North Central Illinois Ornithological Society

We had twelve participants for this morning’s trip. We started with several locations at Rock Cut State Park, then visited Windsor Lake, Nygren Wetlands and the Howard Farm on Rte. 70.  We finished at about 12:30 with a total of 47 species.

The highlights were six Ross’s Geese at Howard’s Farm. They were in the company of about six Snow Geese, an adult Blue Goose and an immature Blue Goose. Several  flocks of Canada Geese had Cackling Geese mixed in, but also other subspecies of Canada. A flock of about 20 Snow Buntings was seen briefly near the observation deck at Nygren Wetlands.  About 100 Sandhill cranes were seen at Nygren and another fifty or so flew over Howard’s Farm.

The lakes at Rock Cut State Park had three Common Loons, a Pied-billed Grebe, a Horned Grebe, 3 Bonaparte’s Gulls, Bufflehead, Hooded Mergansers, Common Goldeneye and Bald Eagle. But, overall, the waterfowl species diversity was low.

Here’s the morning’s list:

Snow Goose

Ross’s Goose

Cackling Goose

Canada Goose

Mallard

N. Shoveler

Green-winged Teal

Bufflehead

Common Goldeneye

Hooded Merganser

Common Loon

Horned Grebe

Pied-billed Grebe

Great Blue Heron

Bald Eagle

N. Harrier

Sharp-shinned Hawk

Cooper’s Hawk

Red-tailed Hawk

Am. Kestrel

Sandhill Crane

Am. Coot

Killdeer

Wilson’s Snipe

Bonaparte’s Gull

Ring-billed Gull

Herring Gull

Rock Pigeon

Mourning Dove

Belted Kingfisher

Red-bellied Woodpecker

Downy Woodpecker

N. Flicker

Horned Lark

Blue Jay

Am. Crow

Black-capped Chickadee

White-breasted Nuthatch

E. Bluebird

Cedar Waxwing

European Starling

N. Cardinal

Am. Tree Sparrow

Dark-eyed Junco

Snow Bunting

Am. Goldfinch

European House Sparrow

Barbara and I hiked the loop trail around Nygren Wetlands this morning. The new trail signs look great!

A skin of ice covered most of the still water visible from the observation platform but a variety of puddle ducks was present in the open water to the SE, best viewed from the trail that runs along the east side of the marsh. We counted 9 Wilson’s Snipe, plus 4 Killdeer and 2 Ring-billed Gulls, too.

An immature harrier was working the grassland. Quite a few Fox Sparrows were along the east side near the portajohn. They were mixed in with W/C and W/T Sparrows. American Tree Sparrows were present in very good numbers, but only a few juncos. I heard Snow Buntings fly over.

This evening at dusk, 2 Great Horned Owls were heard from the observation deck, but no Short-eared Owls were seen. The Sandhill Crane numbers are starting to build up.

Larry Balch, Barbara and I took a drive up to Sugar River FP this morning. We found 1 adult and 1 juvenile Yellow-crowned Night-heron in the swamp in the center of the loop road. As far as we know, this is the first sighting of a juvenile YCNH this year. The other reports have been an adult.

On the way to Sugar River, we stopped at the puddle on Meridian Road where I saw the shorebirds yesterday. There were a fair number of birds, but of much different species composition–mostly Lesser Yellowlegs and Solitary Sandpipers, with some Pectoral Sandpipers and a few peeps, including 1 Semipalmated Sandpiper. The others looked like Least, but we didnt’ get a scope on them. There were also 2 Snipe.

Moody/Blodgett intersection puddle had a lot of Great Egrets, Great Blue and Green Herons, plus an uncounted number of Wood Ducks, which just seemed to keep flying out of the corn in small groups. 2 Osprey were at Nygren, viewed from the observation deck.

Thanks to Susan Williams comment to my earlier post, I was alerted to Am. White Pelicans at Nygren.  I went out there after work today and counted 45.  While there, I met Martin Kehoe, who assisted in a controlled burn on another part of the property.  He told me that Greg Keilbach counted “around 100″ scattered through the ponds in the lower levels of the preserve.  Most of the pelicans I saw flew up from the area of the  big oxbow that is below the hill on which the barn sits.  Also visible from the overlook was a pair of Sandhill Cranes, a Harrier, about 8 GWTeal, a similar number of N. Shovelers, two pairs of Wood Ducks, a raft of Coots, several TVs, and a distant immature Bald Eagle.

