St. Louis - Summer
Kate and I found ourselves headed for St. Louis at the
end of
June for a cousin's wedding and we decided to take an extra day
on the Friday before and do a little birding. I had read about
Chatuaqua National Wildlife Refuge in central Illinois, so we
left on Thursday evening, staying in Pekin and planning to set
out in the morning. Unfortunately, we woke up to rain (a
precursor of the rain that caused the problems along the
Mississippi a week later). We got to Chatauqua and sat in the
parking lot with the windshield wipers going and the rain coming
down. It was one of those uniformly grey, low hanging skies, the
kind that say, "I'm going to rain all day so just relax and deal
with it." We decided we weren't going to see anything here
today.
So we drove down to Grafton along the Illinois river using the
two lane highways. We had a nice drive, spotting egrets, herons,
Turkey Vultures, Kingfishers and a few Red- tailed Hawks along
the way. As we pulled into Grafton, a little river town north of
Alton, we remarked that the water seemed to be getting ominously
high. We, of course, had no clue of how high it was destined to
get.
We got out our Illinois birding book and it suggested birding
along some fishing access roads. Finding these roads blocked by
high water, we tried Pere Marquette State Park. We hiked one of
the shorter trails, seeing lots of Blue-gray Gnatcatchers and a
couple of Carolina Wrens. We then headed down to Horseshoe Lake
near East St. Louis. I had read that this was a good place for
Bank Swallows.
When we got there, I was a little disappointed. Horseshoe Lake
State Park is primarily a recreational park, mostly oriented
toward picnicing and fishing with very little unmown, unimproved
areas. We drove around a little and while crossing a dike, saw
some swallows. We quickly pulled over and watched as they flew
around, doing their swallow thing. We spotted the bands around
the throat and got our Bank Swallows. A life bird for us.
We wandered around a little more and saw grey birds with white
wing flashes. This was another bird that I had been looking
for.
Mockingbirds are tough to find in the Chicago area and, wanting
it for my Illinois life list, I had hoped we would see some on
this trip. It looked like we found them. They were flying
around a little parking area so we pulled over to observe them
for a few minutes.
As we were watching, we noticed a feeder among some shrubs. We
saw some House Sparrows on it, then I thought "House Sparrows
don't have brown caps...wait a minute...(consult field
guide)...Eurasian Tree Sparrows!" I wasn't sure how
widespread
they were in the St. Louis area, figuring from what I had read
that they were pretty common, but local. Well, we had just
located one of the local sites.
So far, in the course of about 30 minutes, we had 2 lifers and
one Illinois lifer. Definitely deserving of a Frazier
Whoa!
As we continued to watch the birds, coming down off of our
Eurasian Tree Sparrow high, we heard a Bobwhite calling off in
the distance. Another good bird that we wanted to see so we
trudged off across the grass in search of the
bird.
As we got closer, we realized that there were two birds, the
closest one deep in a corn field. Not wanting to cross corn that
was having a tough enough time coming up as it was, we stood at
the edge. I decided to try to imitate the Bobwhite and see if I
could make him do something.
My Bobwhite whistle leaves much to be desired. The "bob"
came
out ok, but the "white" was way off key and flat.
Nothing
happened from the target bird, but all of a sudden, I heard a
bobwhite from a nearby tree. Huh...a bobwhite in a tree???...he
should be easy to see...wait a minute, that was an awfully flat
"white"...OK think this through, Jim...aha! What a
thrill. I
had just experience a truly unique birding sensation. I was
being perfectly imitated by a Mockingbird while I was doing a bad
job imitating a Bobwhite! The Bobwhite disappeared. Probably
decided there were some mutants out there that he didn't want
anything to do with.
The wedding was nice. But the big surprise was rolling into St.
Louis in the middle of a gigantic square dancing convention.
Jim Frazier |
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