This series of photos is from December 23. I went back on the 26th and will share those photos in a separate post. The weather has since turned a bit more wintry. I decided not to go out today due to early cloud cover and mostly mud – I am getting a bit tired of cleaning the treads of my boots. But I also have so much to do at home that I kept putting off “until I retire” or “until winter” and since I am in both those places, I need to get going on the 20-years-of-accumulated-stuff project.
The sky was dramatic at first but brightened up ever so slightly. There are new piles of chopped wood here and there along the trails. I can only imagine the volunteers were taking care of fallen or about-to-fall trees.
At first this White-breasted Nuthatch was hard to uncover but he came out and made himself known eventually.
Red-bellied Woodpeckers have been more abundant than I remember, but it could just be that for the sake of getting out more, I have become more attuned to their comings and goings. I was delighted to find the flight sequence in my photos, which I put into the carousel below.
A favorite ground-foraging place these days is the trail, and when I’m lucky and the only person on the trail, I can usually stop and watch the birds for some time.
Song Sparrow and female Northern Cardinal
Another Song Sparrow
I was beginning to think my ears were lying to me because I thought I always heard White-throated Sparrows but I was never seeing them. Then this one posed for a picture.
White-throated Sparrow
Dark-eyed Juncos are also fond of the gravelly trails.
I could barely focus on this somewhat far-away American Goldfinch, but I so love their muted tones this time of year.
It wouldn’t be Christmas week without a male Northern Cardinal.
I’ll be back shortly with the next installment. The days are getting longer…already!
Suffice it to say we are presently in the middle of a cloud. I took the little camera out this morning trying to capture it. The rain overnight and the cloud cover made the prospect of going for a walk in the woods less attractive than usual.
In the backyard, the cloud continued…
This is a perfectly senseless segue to some photos from July 31st taken at the Portage on the cusp of what would soon be the beginning of fall migration. The photos have been languishing on my hard drive and in the name of creating space I have archived them to storage. I found I had one photograph of a Big Bluestem that day in my backyard (below).
Big Bluestem
It appears to have been a suitably sunny morning at the Portage.
It was getting more difficult to find an Indigo Bunting still singing (above) and what was my last attempt to capture a Ruby-throated Hummingbird in the Monarda below.
A Chimney Swift…
Summertime flora…
Queen Anne’s LaceSquirrel Tail-GrassTall Bellflower, also at the top of the post
An elusive Gray Catbird in a mulberry tree…
As I recall there wasn’t enough water to support a lot of turtles last summer but here is one.
An Osprey flew over…
A young American Robin perched on the statue, getting its bearings…
Belted Kingfishers are not often easy to capture but I managed this one, a male.
Ah, dragonflies… a female 12-Spotted Skimmer.
The Portage pond, as it were, on the left, and the low level of the Des Plaines River on the right.
Two Cabbage White Butterflies…
A Monarch Butterfly in the Red Milkweed below.
And a Pearl Crescent Butterfly…
I have been out to the Portage a couple times in the last week and will be back with some of that, but I thought it might be nice to briefly remember what the sunlight looked like in the middle of summer before we finally plunge into some winter weather. Rain may turn to snow with some accumulation tomorrow.
On November 24, the day before Thanksgiving, I got photographs of a buck on the Riverside Lawn side of the Des Plaines River. He was close to the path. This might have been the last time I saw any deer, they seem to have gone elsewhere since.
On that same visit, I saw part of a creature asleep in a tree cavity, but I have no idea what it was. I have since tried to find the tree again but haven’t managed to. Brightening up the photo on the left didn’t help much.
Other than that and a very grey-looking day, the birds were the usual variety. I could expect to see a Red-bellied Woodpecker.
A Downy Woodpecker and a Northern Cardinal managed to make it into the same photograph before I moved to get an unobstructed view of the Cardinal.
It seems I barely captured the Black-capped Chickadee below.
The sky had its dramatic moments.
A distant Red-tailed Hawk below…
Invariably there have been Mallards in the river somewhere. And Canada Geese.
The spareness of the trees imparts a different architecture…
I have been busy baking the annual Cinnamon Oatmeal Raisin loaves for distribution. They have all found homes.
A few of my birds in relaxed moments…
I keep trying to imagine a visit to the lakefront. I haven’t been down to see it for two years, now. I keep telling myself once I go down it will all seem familiar again and I will feel safe. Might be a destination for New Year’s Day. We shall see.
