Al V and the Merlins

Merlin photographed by Vic Berardi.

Last Saturday (Oct 10) I met my friend Bob Russell, who was in town from Minneapolis, for a few hours of mid-day birding at the Skokie Lagoons (a Cook County forest preserve a little inland from Lake Michigan that’s located in the Northfield/Glencoe area). It was a cloudy cold day with strong northwestern winds. As soon as we started, Bob looked up and saw several raptors. There were three sharp-shinned hawks, a turkey vulture, and an adult bald eagle. We quit looking for passerines, and headed to the lake hoping for a decent migration. Turkey vultures kept advancing southwards along the shoreline, but water birds were zilch. We went back to the lagoons and wound up with 40 turkey vultures. A very distant accipiter might well have been a goshawk.

Well it turns out that the Hawk Watch at Illinois Beach Stae Park had one of their best days of the year, tallying over 553 raptors, including 66 merlins, 85 turkey vultures, 299 sharp-shins, 74 red-tails, 2 Swainson’s, and a goshawk. Not to miss this altogether, I headed up to the watch early on Sunday. Predictions were that the morning winds would subside as the day progressed, but some good movement might be expected during those precious early hours.

Before I continue, let me say that I love hawk watches as much as lake watches. I have written elsewhere that hawk watching is like a virus that lodges in the blood indefinitely. Back in the early 1980s, I spent most of two autumns at a different spot at Illinois Beach staring north for these magnificent flyers as they approached from the horizon. The current watch was founded by Vic Berardi and he has done an amazing job, with help from the Sweets and others,  building it to what it is today: from the beginning of September to the end of November at least someone is counting hawks every day (when there is heavy precipitation, the watchers may throw in the towel early). One of the most memorable experiences I have ever had over the course of forty years of birding occurred on an October day two years ago when the heavens opened and discharged a deluge of falcons. We had 700 merlins, 85 peregrines, and 15 kestrals. I mean the very idea of seeing over 800 falcons in a single day still strikes me as ridiculous. I think only Cape May has exceeded those merlin totals.

My Sunday visit, the first I have had a chance to make this fall, fell far short of any records but there were still some striking highlights. Some hawks pass high overhead, barely discernable against the sky, while others streak by low, with an eye for a snack should a morsel be available. A merlin headed for a flock of goldfinches and succeeded in isolating one bird from the rest. The merlin gained a little altitude and shot towards the goldfinch like a bullet, but somehow the intended target managed to elude the predator.

For a while now there has been a turkey vulture hanging around that has largely white primaries. (One inexperienced birder went on line and reported it as a black vulture, a southern species that has been observed in Lake County, IL only once or twice.) The watchers call the bird Al V (albino vulture).  I had never seen the bird until this day and it is a knockout. Through the scope it looked as if the primary tips were dark followed by a large white patch. From the photo, it is clear that some of the primaries are white to the tip, too. There are also white streaks on the body.  Al V drifted south, perhaps for good as it rode the blustery wind towards warmer climes.

Partially albino turkey vulture photographed at the Illinois Beach SP hawk watch in September 2009 by Mike Trahan.