle ever reappeared.

We drove down, past a couple of Northern Harriers and many more field, to the marina at Pere Marquette.  Here, ducks of many species flew overhead.  I asked Vaughn if he had a favorite duck, and he said probably Common Mergansers. Not very long afterwards, these Common Mergansers (Mergus merganser) flew overhead.  Good timing!

We walked out on a levee nearby, with bluffs on one side and the Illinois River on the other.  This view was, as usual, far better in person, though at this particular time there weren't many birds.

Most of the birds we did see, like these Northern Pintails, were flying up and down the river.

We did have a few Ruddy Ducks (Oxyura jamaicensis) bouncing about on the river.  I do mean bouncing, the waves were quite rapid at times.

At one point, this plane flew overhead!  We eventually took the scenic drive through Pere Marquette before crossing the Brussels Ferry over to Calhoun County.  I shot this picture midriver.  A Bald Eagle flew right over our ferry, and while I didn't get good photos, I did get a great look at it.

We made our way to Pohlman Slough, where the Harris' Sparrows had been sighted a few days before.  Harris' Sparrows, for the unaware, are birds from the Great Plains that rarely come to Illinois, though more commonly than Golden Eagles.  Even now, having missed out on those here, I know of at least four other spots where Harris' Sparrows have been seen recently in Illinois.

We did see a few sparrows, including this White-throated Sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis), but overall there were few visible birds.  Most hid in the dead growth of tangled stems surrounding us.

Far off and above us, a Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) sat in its nest.  We watched it for a bit.  This bird has chosen an excellent place to build a nest, and based off the size of the nest, I'd imagine it's been used for a few years.  I think this is the largest of the ten or so Bald Eagle nests I've seen.

We found a flock of House Finches (Haemorhous mexicanus), and inexplicably, my camera chose to focus well on this banal, introduced bird.  I tried and failed to get a decent photo of a Golden Eagle, but without intent I get a great photo of a House Finch?  I do not understand this.  (It's amazing how I can take a great photo and then complain about it regardless, too!) 

After a bit, we determined that there was no evident Harris' Sparrow, so we gave up on it and went to Swan Lake, in the Two Rivers National Wildlife Refuge.  Technically, we were already in that refuge, but I had never been to the visitor's center, so we went there.  It was closed, but the manager let us see inside and get a map.  We talked with him for a little bit, while watching ducks from the deck.

To the east of us, a frozen pond had many dabbling ducks on its surface, mainly Northern Pintails, Mallards, and Gadwalls (Anas strepera), but also a few Northern Shovelers (Anas clypeata) and American Wigeons (Anas americana).  All of these ducks flew just after this picture was taken.

Behind the first set of ponds was a belt of trees, a levee, and Swan Lake.  However, the large white birds on its surface were Snow Geese (Chen caerulescens), not swans.   Many other ducks were also around, including Scaup, Redheads, Goldeneyes, Shovelers, and more of the ducks from earlier, the Mallard-Pintail-Gadwall trio.  We even saw a few American Coots, too!

I took a photo of some waterfowl flying in front of the geese, which turned out to be a Common Goldeneye (Bucephala clangula) taking off from the water.

Right in front of us, a Cooper's Hawk (Accipter cooperii) flew past.  I'm surprised to see one, considering the limited numbers of small birds in this spot at the time for it to hunt.  The clouds, as you might be able to tell from the lighting of these photos, had rolled in, and the wind picked up, making us much colder.  Once we had seen all the birds clearly visible, we left.

Driving back to the ferry, I looked up at some large white birds.  At first, I thought they were Snow Geese, and then my brain and my eyes had a brief disagreement when I got to the foot-long bills of these birds.  I said, "Pelicans!"  Vaughn, surprised, pulled over, and we looked up:

I took a photo of a portion of the flock. From what we could count, there were 55 American White Pelicans (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos).  Generally, pelicans are later migrants not seen this early in February, so we were a bit surprised to see so many this early in the year.  Then again, it's been a warm winter.  After getting back in the car, we arrived at the ferry, where we saw this:

About seventy more pelicans flew past, bringing the day's total to about 125 pelicans!  Not bad for early February!  We tried again to find the Golden Eagle, but it was not visible.  Still, we had seen it once.  On the way back, I spotted a Merlin, as the last bird of the trip.  If you start out with a Great Horned Owl, end up with a Golden Eagle in the middle, and get a Merlin at the end, that's a pretty good trip in my book!  What made this even better was meeting an excellent birder and friend.  I learned quite a bit from Vaughn, and I look forward to future expeditions with him.