Parasitic jaeger photographed at Michigan City, IN in 2006 by John Cassady.

The combination of great birds the week before and the prediction of strong northwest winds resulted in a big turn out of birders for the Miller lake watch of August 29. Close to twenty people showed up, at least two from as far away as Terre Haute. John Cassady, one of the regulars whose photos have graced this blog, was there, still smarting from having missed last week due to the frivolous task of dropping his only child off at Butler University, where she is a freshman. (When I asked him whether they encountered frat guys holding signs thanking parents for leaving their daughters, he replied that if he had seen any such thing he would have turned around and brought her home.)

The first good bird of the day was a diminutive gull about  a quarter mile offshore. It had a thick black bar on each wing, dark secondaries, and a tail band. Too small and early in the season for a black-legged kittiwake, the small gull was actually a little gull. This European species, which for a time nested in Wisconsin, has declined markedly from former years, when we would see numbers of them, usually later in the season with Bonaparte’s gulls (come to think of it, the Bonies have also largely disappeared.) One probably shows up nearly every year off the northern Indiana coast line, but I have not seen one for a long time.

This was not a major flight day as bird numbers were kind of skimpy. One exception was the continual stream of chimney swifts that eventually totaled 879 birds. I thought that given the birding talent assembled, including a number who are top flight photographers, it would have been a perfect circumstance for a non-chimney to fly over- oh, maybe a black or white-collared. But, alas, reality imposed its harsh rule.

Apparently the phenomenon has been going on for several weeks but I had not seen it before: thousands of double-crested cormorants scattered far offshore. Lines of the dark birds were criss-crossing the Chicago skyline, many at the very edge of what the scope- assisted eye could discern. At that distance they were like mirages, blurry empherata without shape that would alternately vanish and reappear as they changed positions. For awhile they seemed to have no direction, but eventually they converged to an area closer in shore, where they were joined by gulls. There are times when Lake Michigan can have a very maritime feel and this was one of them.  I kept expecting pods of cetaceans leaping amidst the birds, and their absence reminded me of where I really was.

Given where I really was, I was curious as to what fish could be abundant enough to support such a frenzy. Decades ago the common forage fish of Lake Michigan was the emerald shiner but their population crashed, as have so many other species that feed on plankton. I asked two friends who are experts on Lake Michigan, Dale Bowman (the Sun-Times outdoor writer) and Phil Willink (ichthyologist at the Field Museum). Dale’s answer: “Alewives or perch. Both are being seen in numbers on shore because of the goofy shoreline temperatures this summer.” Phil leaned towards perch: “I have seen more juvenile yellow perch this summer than forever. There were schools in Burnham Harbor that numbered in the hundreds or thousands.”   

My cormorant reverie abated with the shout, “Jaegers.” I picked up two very distant jaegers as they moved west, similar to the path of last week’s long-tailed. For a brief period a third jaeger joined them but it soon was lost to sight. The remaining birds were clearly of different species- they differed in size and flight and amount of white in the wing. Fortunately, as the birds came a little closer, the long tail feathers of one marked it as a long-tailed.  The other was a young parasitic.  Everyone hoped for a repeat of last week, but it was not to happen as the birds stayed their course and continued beyond the horizon. (And your blogger had to rely on a photo taken at another time and place)

          

The outing of July 28 was really spawned by a desire to see some friends I had not birded with all summer: Carolyn Fields (whose gorgeous photographs have greatly enhanced this blog), Tim Wallace (ditto), Amar Ayyash (a mathematician living in “far away” Will County), and Sullie Gibson (one of the state’s premier high school birders who spent two weeks this summer in Costa Rica as an intern/ guide at a nature lodge). I picked up Sulli at 5:45 and met the rest of the group in Waukegan at 6:30.

