Gimpy-legged buff-breasted sandpiper at Montrose Beach sanctuary. (Photo by Paul Massey)
The last couple of weeks I have been working through the live pigeon shoots that were popular during the last forty years of the nineteenth century. During these contests, competitors would get points for every pigeon they shot out of some total. Most of these contests wound up killing a few thousand but some claimed over 40.000 passenger pigeons. One estimate pegged the total at 500,000 wild pigeons a year died in these matches, and two or three times the number of rock pigeons. Eventually a number of states banned them for the cruelty involved but the principal reason they ended is because the supply of ppigeons ended. Substitutes were found, however. Besides the glass balls and other inanimate objects, there were a variety of living targets, some of which we today would never think of. Bats and blackbirds were used fairly often. But the weirdest one was snow buntings. They were actually pretty popular, but they had a huge drawback: they were devilishly difficult to shoot when there was snow on the ground. White on white did not good shooting make.
Renee Baade, an uncommon visitant from CT, at Wadsworth.
But I did go out twice to do Wadsworth with special friends. Last week Renee Baade was in town from Connecticut for a few days and she was able to join me. We arranged to meet at 8:30 so I would be able to finish a few sections before she arrived. This also allowed me to cover the wettest locations so she did not have to get soaked, as she did not bring with her an ensemble designed to be saturated in mud. (I don’t know what she was thinking.) It turns out she reached our rendezvous point one hour early. Not wanting to wait, she started looking for me, a task she was not likely to accomplish successfully. But in her meandering she did flush a sora, which was the first one I have had at Wadsworth this fall. We did make contact eventually and headed to the Illinois Beach Hawk Watch. Renee runs her own hawk watch in CT where she focuses on broad-wings and so she wanted to trade shop talk with Paul and Janet Sweet. Being a warm flat day, the hawks were quiet.
The following Friday the wind was blowing, and it was our first day that felt really fall like. This time I was accompanied by my friend Mike Solomon, a psychiatrist with whom I discuss nagging questions. It is kind of a shame that psychiatrists can’t treat friends so I settle for wide ranging conversations. We met in 2002 at the Skokie Lagoons and have been fast friends ever since. But not only do I adore Mike, but his wife Carol is wonderful as well, as are his two boys. The first spot we hit at Wadsworth had a nice collection of shorebirds- we had solitary, least, semi sand, and the season’s first pectoral. At the very end of our visit, an osprey flew over the car. I learned later that the folks at the hawk watch had 31, their fifth best ever.
I don’t always act on it, but when there is a three day weekend I feel as if Cindy and I should do something together for at least a few hours. Hey, Cindy, how about spending one of your precious free days birding on a day that is supposed to be in the nineties? Bless her lovely heart she acquiesced (hey, marriage is all about compromise) and we headed to Montrose on Labor Day morning. It was my first visit of the fall. The land birding was pretty slow- we had a handful of warblers such as magnolia, redstart, northern waterthrush, ovenbird, and blackpoll. There were a few Empids, a green heron, and a great-crested flycatcher. A Cooper’s hawk regularly took aerial strolls around the avian buffet to determine what looked good.
But the real highlight was the beach where there was a terrific mix of shorebirds. A mixed flock of semi palmated fed together- that is sandpipers and plover. There were also least and two Baird’s. The Baird’s were instructive because they varied a bit in plumage- one was a classic with warm buffy tones with really long primaries while the other was duller and had shorter wings. The lack of distance was greatly appreciated. But the star of the group was a lovely buff-breasted snadpiper. The largest numbers around here show up on the sod farms to the far far north, west, and south, but a few show up every year on the lakefront. This bird was limping, it was thought that it had been damaged by a peregrine falcon or Cooper’s. One birder believed, though, that it seems be recuperating, as it appeared more spry than it did the day before.
One of the joys of Montrose is social in nature. I meet lots of people I am very fond of but rarely if ever see elsewhere. Indeed, if I did see them in a different habitat, would I even be able to identify them? One such person was Paul Massey, who let me use his buff-breasted sandpiper photo to illustrate this post. I also ran into Ari and Rebecca Rice. Ari is a senior in high school and they are trying to figure out what college he should go to. Mike Solomon’s youngest son is also going through the same process. It is so much more complicated now than the early 1970s. Including summer school, I went to four different undergraduate schools, all but one selected largely on where I could see birds. Ah, those were simpler times. Oh yes that reminds me. In 1869, Henry Bergh first began his efforts to ban live pigeon shoots . . .
Birders enjoying the panoply of shorebirds at Montrose on Labor Day.
Beach restoration area at Montrose, downtown Chicago (Photo by Cindy Kerchmar)