For what it’s worth, I probably spent an hour this morning in between the stages of making yogurt, reading Dave Barry’s 2021 Year in Review (which appeared in The Washington Post and apparently several other publications) and I haven’t laughed so hard in a long time. It could be just me not having a TV and its comedy shows. But I’d like to think this is my reward for surviving 2021. I highly recommend reading it if you haven’t already. A little humor goes a long way these days.
After living in the company of the glorious music we performed in the Return of the Unity Temple Choir Concerts on December 18 and 19, surviving my participation in the concerts and revisiting particularly resonant passages in my head – I went out to the Portage this beautiful sunshiny morning to reclaim my walk routine. At least that was what first struck me as I started up the trail: the past two weeks it seems between spates of inclement weather and the need to practice my choral parts, my sense of routine was minimal at best. Beyond feeding the birds, playing a little piano and swimming, there was only room for choir.
But now we have a couple weeks off before we resume rehearsals. It has been such a profound transition from rehearsing remotely to video performances to learning all the music and singing together, vaccinated and masked, as a choir in live performance again, I found myself exhausted after the first performance and feeling let down a bit after the second, as if I never wanted it to end.
I suppose if I were still working and had less time to preoccupy myself with the clinical details of my moods, this would all be chalked up to just part of the end-of-year-holiday madness, but whatever it is, experiences seem more vivid and significant as I search for meaning in the morass.
But enough of that heavy stuff! It was a beautiful, sunny, crisp morning at the Portage. And I barely saw any birds. A footnote to that – I could not participate in the Christmas Bird Count this year because of the choir concert which fell on the same day, December 18. But the few birds I did see this morning were delightful in their own way, and here they are.
Early on, I heard what I thought was an American Tree Sparrow where I have in the past run into flocks of foraging birds, but did not see it. I proceeded up the path, pausing now and then to listen to a distant call or silence, the wind making me glad I had on my long underwear. Then I heard a Black-capped Chickadee call to me, before it appeared. I have come to consider the Chickadees my Greeter Birds at the Portage. Invariably they have always solicited my attention.
That was just before the opening in the fence. I didn’t feel like walking back along the river toward the railroad tracks or going in the other direction toward the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District (MWRD) but I stood for a moment after going through the break in the fence and managed to capture a couple distant shots of a Red-bellied Woodpecker.
I briefly saw a male Northern Cardinal but did not photograph it. When I got to the second bridge I could see some Mallards in the water that was shallow enough to melt. I started walking the trail on the opposite side of the water.
Here’s what the Portage looked like this morning. It was nice to see a bit more water, albeit mostly frozen at first.
I got caught up to the Mallards which turned out to be two very cold looking birds.
I started walking back on the trail in my normal fashion and then was stopped by a Downy Woodpecker who began foraging with intensity up the trunk of a very small tree. I stood and watched him for quite a while. Forgive me if I took too many pictures.
Then, as I stood there, I began to hear a Dark-eyed Junco, another Red-bellied Woodpecker, and then American Tree Sparrows – confirming what I had heard earlier – and a couple of the Tree Sparrows posed for photographs.
The sight of the American Tree Sparrows made my morning. I have now learned how to identify them by their call, and they behaved in their usual fashion, a foraging flock of about a dozen of them or so. I suspect there were more birds at the Portage that were hiding. Bright sunshine on a cold day could be good for raptors too, although I didn’t see my usual Red-tailed Hawk.
Below is a quick shot through the muck and mire of the kitchen window of the Cooper’s Hawk that visited my yard yesterday morning. I suspect its presence, when unseen to me, explains the absence of birds in the yard on an otherwise lovely day.
I hope to be back sooner than later with more retrospective posts. It’s probably a good time of year to start going through summer and fall photos that I haven’t processed yet. I hope your holiday season is going along safe and warm, wherever you are.
I encounter a suitable number of people walking their dogs on the Riverside trails and lately the dogs have drawn my attention to other wildlife through their people. Last week I met a woman whose dog seemed interested in something off the path … which turned out to be the beaver below. Unfortunately I couldn’t get a clearer shot but it was wonderful to see.
Before that on November 29 which I think might have been the first time I took the mirrorless camera with me, I noticed a man standing with his two dogs on the foot bridge, looking at something. It turned out to be a relaxed Coyote lolling on what is a temporary beach on the other side of the river.
That cloudy morning at the end of November made for a beautiful sunrise, such as I saw it far away from the lake over the tops of houses.
I have seen this Eastern Bluebird a few times, just off the paved path, and managed some photos on the 29th (first below) and then again in better light with the old Canon lens last week (second group below). Either way, I have been excited to see this bird so often, gives me hope to see more in the spring.
