Birding News and Features
Red-headed Woodpecker Blitz!
This year we're trying something new – we want to get a good idea of the distribution of the rapidly-declining population of red-headed woodpeckers in our region, and the habitats they are using. The information we gather will be shared widely to promote conservation of this classic bird of our savannas. The goal is to find each woodpecker pair nesting in the Chicago region. For specific information on how to get involved, see http://www.habitatproject.org/birds/birdblitz2012.html
Priority Sites: monitors needed!
The Chicago Wilderness region needs bird monitors at many beautiful and exciting locations. If you know the local birds by sight and sound and want to contribute to conservation, if you have time to visit a site several times a year and report your observations, please look at our current list of high priority sites without monitors. These are sites where the land manager or steward is eager for input, or where coverage is needed for trends analysis. Updated March 2012.
2012 Monitors' Bird Walk and Brunch!
The BCN Monitors' Bird Walk and Lunch this year will be held on Saturday, May 12. It will start with a guided bird walk at Waterfall Glen Forest Preserve in southern DuPage County and continue afterward to a picnic lunch at Fullersburg Woods Forest Preserve (also DuPage County). All Chicagoland bird monitors are invited. We hope to see as many of you there as possible so we can show appreciation for the skill and effort you volunteer in benefit of bird conservation.
Plan to be at Waterfall Glen at 7:00 a.m. to join the walk. We expect the lunch at Fullersburg Woods to begin about 11:00 a.m.
Registration is necessary! Follow the link to see how.
MONITOR NEWS: March 2012
Surviving the tollway construction
Lee Witkowski monitors birds at a forest preserve under assault. Will County’s Keepataw Preserve encompasses a 215-acre stretch of wetlands along the Des Plaines River and the limestone bluffs bordering them on the north. When the I-355 tollway was extended south into Will County, its planned route cut directly over the eastern edge of the preserve by means of a high, mile-long span. When Lee first monitored the wetland portion in 2005 (after birding there for several years prior), construction of the extension had already begun. While it was underway, he ceased his visits but resumed in 2009 and has continued since, providing a partial before and after record. His monitoring transect runs almost directly below the I-355 bridge. It will take more years to be sure about the results of the tollway construction, but he has noted that green herons and belted kingfishers, originally found there, don’t seem to have returned. There have been some new species showing up – in particular, spotted sandpipers and cliff swallows. Of greater concern than the birds has been the increase in invasive plants –phragmites and cattails, in particular – and the disappearance of Keepataw’s prominent endangered species, the Hines Emerald Dragonfly, from the marshes west of the bridge.
MONITOR NEWS: February 2012
A touch of nature along the Chicago River
One beautiful Saturday last September we had the opportunity to walk around Ronan Park with Annemarie Rand, the bird monitor there for 4 years. This small park along the Chicago River’s North Branch is surrounded by residential neighborhoods and a power plant but is becoming known as a spot for birds, witness the dog walkers and kayakers who paused to talk about them with Annemarie. Meanwhile, a kingfisher cruised up and down the river, a great blue heron stood on the bank, and fall warblers, vireos and thrushes worked the bushes along the shore. And a surprise: eight young black-crowned night-herons sat on the spillway, looking hopefully for fish in the water. They have been regular breeders there for the past three years.
MONITOR NEWS, December 2011
Glacial Heritage
David Schwaegler wants you to know about Lake-in-the-Hills Fen.
“The fen,” a McHenry county Conservation Area, is actually a run-off channel through glacial outwash, with an esker and kame alongside. Above the now mostly dry channel is a line of gravel hills, out of which on the east side seep several fens, producing exceptionally rare plants in the summer and trickles of open water where birds come to drink in the winter. Saving this highly unusual site has been a 30 year long process, beginning in the early 1980s when a grant to preserve “Spring Hill Farm Fen, “ motivated by botanists’ discovery of over 300 plant species in what was then a dairy farm and being eyed as a gravel mine, was never used. At that time a group called the McHenry County Defenders started leading walks and pushing for conservation of the site. The first major conservation steps came in 1988 when the State of Illinois bought the gravel hills and Material Services Corp (the gravel mining company) donated the lowlands to the Village of Lake in the Hills. The state designated it an Illinois Nature preserve in 1990, and the McHenry County Conservation District took over management with Brad Woodson as ecologist. Subsequently there were three additions to the preserve – by the Conservation District, by the state, and by the Larsen family. Later, stewards such as Don Purn and Al Wilson, aided by volunteers and community service workers, continued to bring the site back to its original condition and save the numerous rare plants, including white prairie goldenrod, horned bladderwort, marsh valerium, and swamp thistle.
