When a couple dozen smaller ducks wheeled in formation, like a stunt squadron at the Chicago Air and Water Show, Tom Schrader and I both said, “Teal.” Joel Greenberg looked skeptical, so I walked to the water’s edge at Sag Quarries and looked down the shoreline. The ducks had disappeared.
That send Schrader and me along the Cal Sag Trail until a faint path led us to swimming wood ducks. Schrader took some photos. We told Greenberg they were woodies, not teal.
We had met at Sagawau Environmental Learning Center Monday morning. Schrader, who had an eclectic history in academia and the outdoors, is a top-notch photographer. He recently documented a year of an eagle nest near Hinckley. Greenberg authored the seminal epic, “A Natural History of the Chicago Region,” and the definitive book on passenger pigeons, “A Feathered River Across the Sky.”
His milk run, when birding the migration around Palos, usually starts with Sagawau. Migration around Chicago goes from midsummer to late fall/early winter. More at the end.
We started with robins, red-bellied woodpecker, white-breasted nuthatch, blackbirds and blue jays
Next was Sag Quarries, primarily for water-related birds. Immediately we had wood ducks, mallards, red-winged blackbirds and killdeer, but nothing indicative of a full-blown waterfowl migration, not surprising with the extended summer.
Then, as Greenberg scanned the flats and islands with his spotting scope, he said, “Oh my God, we have two snipe.”
Schrader managed to photograph them. It helps to be skilled and have the right equipment. His vehicle trunk overflows with outdoors gear, camera stuff and big lens.
We added starlings, downy woodpecker, chimney swift, Canada geese, yellow-rumped warbler and yellow-throated vireo as we wandered.
As we moved to Saganashkee Slough, Greenberg remarked on how many monarch butterflies he was seeing and wondered if anybody had talked to Doug Taron (recently retired butterfly guru at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum).
I expected to see a bald eagle at Saganashkee, but we did not. We added great blue heron, cormorants and herring gulls. Schrader spotted a pearl crescent butterfly.
We stopped at Little Red Schoolhouse Nature Center, a gem of the Forest Preserves of Cook County. Beside birds we spotted elsewhere, we added catbird, hummingbird and belted kingfisher. Walking back, we added turkey vultures.
Greenberg suggested lunch at a picnic table at Forty Acres Woods, a first-time site for me. Then we finished at McClaughrey Springs Woods, a place neither Schrader or I had been to. It’s a gem, with Mill Creek flowing through (very low now), I have to revisit.
“Walk in a place like this, you would never guess there are hundreds of thousands of people are living nearby.” Schrader said.
Exactly.
We were mobbed by blue jays, but we also added goldfinch and either a wren or kinglet. Walking back, just before the bridge, we had an eastern phoebe. Bridges are classic nesting spots for them.
It was time.
Greenberg said migration generally begins in July with sandpipers and shorebirds. Then comes some landbirds as they finish nesting, including hummingbirds.
“It’s not really migration but they’ll go from one area where they they breed, maybe in woods, and they may show up in your backyard,” he said. “Then starting, maybe middle of August you start getting actual migration of landbirds. Warblers start showing up and they continue through October.”
Then comes a migration that is unique to our geography. “There is a group of birds that are rare but you can see them [on Lake Michigan],” he said.
That’s because of its north-south orientation. so birds “flying south run out of water at Miller [Beach in Indiana.”
Jaegers are one of rarities you can see at Miller in the fall.
“Then you get into October, there’s hawks starting to move,” he said. “September and October, in some years, big flocks of broad-winged hawks. They’re at the early end of the hawk migration but they can also form huge flocks. … We’ve had over 2,000 birds in a day.”
Illinois has two primary hawkwatches, one at Illinois Beach State Park, the other at Fort Sheridan. They are on the lakefront for a reason. Greenberg said when the winds come from the north or northwest, they are pushed up against the lake in numbers.
“Merlin, the small falcon, there was an incredible day in October, maybe 10 years ago, where we had like 725 merlins and 75 peregrines,” he said. “We saw 800 falcons moving and I think the only place that exceeded this, and I’m not certain of this, is Cape May in New Jersey.”
Waterfowl have already started, mainly puddle ducks first. But they are weather-dependent. Then come diving ducks. In November, bald eagles and the occasional golden eagle start moving, as do sandhill cranes, which usually peak in late November. Some of that is dependent on freezes to our north, especially in Wisconsin.
Weather change is coming, the migration will spike again.