A Yellow-rumped Warbler and the Eastern Bluebird
Those indefatigable Mallards make excellent use of the low water levels in the river.
Along with the photograph at the top of the post, here are some more of the two Downy Woodpeckers I encountered on December 8 as they were foraging peacefully together and then not so peacefully.
Fungus, unusual tree bark and uprooted trees intrigue me.
Another one of those ground-feeding Dark-eyed Juncos.
It was still quite chilly on the 8th, enough for some small ice formations in the river.
A Downy Woodpecker and a Fox Squirrel from 11-29.
A female Northern Cardinal, fluffed up against the cold.
A barely visible White-breasted Nuthatch…
Hofmann Tower through the trees…
As luck would have it, I am stuck inside on this beautiful Sunday morning when I had intended to go out for an early walk, but because my repaired lens is on a FedEx truck somewhere “out for delivery” I have to sit here and wait for its arrival “by end of day.” After all this, I don’t dare take the chance to sign indirectly for it and have it left on the front porch.
Yesterday I was going to have my trees trimmed, but due to gale force winds of 45-50 mph which kept knocking over one of my empty rain barrels even though I had put several weights on top of it to keep it stable, the tree trimming has been postponed until tomorrow morning, so that will be one more good birding morning spent inside. You are right to question why I am writing about this when I could be having Real Problems.
It will be great to get my many trees trimmed after I put it off for so long, they need it badly. And as I sit here hanging out with my indoor crowd, I’m thinking I have a lot to be thankful for and a couple days missed in the wilds of suburbia are not forever. … By now you are probably praying for me to go back out and take enough pictures to keep me silently slaving over them. I hope you are safe and well, wherever you are, and cheerfully caught up in holiday distractions.
Even before I dropped the Canon zoom lens, I was starting to feel like at times it might be more comfortable to go out with the mirrorless camera I purchased a few years ago and had stopped using when I was no longer going downtown to the office. Also I had never really figured out how to get the mirrorless to focus on a bird, so it was a good time to start practicing. These photos are from December 1 and 3, at the Riverside Lawn Trail. I have just figured out that the wooded area across the foot bridge that the county reclaimed which has eventually become part of the forest preserves is called Riverside Lawn.
In spite of the lack of light, I managed to get some fairly decent pictures with this camera. Some well spaced-out starlings were actually all in focus individually. It has a very efficient zoom that managed to get quite clear pictures of the Red-tailed Hawk below from across the river. Invariably I have been seeing a Red-tailed Hawk around 10:00 AM both here and at the Portage.
European Starlings
It must have been windy that morning.
Standing on the first bridge, I noticed a flock of American Robins and the European Starlings hanging out in the shallows and bathing. The camera did a good job capturing the action.
Below is a Hairy Woodpecker, which made four woodpecker species on the 3rd – I did not manage to get a picture of the Northern Flicker. A male Downy Woodpecker is in the second gallery, on the same pole.
And a female Downy Woodpecker.
Red-bellied Woodpecker
I don’t always see Mourning Doves. But on December 3rd, I was standing just hanging out with the mixed flock and a total of eight Mourning Doves eventually showed up.
There are always a lot of Northern Cardinals, and I was lucky enough to figure out the focus on a few of them after many tries.
A Fox Squirrel and a Gray Squirrel.
For as many Dark-eyed Juncos as I normally have seen – up to 30 or more – they are incredibly difficult to capture more often than not. On the ground, they blend right in.
I can always count on Mallards and sometimes Canada Geese.
More dreary views, and the Rock Pigeons that seem to congregate on top of the Riverside Town Hall or the Hofmann Tower.
When it focuses, this camera is great for some really crisp images, so I look forward to using it more often, especially in low light situations. I hope I can get better at focusing all my equipment since I think my ability to determine whether I have the manual focus sharp is diminishing. In this case I gladly welcome artificial intelligence. A wasp nest caught my eye, and I have frequently seen the fungus at the bottom of one tree, which looks like it has been eaten.
I’ll be back shortly with my last visit using my old 100-400mm lens. It’s already proving to be an interesting winter.
I stepped out Friday morning to go birding and right outside the door, my camera strap broke and dropped the camera and 100-400mm Canon L lens on my concrete porch floor. There was no way I could have foreseen this accident, but even with a newer strap I will more likely be holding onto the camera body when there is pavement underfoot.
