Common merganser photographed by Darlene Friedman.
Now the difference two weeks makes this time of year is great: the phenological changes have been striking. Yesterday I was at Wadsworth and all sorts of taxa were up and about. The vegetation is greening up, and even clots of algae are forming in shallow water, all of which is now melted.(The appearance of pond scum is always a harbinger of spring in my book.) I saw my first insect, some sort of diptera. A chipmunk bolted across the road and a particularly large beaver swam upstream at the surface of the Des Plaines River (if this were a Scottish lake, I might have another guess). New puddle ducks for the year included green-winged teal, wigeon, shoveller, and gadwall. Cranes were flying very high such that it was difficult to tease out their calls from the very wind itself- they were closely woven together into one ethereal sound of antiquity.
If there was one great scene, though, it was at my last site, a large grassy expanse that over the course of the year can be dry, a marsh, or a lake. This time it was in between a marsh and a lake, but whatever else it was, it was birdless. Then one of the great songs of spring caught my ear- I thought it was a bit early but no mistaking the notes of that great spring chorister, the western chorus frog (by far the most abundant of our spring frogs, although many people call them spring peepers, a woodland species much less common around here, though maybe on the increase). As I stood listening, my season’s first turkey vulture drifted over and beyond it was a crane with a clear destination in mind.
The quarry lake I referred to last week was indeed ice free, but fortunately not duck free. No loon, but this time the common mergansers and hooded mergansers were joined by a red-breasted merganser making a hat trick of gorgeous birds. It did put me in the mind to check out other local lakes when I was finished at Wadsworth.
Illinois has two principal aggregations of natural lakes- those connected to the Illinois River (many of which have been filled in over the years) and the hundreds of glacial lakes that either formed in morainal basins or when chunks of glacial ice became imbedded in the ground and melted. Most of these are in the Lake and McHenry Counties, and are in the Fox River watershed, although a few are in t he Des Plaines. But none of the latter are east of the Des Plaines so all three of the lakes I looked at wre former quarries; another may have been a quarry too.
After leaving Wadsworth I headed to Sterling Lake, part of the Lake County Forest Preserve District. It usually has loons, but I could not find any, if they were present. Instead, there were two large rafts of ducks segregated as to composition. One of the flocks was entirely red-breasted mergansers while the other was dominated by lesser scaup, with a few ring-necked ducks and bufflehead thrown in.
Osprey Lake lies between a large housing complex and the Des Plaines River. I claim to have discovered it; ok, I am only referring to birders here, and thus am ignoring all the people who live and visit there. There are a series of dikes and small lakes fringed by extensive marsh. I bird it a few times a year, and it always has a fine selection of waterfowl in season- well except for yesterday when all it harbored were a couple of mallards and some herring gulls. I really am at a loss as to why there no birds. (One time four of us visited the site when it was heavily flooded. The water was almost at the top of a bridge railing. We waded the trails which reached our waste at places. At one point two tiny dead baby mink floated by, one of which is in my freezer.
The highlight of the lakes was Independence Grove, also a Lake Count Forest Preserve District property. It is adjacent to the Des Plaines and we birded it on the Waukegan Christmas Count before it was open to the public. But there are now broad grassy areas, extensive trails, picnic tables, and other facilities. There were about 200 birds on the water: in declining order of abundance, lesser scaup, common goldeneye, redhead, red-breasted mergansers, and bufflehead. I rarely see that many redheads in one place.
Then the wind picked up and my single coat was inadequate. Looking at the goldeneyes made me think I was on Lake Michigan in January. What was that about spring?
Drake redhead photographed by Darlene Friedman.
Lesser scaup photographed by Darlene Freidman
Tags: common goldeneye, lesser scaup, quarries, redhead