Barbara and I drove up to Nygren Wetlands, west of Rockton, in the early evening tonight to see if we could find any Short-eared Owls hunting over the marsh at dusk.  We did not see any SE Owls, but we had a lot of puddle ducks at the intersection of Moody and Blodgett Roads.  We believe that many of them came in to Nygren at dusk to roost for the night.

There were about 120 Wood Ducks in the flooded corn field at Moody/Blodgett.  Most Wood Ducks I have ever seen in one place!  Also there were many N. Shovelers, a few Am. Wigeon, a Redhead, 29 WF Geese, and all of those Wood Ducks.  There were 68 Sandhill Cranes standing in a flock at the east end of Moody Road, plus another 10 at Nygren.  One pair at Nygren, apart from the others, was picking up and carrying vegetation, so nest building seems to be under way there.

If anyone goes to Nygren and sees SE Owls, please post that information.  Thank you.

Larry Balch, Barbara and I spent 4 hours in northwest Winnebago County this morning.  Highlights included:  7 Trumpeter Swans at the Howard Farm on IL 70 between Rockford and Durand (1 had a yellow neck band with black letters, which, I believe, is from the Wisconsin project);  over 600 White-fronted Geese and 1 Ross’s Goose at the same place (only 75 or so were hanging out with the swans when we first arrived, but a Bald Eagle flew over in the distant south and put hundreds of waterfowl and Sandhill Cranes into the air–many of the White-fronts came toward us and landed with the swans–the Ross’s Goose and about half of the White-fronts went further east). Howard Farm also had 17 Hooded Mergansers in a farm pond behind the white barn at the red gate.
 
More White-fronted Geese (73) and several Cackling Geese were in a flooded field at the very east end of Moody Road, which is east of the Moody/Blodgett road intersection, west of Rockton;  that area including Nygren Wetlands, also had 5 Black Ducks along Meridian Road north of IL 75, 35 Hooded Mergansers, Common Mergansers (21) and Red-breasted Merganser (1) (all 3 species of mergs at Nygren Wetlands), and a smattering of puddle ducks (Am. Wigeon, N. Pintail, N. Shoveler, Wood Ducks) here and there.  

A Red-shouldered Hawk was calling and flying just west of the bridge over the Sugar River on Winslow Road.

A comment has been posted asking if the Whooping Cranes are likely to suffer from this cold weather and what if they don’t migrate?

I’m no expert, but I know that northern hemisphere cranes tend to be pretty tough critters. Sandhill Cranes routinely migrate north into Nebraska and the Dakotas in March when the Great Plains’ weather can be pretty forbidding.  There is abundant food for cranes with all the corn being harvested and the weather really isn’t too bad so far. We’ve heard from the International Crane Foundation that there are still a bunch of other Sandhill and Whooping Cranes at Necedah NWR in Wisconsin that haven’t even started to migrate yet. I think we are all surprised that these birds have stayed here so long, but apparently they like it here and when they are ready they’ll go. The older birds in this group have migrated both ways on their own before, in fact, there is only one bird of the five that is on his first ultralight-free migration. My guess is that they are fine, and one day they’ll be gone.

I looked for the Whoopers today but could not find them. Water at Nygren this afternoon was about half skinned with ice. There were a lot of Mallards and Candas but only a half a dozen coot and only 9 Sandhills. I would be interested to hear if anyone has seen the Whoopers since the morning of Dec 3.

Barbara

Barbara and I saw 17 Sandhill Cranes flying over our house at 10:15 a.m. today. With the strong northwest wind, we figured that a big push of migrating Sandhill Cranes was underway, and, we hoped, the Whooping Cranes would be on the move as well.

We drove up to Nygren around noon and found all 5 Whooping Cranes standing in the marsh in the usual place, so apparently they didn’t think that the weather was so great for migration. However, only 3 Sandhill Cranes were with them.

Reports on IBET this afternoon referred to migrating flocks of 1800-3600 Sandhills migrating. I suspect that a lot of them stopped at the Jasper-Pulaski State Wildlife Management Area in NW Indiana. None of the reports made any mention of Whoopers. Barbara reported to ICF that the Whoopers were still at Nygren and was told that some Whoopers left Necedah this morning to migrate, but some never got out of Wisconsin.

We’ve heard a second-hand report that at dusk last evening there were three Short-eared Owls (in addition to the 5 Whooping cranes, Sandhill Cranes and Tundra Swans) seen from the observation platform at Nygren Wetlands.