Another trip to Texas was at the wrong time of year and the rest of our birding has been in areas where you just don't get to see Painted Buntings.

Well, we only had to drive 2 hours from our front door to get one. 

This week, a Painted Bunting (male) appeared in a city park in Bloomington, Illinois.  This, by the way, has been an interesting spring for southern vagrants.  We've been kicking Worm-eating Warblers out of the way and fighting off hordes of Purple Gallinules.  Not to mention a Neotropic Cormorant.

Every day, on IBET, the Illinois birding email list, there have been updates from those fortunate few who don't seem to have to work during the week.  Kate and I were fervently hoping that the bird would hang on through Saturday.   The last report posted said that the bird had been seen on Friday evening.  So we agreed to skedaddle down to Bloomington on Saturday morning.

Let's keep in mind that Kate and I are very genteel birders.  Getting up at 4am is just too dang early!  But we wanted to be there as early as possible, so we didn't hear comments like, "you just missed him!"  We got to the park at 7:15am and found several folks already waiting.  Happily (for us) nothing definite had been seen yet.  The bird "possibly" had been seen flying across the trail earlier, but it was a fleeting glance.  But it was enough to give us some comfort that he was still lurking.

So we proceeded to stand around, sit on park benches, and patrol the various reported locations, to no avail.  Minutes passed.  Biological requirements came and went.  Jim slipped on a wet, grassy hill and applied a nice coating of mud to his khakis.   But no Painted Bunting. 

I could tell Kate was starting to get a little peeved.  I was going to have a tough time convincing my better half that it was HER idea to get up at 4am to haul our butts down here for a failed chase.  And of course, by the time we headed home, the traffic in Chicago would be nasty, making for a very quiet, long ride - if you know what I mean.  It got to be about 10am and we agreed that we'd give it another half hour.  We had other things to do today and figured the longer we waited, the less likely it was that we'd see the bird....seems like there's a birding law about that.

Well, guess what.  Another birding law was invoked...the one about announcing that you're leaving!  Suddenly, the word went out far and wide that they had the Painted Bunting in one of the hedges.  We hustled back (I hesitate to say that I ran) and found lots of folks on a BEAUTIFUL Painted Bunting perched nicely about 15 feet up in a hedge.  He politely moved around on the branch so we could see front, sides and back.   Wow!  I love it when they look better than they do in the field guide.  He seemed to wait patiently until everyone had a look through the 60 power scope (Kate got to see him yawn) and then he vanished. 
As I am wont to say, Woohoo!  Birding Karma strikes again.  We dipped on Garganey and Purple Gallinule last weekend, but today we get the PB.  We continue to maintain our average of about 1 in 3 successes for these chases. 

Jim Frazier
5/22/1999