North Central Illinois Ornithological Society

Announcing a date change for the field trip to Nachusa Grasslands and Lowden Miller State Park scheduled for June 2nd. The trip has been moved back one week to June 9th. Everything else is the same. With questions call Barbara Williams at 779-537-3352

Sixteen club members participated in this morning’s trip. We began with several stops in Rock Cut State Park, moved to Windsor Lake and Nygren Wetlands and ended with a quick stop at Oliver Road. We came up with 54 species of birds. We did not find any particularly unusual birds.
From the Red Oak Picnic area in RCSP we saw two Horned Grebes and a Pied-billed Grebe. We saw one Common Loon in spite of there being lots of fishermen in boats on Pierce Lake. Also at RCSP, a Brown Thrasher sang his heart out from a treetop and Tree Swallows cruised above the lake.
A Sora was heard from a wet spot along Oliver Road and four Lesser Yellowlegs were in a small flooded place just south of Oliver Road.
The weather was mild and the toads were singing.

We’ve decided to meet at Rock Cut State Park, at the parking area right next to the Pierce Lake dam, at 8:30 a.m. on Saturday, March 24. We will take a look at the lake and then walk down the bike path along Willow Creek for a while. Later, we will probably check Windsor Lake and maybe Nygren Wetlands.
All are welcome to join us!

Barbara

When we scheduled this field trip we did not know that the Rock Cut State Park deer hunt was this weekend. The main body of the park will be closed to all but the people participating in the hunt.

Instead of meeting at the Lion’s Club parking area we will meet at the big parking lot that overlooks Olson Lake on the east side of Rte. 90 where we held the hawk watches. We will meet at 8:00 a.m., look at Olson Lake and then probably go to Windsor Lake, Nygren Wetlands, Lake Summerset and Howard’s farm. I expect we will be finished around noon.

The second NCIOS hawk watch field trip will be held this Saturday, October 15, 2011 at the Olson Lake parking lot at Rock Cut SP from 9:00 a.m. to noon. Bring a comfortable chair and dress for the weather. No pre-registration is necessary. Just show up! Hope that we see you there.

Join us for some hawkwatching on Saturday Sept. 24 from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon in the parking area at Olson Lake in Rock Cut State Park. There was a large movement of Broad-winged Hawks through Hawk Ridge in Duluth this past weekend, so if we are lucky we might see a lot of activity. Bring your scopes, binoculars and maybe a comfortable chair.

At the last meeting, it was decided to do a field trip to Rock Cut SP. No leader was assigned. 7 of us showed up by the dam parking lot at the pre-determined hour of 0730 and just took a mosey down the trails below the dam. It was raining lightly, so umbrellas were open. By 1000, several people had to leave, but 4 continued over to the Hart Road parking lot on the west side.

A total of 76 species were recorded, although I am including a couple I heard while driving in on the north entrance road before we met, like Cerulean Warbler.
Highlights included Wilson’s, Canada, Magnolia, Blackpoll, and Blue-winged Warblers, both Alder (5) and Willow (3) Flycatchers, and a White-eyed Vireo. Some of the 4 at Hart Road also had a very brief look at a Swainson’s Hawk that soared toward, and then banked away, from us as we were standing on Hart Road in the equestrian parking lot area looking and listening to the WE Vireo. I got a very brief look before it disappeared behind the trees in the hedge row and continued to fly away from us to the south, so the views from behind weren’t particularly good. A large buteo, with long wings that were pretty pointed, thin in proportion to that of Red-tail, held in slight dihedral. My brief look included a the underwings, with the dark flight feathers on both wings in contrast to off-white underwing coverts. When last seen, it was moving south and disappeared behind a tree line.

A lone Ruddy Duck was on the lake. 4 Spotted Sandpipers flew by, and 2 Ring-billed Gulls were on the rocky island until they were flushed off by fishermen in a boat.

No Olive-sided, Acadian, or Yellow-bellied Flycatchers, Bell’s Vireos, Yellow-breasted Chats or cuckoos of either species were recorded.

18 persons attended the NCIOS hawk watch field trip at Olson Lake in Rock Cut SP on Sunday, September 26. It was lead by Vic Berardi, the founder of the Illinois Beach SP hawk watch. Here is Vic’s report from IBET.

“This morning I spent 4 wonderful hours hawk watching with a terrific group of birders from the North Central Illinois Ornithological Society (Rockford Bird Club) We made our observations from the Olson Lake parking lot, which is part of Rock Cut State Park. The view from this parking lot is incredible with an expansive vista to the north, west and east. Although weather conditions were not ideal for general raptor movement (3rd day after a cold front) we did manage to tally 61 hawks from 8:30AM to 12:30PM. Most of the hawks were quite distant and required a scope for ID verification of age/sex but a few came in fairly close. I think this spot could be an excellent location for an inland hawk watch in Illinois.

Here’s what we saw:

Osprey – 2
Bald Eagle – 1
Northern Harrier – 1
Sharp-shinned Hawk – 6
Copper’s Hawk – 7
Broad-winged Hawk – 7
Red-tailed Hawk – 35
Peregrine Falcon – 2
TOTAL – 61

I’m hoping to return to this spot this fall under better weather conditions for migrating raptors. I’d love to see its potential!

Thanks to NCIOS for a great time today!”

Thank you to Vic for a very enjoyable morning. Anyone can go to this site, which is at the highest point of the parking lot S of the beach at Olson Lake, and just sit and watch the skies for raptors. Because of the distances, scanning with binoculars and a scope is necesarry–it is hard to pick out the tiny specks of birds at those distances with the unaided eye.

The rain stopped just as we started to walk at Franklin Creek. The birds were sparse, with only five species of warblers seen, but our group of eleven participants had a fine time. The wildflowers at Franklin Creek are impressive right now with masses of trilliums, anemones, wild geraniums and shooting stars.

The October 10th NCIOS field trip to the International Crane Foundation is fast approaching. Please see our calendar of events for full details. This is just a reminder that reservations and money must be received by Ken Frey by Wednesday, September 30th.

The cost is $7.00 for adults and $2.00 for children 18 and younger. We hope to see you out there!!

Call Ken at 815-877-5028 for payment and reservations.