Of all the Illinois beaches fronting on Lake Michigan, Waukegan’s may be the best for shorebirds (it would be even better if local dog owners adhered to city laws requiring that pet canids must be leashed). It was here, back in 1973, that piping plover are generally thought to have last nested in the state. On this day, though, the beach was stingy, offering up but a few sanderlings,  the quintessential beach sandpiper, and an impatient northern harrier heading south well before the rest of harrierdom.

 Our next stop was Illinois Beach State Park (IBSP) , a truly extraordinary place that has long been one of my favorites. (I am actually surprised I have gone this long as a blogger without mentioning it.) When the Illinois Natural Areas Inventory completed its work in 1978 it determined that IBSP had more high quality natural communities than anywhere else in the state. The park even harbors an animal found nowhere else in the world, the leafhopper  Paraphlepsius lupalus.

 We decided to take the Dead River trail (Dead River is the only Illinois river still flowing into Lake Michigan that is not channelized or dammed). Our first interesting bird was a black-billed cuckoo that flashed by and then proceeded to call. Tim had earlier made me promise that we would find one this summer, so the appearance of his lifer took a lot of pressure off my weary shoulders (“the blog, the blog”). Then Sulli spotted one of the day’s two best birds- a blue grosbeak. He saw the male fly into the top of a black oak where it regaled us with song and excellent scope views (our crack photographers obtained great shots). Returning via a different but nearby trail, we met a pair of blue grosbeaks, the female of which carried food.

 Blue grosbeaks until recently were extremely rare in northeast Illinois. I had only seen it once before in Lake County but they are among those southern species that are expanding their ranges northward. Although there is a tendency in some circles to attribute all of this to climate change, I am reluctant to do so because during any period in the past, some species or other is expanding or contracting its range. Cardinals, for example, moved into the region over the first half of the twentieth century while red-bellied woodpeckers arrived during the middle half.

Male blue grosbeak photographed at Illinois Beach State Park by Carolyn Fields.

The day’s big challenge was figuring out what to do (and maintaining alertness) until we shifted our attention to Almond Road Marsh, where for much of the summer a neo-tropical cormorant would appear at dusk to roost with the double-cresteds. It would be a lifer for Sulli, a state bird for Carolyn, and a county bird for me (I have only seen it once in Illinois, and that was a while ago). I had made an earlier try for the bird, spending two and a half hours looking in vain. I later learned that if instead of leaving at 6:30 I had stayed until 7:30, I would have seen it. Amar had to leave us to drive the hour and a half to the community college where he had a class to teach.

 We looked at some shorebird spots and then stopped for dinner and chilled ambient air. More than hungry we were parched. My order raised eyebrows: one tall glass of carbonated water, one milk shake, and an empty glass in which to mix them. Ah the creamy richness of the shake combined with the refreshing tingle of the seltzer hit the spot. Manifesting some concern that he didn’t see it on the menu, Tim was relieved to learn that he could obtain a chocolate malt. Sulli raised the possibility of ordering a milkshake incorporating all the flavors offered by the restaurant, but settled on a vanilla. Carolyn’s thought process and choice were so devoid of drama I can’t even recall what she ordered.

 With everyone fortified by cold fluids rich in calories (and even some actual food), we headed to Almond Road Marsh. Common moorhens called and Sulli spotted two juveniles as they ventured out of the cattails for a few minutes. As time went on, the number of egrets returning to the roost grew to eventually 97. Unfortunately, the number of double-crested cormorants had declined to 20, many fewer than what had been there a few weeks earlier. And indeed the neo-corm never did show up, but my picking out a first year little blue heron among the egrets buoyed spirits (and Carolyn’s county list). At eight we left confident that the neo-corm was gone. (Only to learn in subsequent days that the bird reappeared in a nearby marsh- darn that bird, I guess I will have to look again.) I dropped Sulli off at 9, and arrived at my place at 10. It took a 30 minute nap in the car before I had the energy to enter the house and go to sleep.

Double-crested cormorant at Almond Road Marsh photographed by Carolyn Fields.