Verbosity, I have been told, is not a good quality for bloggers, whose work should be pithy and to the point. Trying to adjust to this new medium, I leave stuff out of my accounts that might be of interest. For example, the post entitled “Miller Time with the Hoosier Gang”, focused on the first half of the day. Once the long-tailed jaeger flew by, the birding became pretty slow and the group decided to move elsewhere. We focused on a couple of shorebird sites in southern Lake County.
The best one involved parking in a tiny pulloff that could accommodate no more than two cars. We crossed the road, walked down a cement embankment, and meandered through a dense willow thicket until we reached the muddy shore of a small lake. I wondered how anyone would have discovered the place, but there is a building on a rise at the far end and it was from there that the water body was first discerned. (Like Balboa first laying his eyes on the Pacific Ocean.)
Brendon Grube had been there the day before and had found a marbled godwit. Broad mud flats offered habitat for a variety of shorebirds, including both yellowlegs, dowitcher (sp?), and semipalmated plover. A small flock of mallards fed in the shallows. And right in their midst stood the marbled godwit. These large western sandpipers with there long upturned bills are seen annually, with some large flocks occasionally observed along the lakefront. But I have missed them in recent years as they rarely stay around very long. It was a real treat, as well as an Indiana bird for me.
Graphite rendition of marbled godwit by Sulli Gibson (August 2009).
Nice illustration by Sulli, I didn’t know he was an artist.