Golden Crowns in Riverside

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I’ve been trying to write this post since last Tuesday. Spring migration has begun, and at this rate I will not be able to get caught up until next spring. On my visit the morning of April 5 to Riverside, one species stood out, albeit the smallest: Golden-crowned Kinglet. I first encountered several by the paved path in Riverside, but on the Riverside Lawn side of the river, there could easily have been more than the 50 I reported. They were slightly outnumbered by Red-winged Blackbirds that I did not bother to photograph in cloudy light, but I did record them because some of their vocalizations reminded me a bit of other blackbirds I have heard and you can hear the beautiful cacophony in the second recording below. The first recording has the sound of the Kinglets – that little tiny tinker bell sound on top of the blackbird chorus.

Golden-crowned Kinglets
Red-winged Blackbirds

I took way too many pictures of the Kinglets because they were practically at eye level or on the ground…

Here’s how the Des Plaines River looks these days from the paved path in Riverside.

On the other side of the paved path, the flood plain was flooded a bit, providing enough water for a group of Blue-winged Teal along with Mallards and Canada Geese. As for the geese, I have been seeing 68B a lot lately.

In addition to all the Golden-crowned Kinglets I saw my first Ruby-crowned Kinglet of the season.

Here’s how the river looked that morning from the Lyons side by the Hofmann Tower.

When I came back to the bridge on Joliet Avenue I could just barely see a Belted Kingfisher perched far away in this tree. I had followed her in flight from another location. I have usually seen a male at this location so it was nice to see her with her rufous breast band.

There were still some Red-breasted Mergansers in the river, although they were pretty far away.

I always have room for a perching Northern Cardinal. Here are my two volunteers from that morning.

With the available light on and off, I thought these Mallards looked rather content in the fluddle.

The perched Song Sparrow sat and talked to me, he didn’t sing this time. The one on the ground looks to be a different individual.

Brown Creepers never really disappeared but they seem to be making a comeback for spring anyway.

I wasn’t able to capture a Great Blue Heron by the river that morning but I sort of managed to commemorate these two flying over.

Here are two more of my favorite Golden-crowned Kinglet photos.

I will try to get back sooner. I have been alternating visits to Riverside with the Chicago Portage and every day I have gone out, I have seen something new.

I also have been spending time visiting with my flute-playing friend Linda who very unfortunately broke her femur a week and a half ago. She is recuperating well from a successful surgery which put her back together, and she is now in rehab. I will miss playing with her in this year’s Spring Music Festival but pray for her complete recovery and making music together again.

Return of the Slough

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All the rain we have had has made McGinnis a slough again. The water levels are now deep enough to support a lot of birds and to attract visiting American White Pelicans. I read someone’s post about seeing them flying over McGinnis Slough on Sunday, which would have been a lovely sight, but that was enough to motivate me to see if perhaps some had decided to stay. I remember seeing hundreds of them years ago. I was happy to see perhaps forty or so, albeit too distant for a decent photograph, on Monday morning.

Even if there weren’t a lot of birds that I could see very well, it was good to see the slough again.

There were Bufflehead and Ring-necked Ducks at a distance, as is everything at McGinnis right now. I did manage to see one male Ring-necked Duck near enough for a photo. I haven’t seen these birds in a while. Look closely and you can see the ring on his neck.

Unsurprisingly, there were a lot of American Coots, some of which I inadvertently disturbed walking back through the trail.

Also predictably, there were a lot of Red-winged Blackbirds deciding on their territories. I took too many shots of this one trying to hold onto his perch in the wind.

Below, another male and a female, perched in the marsh.

Toward the end of last summer the water was non-existent. It’s good to see it again.

It started to get really cloudy before I left.

There were several Pied-billed Grebes but they were too far away to photograph except for maybe this one.

I barely captured this female Northern Cardinal but she proved how few photo opportunities there were.

The next series of photos is from one of my last visits on November 8 of last year. There were not many birds on that visit either although I attribute much of that to the fact that the grass was being cut very noisily.

The water levels were returning by November, which I guess was attractive to some Ring-billed Gulls.

Song Sparrows were still around here and there.

There were several Pied-billed Grebes that day as well.

And the American Coots were less skittish.

Canada Geese in formation

Now I will be start going to McGinnis more often. I will likely branch out and visit more places in the Palos area too, as there are a lot of them.

I am looking forward to choir rehearsal tonight. We sang half-masked on Sunday. The sanctuary was full of congregants so it was slowly starting to feel a little bit more normal. One inch at a time.

Slowly Emerging from Winter’s Grip

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We are still cold. The forecast hovers between rain with a little snow mixed in and sunny respites here and there – the last sunny morning was Friday, and we will have one more day of sunshine tomorrow. I will be indoors singing in the choir, but it will be good to have the sunshine streaming through the clerestory windows of Unity Temple: the forecast is for rain and snow every day in the week ahead.

I guess I shouldn’t be complaining. Last year we had a drought. We seem to be making up for it this year. In any event, contrary to my musings in my last post, the American Tree Sparrows have not yet left the Portage, and there are still a few Dark-eyed Juncos around too. There wasn’t much happening with perching birds yesterday so I took note of a few other things.

A dusting of snow from the night before
Blue sky
A little bit of green
Flooded bottomlands by the Des Plaines

I was encouraged to see and hear an Eastern Phoebe, albeit at quite a distance.