MONITOR NEWS: November 2011
A conservation leader
Every conservationist in our area – and many across the country as well – know Donnie Dann. Donnie works tirelessly for a variety of conservation organizations, including the American Bird Conservancy and The Nature Conservancy. He was a member of the ABC board from 1997 to 2006, their treasurer for 4 years, and today he continues on the Advisory Board. He does numerous presentations and slide shows for bird clubs. He has been a trustee of TNC and is now in his third term as a trustee emeritus. Locally, he is a past president of the BCN and now sits on the Executive Committee as Advocacy Chair. He sends out a bi-monthly newsletter, Conservation Alert, that goes directly or indirectly to several thousand people (www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1027756404&v=app_2347471856). He frequently fires off letters to politicians and others about conservation issues. Governor Quinn has appointed him to the state’s Nature Preserves Commission, and recently IDNR Director Marc Miller appointed him to the Lake Michigan Offshore Wind Energy Advisory Council.
Does this sound like a busy man? This isn’t all.
MONITOR NEWS: October 2011
Grasslands amid the particle collisions
Dave Spleha took up serious birding in the 1990s, encouraged by his son who had just taken a college ornithology class. Later Dave began keeping track of birds at Fermilab with Peter Kasper, who was doing regular bird surveys there. In 2005 Peter suggested that Dave begin point count monitoring, and they set up 10 points in a variety of grassland areas. Dave now covers these points during the breeding season while continuing to monitor year round with Peter. The data they are compiling provides an exceptional view of bird populations over time at a variety of differently managed habitats.
MONITOR NEWS: September 2011
Green space in McHenry County
Marilyn Schmidling has been watching birds since she was 10 and considers seeing them the best part of her day. During breeding seasons since 2002 she has been monitoring Coral Woods Conservation Area in McHenry County, assisted at times by Kathy Persyk and Carol Thomas. Among their special treats are tree swallows dive-bombing their heads as they approach the nest (bluebird) boxes, woodpeckers drumming while the young drone from their holes, and a Cooper’s hawk swooping down on a fallen log right in front of them. Besides the usual woodland specialties such as great crested flycatcher, wood thrush, ovenbird and scarlet tanager, they’ve found some unexpected ones over the years: cerulean warbler, Kentucky warbler, and Marilyn’s favorite observation, a singing Acadian flycatcher.
MONITOR NEWS, July 2011
Ambassador for nature
Eric Gyllenhaal has an intense interest in the natural world and has been birding on and off since college. A few years ago, after one of his “off” periods, his two sons took up birding and pulled him back into it. They pushed him into becoming a monitor. With his kids he’s now keeping track of the birds in his yard, in his Oak Park neighborhood, and at Columbus Park. Meanwhile, his sons Aaron (14 years) and Ethan (16 years) are now chasing birds and keeping records on their own. Aaron has been interested since he saw some monk parakeets. Ethan will take a train to Montrose Harbor or join twitching expeditions every chance he gets; recently he has become bird monitor at Miller Meadow.
MONITOR NEWS: June 2011
Forest remnants
MacArthur Woods, a 450-acre preserve along the Des Plaines River in Vernon Hills, contains one of the larger tracts of unbroken forest remaining in our area. For two years Gary Hantsbarger, a skilled birder with 28 years experience, has been surveying birds here, using monitoring points set up by the Lake County Forest Preserve District. Gary apparently enjoys this work because this year he has taken on two other monitoring sites: Ryerson Woods and Oriole Grove.
MacArthur Woods isn’t easy of access. There is no public parking, so most of us can get in only by canoe or by the bike path that doubles for cross-country skiing in the winter. In the Chicagoland area, of course, habitat fragmentation is the rule, and this preserve offers at least a hint of what the bird populations would be like in a larger and less disturbed forest.
Please report nesting Red-headed Woodpeckers
Do you know of any place that Red-headed Woodpeckers are nesting? Dale Crusoe, an experienced field researcher of this species, is doing a study for BCN on their historical distribution in the Chicago area based upon BCN records. If you find these birds anywhere in the Greater Chicago Area during June or July, please report them to BCN eBird and to Dale: dalecrusoe@att.net. Please include information about the specific habitat where the bird is observed e.g. oak savanna, areas that have dead trees and/or living trees with dead limbs (snags) and other potential habitats.
MONITOR NEWS: May 2011
Monitoring Cook County's changing wetlands
Al Thomas has been monitoring the marshes along the Old Plank Road Trail by Butterfield Creek headwaters for 15 years, where former farmland is giving way to subdivisions. The bird populations of course show the effects, but this is still Al’s favorite monitoring place, and he continues to survey the birds, providing insight to a type of habitat change going on all over our area. More recently he has expanded his monitoring to include two nearby but quite different wetland areas, one a section of a huge Cook County forest preserve undergoing intensive management, the other in the restored public park of a suburban village. The forest preserve area is Tinley Creek Wetlands (now called Killdeer Wetlands), adjacent to Bartel Grasslands. Al started monitoring there in 2009. Then last year he began monitoring the marsh at Park Forest’s Central Park, where ongoing management is part of the village’s plan.
