North Central Illinois Ornithological Society

Barbara and I drove to the Westlake Community Building around 0900 this morning for the NLI mortgage burning event kickoff. NLI paid off the mortgage on its purchase of the Pecatonica Ridge prairie and wetland property. As we approached Westlake, we spotted a Common Loon in the lake about 500 feet or so north of the swimming beach area.

nothing left of the shorebirds this morning except lots of snipe, but lots of Rusty Blackbirds out there in the Pec Wetlands

Lots of shorebirds out west of Blair Road, Pecatonica Wetlands.  It was getting dark and I did not have good binoculars so I couldn’t id.   Severlal flocks  in fields off of Maize Road. 
Go Pec Road north of Pecatonica, left on Best, left on Blair, left on Goeke which turns into Maize and is gravel.  they were in fields before Farwell Bridge road.

Also lots of wood ducks and some grebes and coots.

Lots of RWBB out at the Pec Wetlands along Blair Road on Sunday.  Only saw males.

Barbara and I checked the goose flock at Howard’s around 12:30 p.m. today. We counted 250 White-fronted Geese and 12 Cackling Geese mixed in with the Canadas. Lots (9) of Bald Eagles along the Pecatonica River between Ridott, in Stephenson County, and Howard’s.

The fields along the Pec River have a lot of water in them, but, of course, it is all frozen at the moment. Should be good for dabbling ducks and other migrants when the ice melts.

There are reports of up to 4 Snowy Owls in Dekalb and LaSalle Counties. The Dekalb bird was seen again this afternoon, and 2 of the 3 LaSalle birds were seen both morning and afternoon. The LaSalle bird reported by Cindy McKee southwest of Ottawa was the only bird not reported as being seen today, although it was reported yesterday. Details and directions are on IBET, which can be accessed through http://www.birdingonthe.net /

One Common Redpoll was just feeding on our thistle feeder. The first one I have seen here this season

On Friday Jan 16 I saw several Bluebirds on the Pecatonica River bottoms. Flickers were still abundant and one Robin showed itself.

We’ll meet at the Alpine Village Shopping Center on the Northeast corner of the intersection of Harrison and Alpine Roads in Rockford. Meet in the parking lot between the Hallmark store and the Amcore Bank just before 8:00 a.m. for car pooling. We plan to leave at 8:00
It looks like we’ll have some ice on the river down by Starved Rock State Park. That will provide places for gulls to stand around, and, if the Lock and Dam are operating normally we may have a good day with a bunch of gulls and some Bald Eagles as well. In the event that the gull-watching doesn’t pan out we still have the back up plan to do some hiking in the State Park. In any event, bring GOOD boots and WARM clothes!!! Watching birds from inside the Lock and Dam observation building is limited, at best. Bring scopes if you have them. After gull-watching we plan to stop for a bite to eat at Duffy’s Tavern in Utica.

Six inches of soggy snow, lots of ice, persistent rain and heavy fog created some really challenging conditions. Both the birds and the birders would have rather been somewhere else. The low total of 52 species and the exceptionally low total of 6982 individual birds are certainly due to the weather. The average number of species for the last ten years is 64. The average number of individual birds for the last ten years is 24,452.
I give great credit to all of you who went out and counted. We spent about a normal amount of time in the field although a higher-than-normal percentage was spent in vehicles rather than on foot. I’m sure we set a new count record for the number of hours spent under umbrellas.
32 counters participated in the field, plus 5 feeder watchers. 3 parties went out early or late to look for owls.
We broke old the old count record of 22 Common Mergansers with a big flock by the 15th Ave. bridge and smaller groups scattered down the river totaling 93. New count records were set by small margins for Eastern Bluebird with 14 and Yellow-bellied Sapsucker with 3.
A huge thanks to all of you for your time and effort. This was the 19th year of the Kishwaukee count. You can see the results of this count, and all of the others, at the National Audubon Society’s website at http://www.audubon.org/bird/cbc. The dates for the Rockford and Kishwaukee counts in Dec 2009 will be the 19th and the 27th. I hope you can join us for some better weather.
Here’s the list of birds we found:

1204 Canada Goose
191 Mallard
16 Common Goldeneye
93 Common Merganser
9 Ring-necked Pheasant
8 Wild Turkey
1 Great Blue Heron
6 Bald Eagle (4 ad, 2 imm)
3 Cooper’s Hawk
21 Red-tailed Hawk
5 American Kestrel
1 Merlin
1 Peregrine Falcon
11 Herring Gull
372 Rock Pigeon
297 Mourning Dove
2 Eastern Screech- Owl
1 Great Horned Owl
3 Belted Kingfisher
61 Red-bellied Woodpecker
3 Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
82 Downy Woodpecker
20 Hairy Woodpecker
15 Northern Flicker
125 Blue Jay
366 American Crow
37 Horned Lark
280 Black-capped Chickadee
32 Tufted Titmouse
2 Red-breasted Nuthatch
97 White-breasted Nuthatch
53 Brown Creeper
3 Carolina Wren
1 Winter Wren
6 Golden-crowned Kinglet
14 Eastern Bluebird
33 American Robin
1207 European Starling
117 Cedar Waxwing
136 American Tree Sparrow
1 Fox Sparrow
19 Song Sparrow
20 White-throated Sparrow
6 White-crowned Sparrow
661 Dark-eyed Junco
2 Lapland Longspur
290 Northern Cardinal
8 Purple Finch
100 House Finch
73 Pine Siskin
282 American Goldfinch
585 House Sparrow