So where was the greenhouse effect when we needed it? This year’s statewide spring bird count ran directly into a snowstorm that in some places reduced visibility to near zero. One participant, trying futilely to count birds along the North Shore Channel, reported plaintively: “Because of the snowstorm, there was no bird activity in trees that I could detect.”
The four ran into some of the worst weather May can offer. The day was cold and rainy, and the winds were gusting to 40 miles an hour. But when I commiserated with Dave about their terrible weather luck, he told me they had actually seen lots of birds, that the high winds had improved the birding. Species such as cerulean and Blackburnian warbler, birds that you usually glimpse through a dense screen of leaves as they hop about in the crowns of 40-foot trees, had been driven to the ground by the high winds. They were feeding in the grass, providing the closest, clearest views you could get.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The monk parakeet is an alien species that escaped from captivity and managed to survive our winters and breed here. It is a very troublesome pest in its native lands–primarily Argentina–and there is good reason to believe that it will be equally troublesome here once its population gets big enough. The DOC should trap or shoot the Jackson Park birds, or urge the U.S. Department of Agriculture to do the job, but they don’t have the political will to do that. So they are pretending that these birds don’t exist.
Upland sandpiper was one that we missed this year. This is an endangered species in Illinois, but we have been getting a few birds every year. They have apparently been nesting in a forest preserve near Tinley Park, and that has been the only reliable location for them in Cook County during this decade.
Lake County had better luck with rarities than we did. Birders on the lakefront near Waukegan reported piping plovers–another endangered species–and flocks of avocets and marbled godwits. These shorebirds are seldom seen in Illinois. They may have been driven to land by the foul weather.