MONITOR NEWS: April 2011
"Learn the place."
Alan Anderson has certainly done more monitoring at more sites than anyone else in our region. He began in 1984, 15 years before the BCN Survey even began. Since 1999 all his data has gone into BCN eBird, but he still saves the earlier records. Instead of getting tied down to a single place, during any given year Alan travels to forest preserves all over Cook County and the eastern part of DuPage County. There are 15-20 locations he tries to visit at least once or twice every year plus quite a few more that he will monitor depending on the weather and his available time. Each location is one he studies and then works out a monitoring system for. Everywhere he establishes a set route (transect) and follows it every time he visits. In addition to providing an unparalleled record of Chicagoland bird populations, he also works on conservation issues, most recently trying to make sure that natural habitat was not destroyed along the Des Plaines Riverwalk.
MONITOR NEWS: March 2011
The Arboretum Team
The Morton Arboretum in Lisle has long been one of Chicago area’s most popular birding sites, and now it is being systematically monitored. For the last 4 years an enthusiastic group of volunteers has been surveying bird populations in the Arboretum’s natural areas. Organized by Kurt Dreisilker, Manager of Natural Resources, along with Jody and Jerry Zamirowski, the group currently covers 13 defined areas, with more likely to be added in the future. Each monitor is assigned to one or more of these areas and visits them year round: once a week during the breeding season and once or twice a month at other times of the year. In December the group got together at the Arboretum for lunch, a short owl hunt, and their second meeting – a lively one!
MONITOR NEWS, February 2011
Gifts from Nature
Bob and Kathy Andrini are probably the best known birders in Kane County. Bob is president of Kane County Audubon and, with Kathy, presents programs and leads field trips for KCA. He teaches birding classes for the College of DuPage, volunteers at the Field Museum in Chicago and recently had one of his images on the cover of the Illinois Audubon magazine. Bob and Kathy, both retired teachers, also teach birding classes for the St Charles Park District and offer their popular bird programs for interested groups. Want to check this out? Full information is at their website, www.birdsrkool.com. In addition to all this, they monitor birds at St Charles Park District sites, Bob at Norris Woods, Kathy at Delnor Woods.
MONITOR NEWS, January 2011
A great relationship creates a great grassland
Joe Suchecki has been monitoring birds at Springbrook Prairie, an 1800-acre preserve in Naperville, since 1994. He wasn’t the first to do surveys at this exceptional site: DuPage Forest Preserve District staff already had records going back to the 1980s. As the monitoring records accumulate and provide evidence for effective management practices in this preserve, Joe and the district’s staff have continued to work closely together, establishing “a great relationship.” He has no difficulty communicating with the volunteer stewards who come out to work there. He is the site steward.
MONITOR NEWS, December 2010
An all-season adventure
Paul Douglas Forest Preserve in northwestern Cook County receives attention from birders, especially in the late spring and summer when great blue herons nest on towers and the marsh at their feet is an excellent place to find rails and yellow-headed blackbirds. Stan Stec has been monitoring here since 1999, but he doesn’t confine his surveys to the breeding seasons. In fact, his main advice to other monitors is to get out more often: “Monitoring is an all-season adventure.” In winter Stan finds harriers patrolling the grasslands that were home to bobolinks and Henslow’s sparrows in summer. In migration, perhaps the slowest time of the year here, there are wooded ponds where passerines congregate in May, and a flock of palm warblers fed in the tall grasses when we visited in September. Nearby the bloody remains of a snake hung from a forest preserve sign, left there by an owl.
MONITOR NEWS, November 2010
Teamwork at Fort Sheridan
Fort Sheridan Forest Preserve, on the site of the historic Army base, features a grassland on bluffs overlooking Lake Michigan, several forested ravines, an oak savanna, and access to a stretch of sandy beach. Final plans for the area are still under consideration, but birders have discovered the spot, and two BCN monitors have been keeping track of the bird populations. They are Sandra Kroll, who has been keeping records here since the preserve opened to the public in 2006, and Jane Mikulski, who joined Sandra to form a team of regular monitors in 2008.
MONITOR NEWS, October 2010
Grand Birding at Orland Grassland
This spring Orland Grassland hosted two big events, its sixth annual Grand Birding Event and a “Welcome Back Bobolinks” event with guided tours of the site. In addition to these, since 2003 a team of monitors has surveyed nesting birds on the restored prairies and shrublands of this 960-acre site in southwestern Cook County. The monitoring team, led by Wes Serafin and John Staudinger, has documented breeding populations of numerous birds of concern, including bobolinks, dickcissels, Henslow’s sparrows, orchard orioles and yellow-breasted chats.
