We must have been right in the migratory path for these birds, because I can’t remember ever seeing them before, but this spring I got to photograph two individuals. This short post is a tribute to a special encounter I had with this one Philadelphia Vireo at the Portage on May 27.
There’s nothing flashy about this bird, and observing a gray bird so closely on a rather gray-sky day was totally unexpected. I just stood and photographed this beautiful creature while it gleaned what I can only imagine were infinitesimal insects caught in what might appeared to be some web filament.
So if you ever get this good a look at a vireo, you can always confirm the genus because they all have blue feet!
I will be back with a more traditional post soon. I just wanted to devote an entire page to these pictures because the encounter was so special. A bird I was barely familiar with gave me an entire tutorial about its habits and appearance in the space of maybe five minutes. I am forever grateful.
It’s hard to believe but spring passerine migration has come and gone again. I never made it to the lakefront, where I’m sure most of the migrants coming through the city were. The trees in the park near my office were late in leafing out, and I was beginning to wonder if I would ever see any warblers, and then, the last two days of May, there were a few pretty birds in that last push.
Male American Redstart – just starting to fill in his second year colors
I took all these photographs trying out my new mirrorless camera. The purchase was inspired by the fact that one guide and one participant were using the Sony RX10 on the Texas trip, so I took that fact alone as a recommendation. I really haven’t had time to investigate all the features, but it’s more compact and easier to carry than my Canon 70D with the 300mm lens attached, so I have this now for situations when I don’t want to carry quite as much gear.
Eastern Towhee
After all the Hermit Thrushes that were in the park weeks before (not as many as last year, but I think I got pictures with the other camera…), I was surprised to see this Wood Thrush on May 30, after I had gone back to try to get a picture of the Eastern Towhee above who showed up on May 29 but eluded my efforts.
Wood Thrush
White-throated Sparrows were more prevalent in April – they seem to be all gone now
Female Common Yellowthroat
Female American Redstart
More shots of the Canada Warbler. She was in the park for two days. I often think that someone should name shades of yellow after particular warblers, but the steel-blue gray back of a Canada Warbler always stands out for me.
Gray Catbird
I adore Wilson’s Warblers – because they tend to move more slowly and deliberately in the trees! And I recognize Wilson’s Yellow, which is a good thing because I don’t always get to see that trademark skullcap.
Wilson’s Warbler
It was especially challenging to get a photograph of this male Mourning Warbler. Usually they are closer to the ground, but this guy was up in the trees after their burst of foliage attracted just the bugs or worms he was looking for.
Mourning Warbler
Was surprised to see this flycatcher on May 30. Even more surprised to get a picture of it.
Eastern Wood-Pewee
One of the last Ovenbirds – they were on the ground in the park for at least two weeks before the end of May
I don’t expect to see much along the Chicago River in the next month or two, save a Ring-Billed Gull or Herring Gull, or the occasional Mallard. Every once in a while there is a Black-Crowned Night-Heron making its way slowly along the river. But birds move and there’s always the possibility of a surprise somewhere.
I have many pictures I want to share from several Portage visits, and of course I will get back to the Texas adventure as soon as possible. Looking for more space in my non-blogging life. Survived the annual choir appreciation dinner and talent show Wednesday — the offerings from the choir members were outstanding and seem to get better and more varied every year. The “survival” part was debuting a flute-and-piano piece with my flutist extraordinaire friend Linda Rios, based on a melody I had written 50 (?) years ago to the lyrics of a Robert Frost poem, “The Vindictives.” Which has led me back to Frost and poetry in general. Looking for my next melody to show up sooner than another 50 years …And I hope to be back to this page soon!
It seems a good time to go back to my Texas trip photo memories before I lose track of it entirely. Day Two was a travel day from Del Rio, where we had spent the night, to Big Bend National Park where we stayed three days. Of course we birded along the way.
Black-bellied Whistling Ducks
Yesterday I turned on the reluctant travel laptop to see if it was in any mood to let me look at my Texas pictures. Lo and behold I found more images, and the amazing thing is that I was allowed to process them, so here is everything from that travel day, including the domestic waterfowl below which adorned the first stop.
Viewer discretion advised: a Mallard menage a trois that might prove disturbing to younger viewers
Northern Shoveler and Blue-winged Teal
Travel notes from my cell phone… I love the rugged terrain of Southwest Texas.