There are Americans Robins everywhere, but they were generally too busy for photographs. I often find one walking ahead of me, sometimes looking back waiting for me to make the next move.

The Brown-headed Cowbirds are back, and beginning their courtship rituals. Below, some photos of the standard configuration – two males and one female with her back to both of them.

There were Red-winged Blackbirds everywhere but they were often too busy to capture. It is nice to see the females getting ready to settle in.

Since there were still numerous American Tree Sparrows, I took a lot of photos. Just to make sure I won’t forget what they look like.

Song Sparrows were not as easy to capture but they will be around all summer, when I will try as ever to get a picture of one singing.

Then there’s the stuff that seems to be greening before everything else and drawing my attention to the thorns amongst the leaves. It looks like some sort of wild gooseberry but I haven’t nailed it down yet. Update: my faithful follower Ann has identified this as Ribes hirtellum, Wild Gooseberry. Thank you, Ann!

Now I’m going back to March 15, which by contrast was a cloudy day, but offered some nice photo opportunities.

Sometimes I just get lucky with these White-breasted Nuthatch guys. This time became a nuthatch overload.

Also memorable that day was seeing a male Wood Duck in the water.

And then, flying away…

A male Red-winged Blackbird offered a series of images.

I also captured a female in flight.

A pair of Song Sparrows perched for me.

And I had an elusive Black-capped Chickadee. They have been keeping a low profile lately but I expect to see them a lot as soon as the bugs and warblers arrive.

I can’t resist being stared down by a Dark-eyed Junco.

American Tree Sparrows were fewer in number than they have been in the last week.

One more American Robin on the ground.

With the forecast for rain and snow this week, I don’t know how often I will get out. Of course things can change. I just don’t want to repeat an exercise I went through one day last week when I went out the front door and came back in three times before I finally decided to take my chances. So I will likely be back with some older photos before I banish them to storage. I hope your days are getting greener.

Feeling Warmer in the Sun

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I went to the Chicago Portage on Monday morning, the last time we had full sunshine, and I met a lot of birds and some people too. It was cold, but the sunshine gave a little bit more than the illusion of warmth. In all it was good to go slowly and watch the birds, but I took way too many photographs. I wonder how I will manage to get through warbler migration at this rate.

After stopping and talking to some people on the trail and mentioning that Golden-crowned Kinglets had started showing up when they asked me if there was anything new, I encountered about half a dozen of the birds and managed to capture one who volunteered for a lot of clicks.

It was almost worth it to memorialize the blue sky background.

Somewhere next to the trail by some spindly young hackberry trees I saw this very thorny plant that had the only green leaves in the entire preserve. I am not familiar with this at all. I welcome identification from any botanists out there.

I kept waiting for this Northern Flicker to fly so I might capture its golden shafts but it was definitely not going anywhere.

I never know when I will see a pair of Northern Cardinals. In this case I think she was waiting for him.

I spent the longest time behind this bird photographing it without identifying it. Backlit and alone on the path in front of me, it seemed unfamiliar. I have now decided it’s a Brown-headed Cowbird. I think I have never seen one in the cold before – in other words, it was so fluffed up I couldn’t recognize it.

There are a few American Goldfinches at the Portage. Here’s one, early on in my walk, looking rather cold.

If you stood in the right spot on the trail where I suspect asphalt will be going in, it was possible to see American Tree Sparrows everywhere. At some point one sat and started singing, and I tried to record him over a lot of noise. I did manage to get a couple recordings, as faint as they are, and they are below this photograph. I heard one singing earlier this year and compared it to the recording on my Sibley cell phone app which was made in Alaska, where they breed.

I did manage to take too many pictures of American Tree Sparrows fading into their surroundings.

I almost forgot, a Killdeer landed in the marsh and this was the best I could do through the vegetation.

I was delighted to find a Fox Sparrow in my photographs. I don’t remember taking these pictures. My camera remembered well, though.

I couldn’t help but notice the duckweed staging a comeback.

Messing around in the marshy area were a few female Red-winged Blackbirds.

And I was taken with this pretty little Song Sparrow.

On the way out, I saw the pair of Eastern Bluebirds again, only this time there was better light. They were quite far away for the most part but I tried to at least capture some of that blue.

The closer photos were of the female who is drabber in plumage but I think she is lovely nonetheless.

Perhaps the birds of the day were the American Tree Sparrows. I suspect that with the warmer winds we are now experiencing, they will be moving up north and this could have been the last time to see them.

I was going to add some photographs from March 15 – but other than the fact that it was not a sunny day, which clashes with the theme, this seems like quite enough for now. It’s rainy today and we have one more rainy day tomorrow, so I am going to try to finish taking care of some things that I keep putting off and I will be back as soon as I can get it together.

One more of the Golden-Crowned Kinglet

Sunshine Returns

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It’s very cold today and it looks like tomorrow will be the same – below freezing in the morning – but the sun is shining and it’s not too windy, so that makes up for almost everything. I haven’t put my long underwear away quite yet. And it was good to be wearing more substantial boots this morning as they are warmer than the hikers.

The view from the bridge
The shallow water is a bit frozen

Things started out pretty slow with a couple Song Sparrows on the trail. There were a few Northern Cardinals behind too many branches to bother with.

When I approached the marshy area on the other side of the second bridge, which is the path that has been marked by the surveyor, I saw a lot of American Tree Sparrows – at least 20 – and that also seemed to be where the Red-winged Blackbirds were hanging out too. I concentrated on the sparrows.