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The club field trip to Waterfall
Glen Forest Preserve today also suffered from the same problem as yesterday...beautiful,
clear weather. The birds are just blowing right by us! But,
a bad day of birding is better than a good day at the office...to paraphrase
a common bumper sticker.
It was another a big turn
out, over 35 people showed up. We started off in the main parking
lot, with a nice Pine Warbler in the pines over the latrines. Then,
an Indigo Bunting showed up.
We then caravanned to the
trail entrance off of Bluff Road where we split into two groups...the amblers
and the "other" birders. Needless to say, I was on the "Amblers".
As it turned out, we were more successful than the other group. We
had walkie-talkies and they kept asking us if we were seeing anything.
While we weren't seeing much, we were seeing enough to make it interesting.
Waterfall Glen is a nifty
preserve and the area that we were in, the south east section along Sawmill
Creek is beautiful. Not many birds today...but a nice place to visit.
As we were walking down one
path, we noticed a big dark raptor-like bird perched about 1/4 mile away
on a telephone pole. We couldn't dope it out, so we diverted from
our intended path and headed for the bird. Visions of an immature
bald-eagle sighting danced in our minds. As we got closer, the head
started getting longer and we finally got close enough to see the red head.
So it was a plain ‘ol Turkey Vulture. But it was exciting for all
of 5 minutes.
After seeing a few warblers
(Black-throated Green, Yellow-rumped and Nashville), Baltimore Orioles,
Catbirds and hearing a Thrasher or two, we returned the caravan to the
main parking area where we took a trail over to a marsh north of the parking
lot. There, we found a Sora and two Solitary Sandpipers. The
Sora was a lifer for a British birder that was with us. After hearing
it first, we got excellent views of it wandering around out in the open.
It was probably the best look I've ever had of one in Illinois.
The group kept getting smaller
as some of them headed off to the 91st Street pond to try to find a Worm-eating
Warbler that had been seen on Friday evening. Given the clear weather,
I figured that it had plenty of time since the sighting to skedaddle back
to where it belonged. So I headed home.
On the way, I got a call
on the "Bird Phone" about a possible female Summer Tanager seen in a park
in Naperville at Heritage Hill Park. I made arrangements to meet
the callers there and we discussed the sighting. We came to the conclusion
that it was probably a Scarlet, since the odds were highly against a Summer
Tanager and they really couldn't be sure on the color or bill size.
I got a chance to see it, but it was near noon and the bird was too high
to have a chance of seeing the color well. Nevertheless, I discovered
a nice birding spot, got my first Black-and-White Warbler and tanager (sp)
of the year.
Jim Frazier
5/2/1999
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