A view of the Rio Grande along the way
Rocks and what to do with them
It was nice to revisit species I have seen before. Some I saw much better than on previous occasions, while others like the Rufous-Crowned Sparrow below, eluded the camera, even though fairly common. And then there were the life birds.
Rufous-crowned Sparrow
Bewick’s Wren
Cliff Swallows
Brown-headed Cowbirds
Great-Tailed Grackle Bash
Olive Sparrow – a lifer which looked much better than the lighting allowed
Clay-colored Sparrow
The Morelet’s Seedeater is not exactly new, if I can believe I have seen a White-Collared Seedeater before. Anyway, it’s been split into its own species, so that makes it a life bird. We searched for this guy for a while and then he practically followed us around for the next quarter hour or more.
Morelet’s Seedeater
Lesser Goldfinch I have seen before, maybe not so well.Orchard Oriole we get in the Chicago area, though not as common as Baltimore Oriole.House Finch (of the original population!), not the ones that crowd my backyard.
It would have been nice to see a Western Meadowlark but this Eastern Meadowlark posed nicely for us.
Eastern Meadowlark
I’ve glimpsed Ladder-backed Woodpeckers in New Mexico but have never seen them so well as on this trip.
Ladder-backed Woodpecker
Then to see some old friends really well…
Golden-fronted Woodpecker (female) with White-Winged DoveLark SparrowHepatic TanagerBlue Grosbeak
We arrived at the Chisos Mountain Lodge in Big Bend National Park, checked into our rooms and witnessed this sunset outside the dining hall that evening.
Chisos Mountains sunset
Meanwhile back home, it’s intermittent thunderstorms and cooler weather. I am fond of rain, but not so much.
Never knowing what to expect but full of expectation is how I approach the Portage on a regular basis. So arriving late last Saturday morning was bound to be a mixed bag. I stopped on the bridge to talk with another birder I’ve run into lately there, and snapped the photograph of the female Baltimore Oriole below. And then as I started to walk, an adult Bald Eagle flew over. I didn’t have time to capture it the first time but it came back and so the image above.
Baltimore Oriole (female)
As usual there were more birds heard than seen at this hour but I was content to see what I did. Indigo Buntings are still evading the lens, but I will have many more opportunities to endure their frustrating behavior.
Blue-Gray Gnatcatchers are abundant and usually hard to spot, but I found this busy nesting pair.
Tree Swallows used to nest here…this one looks like he’s thinking about it.
Tree Swallow
Warbling Vireos…I always hear several of them, but they are normally very hard to see. However this one was singing and perched at a comfortable height for me to capture him.
This is the time of year when dandelions get a bad rap, but I found it interesting to see a Song Sparrow eating the seeds before they had a chance to disburse. So there, I have proof that dandelions aren’t just attractive to pollinators but they are also a source of food for birds, and of course humans. We may need them some day!
One of the two Green Herons was hunting. At one point it took off across the water and caused a sunning turtle to slide off its stump. There were a lot of turtles out. Click on the images below and you can see what I mean.
A few more pictures of Portage breeders… I’m leading one more walk tomorrow morning as an auction donation to Unity Temple and the forecast is for thunderstorms. But the weather changes every few minutes. We had the same forecast for this morning and except for a few thunderclaps around 6:15 a.m. and a little rain, now it is cloudy but clear. I am hoping for the same sort of cooperation tomorrow, it will make dealing with the muddy spots a lot easier.
As we climb back out of yet another spell of wintry, inclement weather, I have to wonder what effect this fitful spring is having on the migrants we are all too happy to observe. I have had a Swainson’s Thrush in my yard the last two days. I’m happy to provide for this bird and maybe it doesn’t have too much farther to go to get to its breeding grounds, but likely it will be dodging more storms on its way.
Last Saturday I attended a small informal walk at Columbus Park and then went to the Portage. Sunday birding was off the table, as I committed to choir-singing all day. Here it is Wednesday: I just finished going through these pictures last night. I will be leading one more walk this Saturday at the Portage if the current “morning thunderstorms” forecast does not pan out. It’s ever crazier to be paying attention to the forecast when it changes every five minutes, but I can’t help it.
Great Blue Heron
Black-crowned Night-Heron, Columbus Park
It’s always nice to see the herons at this location. My list of species totaled 32 which is not spectacular but it was great to have sunshine which the birds were enjoying too. I’ll do a separate post about the Portage later.