I proceeded to go birding anyway. The camera seems to be fine. But the zoom ring on the lens is stuck somehow making it too tight to turn, so I am sending the lens for repair. I went back to my old lens yesterday, which has a manual push-me pull-you zoom on it – using it was a bit of an adjustment. But luckily I don’t have as many birds tempting me to photograph them as I did back in September, which is when I took the photos in this post. September 30, to be exact, at the Portage.
The lovely lady at the top of the post and in the gallery below is a female Common Yellowthroat.
Kinglets were showing up too. The Ruby-crowned Kinglet below gave me plenty of looks at its crown without the red. Then I had barely one good shot of a Golden-crowned Kinglet, but there were many more in the days that followed.
Golden-crowned Kinglet
One bird I felt privileged to see a few times this fall was a Northern Waterthrush.
Not a warbler but a nice-looking Red-bellied Woodpecker…
Below is a Northern Parula.
Black-throated Green Warblers were abundant this fall.
In the I Took Way Too Many Pictures Department, the most cooperative bird of the season had to be Blackpoll Warbler.
Sunshine and greenery at the Portage … before the fall. And a pair of Canada Geese for good measure.
One more of the Common Yellowthroat
I will be back soon with another post, slipping in and out of real time … it feels almost normal these days anyway, to be slipping in and out of reality.
I’ve been to the Portage several times lately, and that includes a few times since these photographs which were taken November 26 and 28. I managed to get a few pictures of an American Tree Sparrow, which was my main motivation to go out into the cold the second day. I will likely see more of this species in the coming weeks.In fact I saw three this morning. But it’s also been relatively quiet at the Portage lately.
For whatever reason it was harder to get the bird posing below in focus than the one mired in the stalks.
The usual cast of characters were present on one or both days. I was fortunate enough to have four woodpecker species on the first day: Red-bellied, Downy, Northern Flicker and Hairy.
What’s really interesting about the photos below is that I didn’t realize until I started processing them that next to the Flicker on a separate branch was an Orange-Crowned Warbler. I enlarged the image of the warbler below.
This is Dark-eyed Junco season. I have been encountering flocks usually foraging on the path, along with Northern Cardinals.
There are still some American Goldfinches about all though not as many as I was seeing a couple weeks ago.
It’s always a nice surprise to see a Brown Creeper.
Here’s what the Portage was looking like on those cold, cloudy days.
I think the Fox Sparrow below is the last one I have seen.
There have been one or two Red-tailed Hawks every time I have gone to this location. Sometimes I only hear the hawk, but usually if I am still around by 10:00 I get to see one. This is a particularly dark-colored individual.
More washed-out Portage pics.
Black-capped Chickadee
I usually see or hear at least one White-breasted Nuthatch.
Canada Geese on the Des Plaines RiverDark-eyed Junco
I hope to be back sooner than later. It’s getting harder and harder to pack a full day into the space of reduced daylight. I have been living with birds for a long time, but now that I spend even more time with them, the consequence could be thinking more and more like a bird!
I have been out locally the past two weeks and there is much to post about, but I thought it might be time to take a historical break. These pictures are all from October 19th at the Portage. Only a little over a month ago, there was still more color among the birds than the leaves. I spent a lot of time with this Nashville Warbler.
Perhaps in the instance below the leaves outshone the bird – a pretty drab-looking American Goldfinch.
The other late fall warblers were on hand. Below is a Yellow-rumped Warbler.
And the one I kept seeing later and later into the season, an Orange-crowned Warbler…
Barely visible but I would know that face anywhere (Orange-crowned Warbler)
Not a lot of sparrows on hand but I managed to capture these two.
White-throated SparrowLincoln’s Sparrow
And the Kinglets – Golden-crowned and Ruby-crowned…
A little Portage scenery
It’s been wonderful to see Brown Creepers on so many occasions.
Always glad to see a Black-capped Chickadee who seems to return the sentiment.
This could have been the only Great Blue Heron I saw here for months since the drought caused the water level to drop so drastically.
Not a wonderful place for a Hermit Thrush to pose but I was glad to see it.
It wasn’t quite woodpecker “season” yet but I managed to see this female Downy Woodpecker.
There are lots more historical visits to make sense of – indeed a flurry of fall warblers that I was so busy taking pictures of I barely have barely had time to go through them, so they may periodically provide a little visual warmup during the cold.
