The beginning of a breeding-bird survey is like the beginning of a love affair. You just know that this time it’s really going to work. Other springs may have yielded the banalities of robins and redwings, but this is certain to be the year of Cooper’s hawk nests and hummingbird fledglings.
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The Return of the Bluebirds is currently feeding my dreams. I saw them on March 18: two males hopping from branch to branch in a clump of small trees near the north end of the preserve. The blue on their heads and backs was so intense they almost seemed to glow. Bluebirds–like blue jays and indigo buntings and every other kind of blue bird–have no blue pigment in their feathers. The color comes from a peculiarity in the structure of the feathers that causes them to reflect blue light. On overcast days, blue birds tend to fade to gray, but on this dark, murky day–it had been snowing a few minutes earlier– these birds looked bright enough to read by.
A pair of eastern bluebirds nested at Somme last year, and I’m hoping the birds I saw this year were returnees and not just migrants pausing for a rest on their way to someplace else. Bluebirds used to be common all over the eastern U.S. In the days of generalized farming, they nested in natural cavities in wooden fence posts and hunted insects in cow pastures. Contemporary fence posts are made of steel. Cow pastures are much rarer than they used to be, and where they do exist, starlings fiercely contest the rights to nesting cavities.
The other half is open grassland. At the heart of this is a high-quality prairie that has been designated an Illinois Nature Preserve. The NBPP has been steadily cutting away at the woodland and planting prairie seeds in the grasslands. Eventually, according to the management plan, all that will remain of the woods will be a thin strip along Dundee Road whose function will be to keep off-road vehicles out.
So far this year, I have made two visits. After that first snowy day when I saw the bluebirds, I went back on March 22, a pleasantly warm sunny day, and spent three hours in a slow walk through the land on both sides of the tracks.
I have some hopes for the pair of wood ducks I saw in Oak Pond, one of the small ponds on the moraine. Oak Pond was completely hidden in the woods. Large trees grew right out of the middle of it. These trees have now been girdled, and as they rot, natural cavities of the sort favored by wood ducks should open up in them.