Female
Common Yellowthroat (Male)
American Redstart
Swainson’s Thrush
Northern Rough-winged Swallow
Red-winged Blackbird
This is the first time I’ve seen Wood Ducks hanging out on the lawn…but the Mallard was quite comfortably snoozing.
There are two Spotted Sandpipers in the photograph below the ducks, but the second one is a bit harder to see…
Spotted Sandpipers
I found the Philadelphia Vireo in my photographs last night. A surprise to me as I don’t think I’ve ever taken a picture of one before.
Philadelphia Vireo
Black-and-white Warbler (female)
One more of the Mourning Warbler…
So this is the time of year when I have more photographs than I have time to post… Looking forward to the holiday weekend and hoping it’s not raining too much so I can get a handle on the rapidly increasing jungle that is my yard and maybe see some more birds.
We were warming up in Chicago, finally, it seemed, and then last night with the rain the temperatures dropped and now we are cold, windy and rainy again. So even though Spring Migration will continue to distract me when I am capable of paying attention to it, I want to revisit memories of the southwest Texas trip before they become too distant. Here’s a brief recap of one stop on our first travel day.
Driving to Del Rio from the San Antonio airport for our first night, we pulled off the road at a rest stop and found it to be quite birdy. It also became the comparison stop for tyrannus flycatchers. In addition to the Western Kingbird at the top of this post, we had Couch’s Kingbirds and Scissor-Tailed Flycatchers. This was a perfect introduction because we would continue to run into these birds again and again. The Couch’s was a new one for me. Sorry he’s got his back to us, I’ll see if anything turns up later a bit more representative of the whole bird.
Couch’s KingbirdScissor-tailed Flycatcher
Also at that stop was my first look at a Bullock’s Oriole.
Bullock’s Oriole
In addition to the birds, we encountered Leaf-Cutter Ants which are some of my favorite creatures.
I expected to see plenty of Great-tailed Grackles but there’s always the first one…
A few more of the Scissor-Tailed Flycatcher. Better pictures will follow. They were consistently the most cooperative, photogenic birds of the trip.
Reluctantly I keep trying to face the present… The high for today in Chicago is 49 degrees Fahrenheit, which is where we are now, raining with thunderstorms possible. My phone app predicts tomorrow’s high will be 83 and cloudy. What to wear?
One more Western Kingbird… I have so many photos and not much time this weekend but my goal is to move on to the pictures from the next day in Texas. As my attention to warbler-and-others migration keeps getting interrupted…
When I came back from Texas two weeks ago, the weather in Chicago was fairly pleasant and I mused I could have two springs! No matter that the Saturday before I got home there was snow on the ground. But just as we slipped into May, when it seemed reasonable to expect things would start warming up a bit, northeast winds picked up and although we weren’t freezing, the windchills were in the 30’s. It’s an understatement to say there has been a lot of rain. The downpours have brought most of the trees into leaf and encouraging emerging plant life everywhere. Then, this past Thursday morning, a lot of migrant birds were down from the skies from the previous evening’s rainstorm.
I’m too far away from the lakefront now to go off searching for rarities on my lunch hour, but I took Friday off so that I could scope out the Portage before my bird walk on Saturday. It turned out to be the nicest day of my three-day weekend. Although it started off chilly and windy, when the sun emerged a little before 10:00 AM all was forgiven.
Magnolia Warbler
I just finished getting through Friday’s pictures last night – it seemed there were way too many, but I discovered three more species in them to add to the list with a grand total of 54 species, 13 of them warblers. Which isn’t super fantastic but it’s credible for the Portage.
As for the Texas pictures, I managed to send some to Field Guides Saturday night and now with that off my plate I can go back through all of them and start developing for my own purposes. Time, technology and energy being available in inconsistent quantities, this will take me a while.
So in the meantime, here are some of the spring migrants from my walk on Friday, and there will likely be some more from this visit and Saturday’s outing as I try to keep up with everything that seems to be happening this month.
American RedstartChestnut-sided WarblerWilson’s WarblerPalm WarblerYellow-rumped Warbler (Myrtle) (robber baron pose)
Magnolia Warbler
Yellow-Rumped Warbler (Myrtle)
Red-eyed Vireo
Lincoln’s Sparrow
This is all I can manage for now. I hope to report back soon with lots more!