I am mourning the death of my beloved singer/songwriter/implacable musician Zebra Finch male to whom I gave the name of Arturo Toscanini. He died Thursday morning. I found him on his back, on the floor of the dining room by the windows. He was still warm when I picked him up. He had been singing a lot lately, and I think perhaps he had been telling me his time was coming because I found myself thinking about how old he had to be, even though he had no signs of aging or impairment, other than it seemed his little goatee was getting whiter and whiter. The blessing in all of this is that I have one of his offspring who is singing an abbreviated version of his Arpeggio Song and an even shorter memory of his TaTaTaTaTAH Song. Also, other birds have taken up the actual Toscanini Song that he used to sing a long time ago. And there are many more songs among them to catalogue and follow. At some point I hope to go through the years of recordings (I determined I must have gotten Arturo sometime in late 2014) to see if I can put together a timeline of his compositions. In the meantime, I am incredibly thankful for all the avian musicians I still have with me. Singing is their raison d’etre, and music is life.
Last week, I finally discovered the other side of the Joliet Avenue bridge in Riverside which everybody else, even my non-birder friends, has likely known about. By running a little later than I had planned, I magically encountered two very nice women that morning who offered some interesting history about the river communities. These photographs are from the 10th and the 16th, and I probably should have done two separate posts, again I have too many photographs.
Except for this past Tuesday. I have been trying to settle into somewhat of a Wednesday routine, going for a walk along the Des Plaines River, then on to the health club for a midday swim so I am free for choir rehearsal in the evening. The pool tends to be less crowded in the evenings, and I am accustomed to going at that time. I also like to see the night sky after I swim. But I digress. Below is a distant picture of the footbridge I had heard about that crosses the Des Plaines.
Instead of the lawn at Indian Gardens, on this side there is a paved path that follows the river from the other side of the bridge near where I park in Lyons. It goes all the way into the Village of Riverside where the library, town hall and police and fire station are all located. The bridge is just past the police and fire station. I encountered my first guide on this walk. She told me she grew up in the area and had moved away but was back to help with her parents. She said the paved path was new, had been installed perhaps only for a year. Among all her other comments, I remember her saying there was a Bald Eagle family on the river last year. I certainly hope to see some Bald Eagles here this winter.
Across from the river side of the path is a large floodplain area that sits well below street level where there are houses. There are steps leading down into it, which the first woman told me was left over from a historical toboggan slide, There’s a similar sort of structure at Swallow Cliffs in the Palos region. Tobogganing must have been popular in Cook County.
The Riverside Water Tower bears further investigation.
There were two Great Blue Herons on the river.
Some more views of the river, leaves and trees…
Struggling to get a picture of at least one Dark-eyed Junco, I took the one below. I hear them more often than I see them lately.
Here’s a House Sparrow near the paved path who caught my attention.
This were Red-bellied Woodpeckers both days. Below is the one on the 10th.
American Goldfinches are still making the best of seed remnants. They are blending in well.
The foot bridge across the river.
On the other side of the footbridge is a paved road that leads to more development, most of which has since been removed. I met a woman who was driving to her physical therapy appointment – she had stopped for me to finish taking the photograph below. She pointed out several overgrown lots where houses had been. The unincorporated area floods, being too low and so close to the river. If I remember what she said correctly, the government bought out the homeowners to return the area to its natural state as a flood plain. She said wildlife had come back in full force and she was thrilled to tell me she had heard two owls calling to each other the night before.
Whie-breasted Nuthatch with … a nut
On my second visit to this area after I crossed the bridge on the 16th and started on the trail along the river, I found a Brown Creeper and a White-breasted Nuthatch.
Brown CreeperWhite-breasted Nuthatch
I think this was the last time I saw a Creeper.
From the bridge, views of Canada Geese on the river.
There were some Mallards on the river as well, but generally far away. I managed to capture these few that were closer to shore. I hope to see some other ducks soon.
After the flocks of American Robins a couple weeks ago, now it’s hard to find even one Robin. Sometimes I only hear one or two.
On the other hand, Northern Cardinals are more visible.
The unpaved path leading back to Joliet Avenue on the other side of the river.
This busy Red-bellied Woodpecker was in the same area of the reclaimed wild space as the Brown Creeper and White-bellied Nuthatch above.
Some more views of the returned-to-wild areas on either side of the river. I will get better at identifying them as I visit more often.
It’s been so dry, it’s hard to imagine what this area will look like when it floods, but I am sure I will find out eventually.
My start and finish point, the Hofmann Tower in Lyons.
Thanks for hanging in here with me. It’s been challenging to put this mess together in any sort of logical progression. But I did want to make a strong case for this place because I will be visiting it often. I have found my second birding home.
