Shorebird locations in the Chicago region can be broken into five categories, three or four of which represent permanent features. Last week I talked about water treatment plants and specifically the granddaddy of them all, the Calumet treatment facility. Another artificial habitat is provided by sod farms, where large expanses of short grass are kept [...]
By late July, breeding birds have largely truncated their singing and most of them are the same old suspects anyway. It is a time when post-breeding birds and their progeny do wander, so the possibility of rarities is something to keep in mind. Last week, for example, Andy Sigler found a young royal tern at [...]
For the last several years, I have been doing bird surveys at an area called the Des Plaines River Wetland Demonstration Project in Wadsworth, Illinois. It is the brainchild of Donald Hey whose organization, Wetlands Research, Inc., manages the project. Old quarries and scrubby woods were converted into marsh and sedge meadow as an outdoor [...]
I returned a few days ago from Redwing, Minnesota, where Andy and I finished up our bird surveys on the lands owned by the Prairie Island Indian Community. Some of the more memorable events were not directly bird related: truck getting deeply mired in mud (extrication required the use of a Bobcat driven by a [...]