I saw three eastern meadowlarks last week in the restored prairie at the western end of Somme Woods. For me this is big news. I’m doing a breeding bird survey on this 150-acre piece of Cook County forest preserve, and nesting meadowlarks would just about make my spring.
Together, this combination of virgin prairie, stunted restoration, and former missile site is the largest unbroken piece of open, treeless land at Somme Woods. If we are ever going to have prairie birds living at Somme, this is where they will be.
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In early April the bird life anywhere in northern Illinois is very unsettled. In most cases, we can only guess which of the birds we see are migrants and which are residents preparing to nest. A few are obvious migrants. The tiny golden-crowned kinglets I saw feeding in the crowns of the oaks in Vestal Grove are heading for northern Wisconsin, Upper Michigan, or the north shore of Lake Superior. The pine siskins I saw nearby are northern finches whose nearest likely nesting grounds are several hundred miles north of here.
The pair of wood ducks was once again at Oak Pond at Somme on April 5. I originally saw them there March 18. The pond was once completely hidden in the woods. Tall trees grew right out of the middle of it. These trees have now been killed by girdling, but they are still standing. There might be a suitable nesting cavity in one of them.
My sighting was of a fairly large bird, which means it could be a Cooper’s hawk, one of the species I’m hoping for this year, but it could also be a female sharp-shinned hawk. My look was too brief to catch any field marks beyond the general outline and the approximate size. Female birds of prey are usually larger than the males, and in accipiters the difference is so great that it may affect their choice of prey. This sort of partitioning of the environment would allow a pair of Cooper’s hawks to live together without competing for the same food sources. He would go after the small birds; she would hunt for the larger ones.
