I joined Henry Griffin and some of the Oak Park Bird Walkers yesterday morning for a tour of Miller Meadow, where I haven’t been for some time. It’s generally a good place to see hawks and yesterday it was also a good place to be for Sandhill Crane migration. Thanks to Henry for leading this walk. Our spirits were warm.

Right away we saw two Red-tailed Hawks which were likely local residents who had come to check up on us. I managed to capture one was it flew over.

We had barely started walking when we spotted a distant Coyote (gray), and something else huddled on the ground which turned out to be another Coyote (red).

Then the gray Coyote walked over to the red one and started, well, fooling around, if you will. She tolerated his overture but didn’t seem too interested. He wandered off after that. The sequence of contact between the two is captured below.

Right about then we heard and saw our first groups of Sandhill Cranes flying over. Henry kept a tally and counted 320 total flying over while we were there.

The cranes just kept coming. We were on the lookout for Whooping Cranes but there were none with these flocks.

Our last group was four individuals that seemed to be a bit lost. They were not flying consistently southeast. But eventually they disappeared, so I can only hope they joined a larger flock, perhaps, and found their way.

Other birds seen briefly included a few American Tree Sparrows, one of which I barely captured as it flew from a brief perch.

I missed seeing a Pine Siskin because I could not resist observing a couple American Crows that flew over.

The most visible bird was a Red-bellied Woodpecker that seemed to live up to its name.

Here’s a distant photo of a Cooper’s Hawk flying over…

and a Downy Woodpecker, for good measure.

It’s cold and I’m not quite used to it yet. I went over to the Chicago Portage this morning and it was cloudy, but not too windy, which I guess is good because the volunteers were burning vegetation they had cleared. I will be back with a little roundup of what I’ve seen there in the past few days. Snow is in the forecast for tomorrow morning, and the beginning of the coming week looks to be very cold, with highs below freezing.

In the meantime, I am looking forward to cleaning the living room tonight because I’ll be warmer doing it, and then no doubt I will eating another variation on leftovers, the holiday having given me the inspiration to make stuffing and cook another butternut squash.