Day 9: Birds, Trees, Music, and Peace on Madeline
Thursday 10 July 2014
70 °F
Today I spent less time focused solely on birding and more time relaxing, enjoying the overall peacefulness and beautiful scenery of Madeline Island, and listening to beautiful music played by the music camp at which my mom is teaching. I did, however, find a few birds; most noteworthy among them was my life bird SPRUCE GROUSE, at which I had a quick but confirming look. It was a medium-sized, dark grouse, considerably smaller than a turkey (which is the only other dark grouse in this part of the country), that flushed from the weeds alongside the road while I was biking this morning. I of course, as with all grouse in my past birding experience, did not manage a photo of it because, well, it was acting like a grouse...shy and "flushy."
I did, however, managed photos of two birds this morning:
RED-EYED VIREO:
Beautiful singing male BLACK-AND-WHITE WARBLER:
Tomorrow I may or may not post depending upon whether I go birding or not. The forecast is rainy for tomorrow and I will be here until Sunday morning so I have plenty of time to soak up the unique avian life of Madeline one last time.
The remainder of my summer has really shaped up. I will go back home to Chicago on Sunday, where I immediately have some birding trips lined up, and I will spend the remainder of July there. Then, for about the first two weeks in August, my family and I will make our annual summer "pilgrimage" to the Sun Valley, Idaho area (AKA my absolute favorite place in the world!) for birding (me), playing in the Sun Valley Summer Symphony (my mom), and soaking up the beautiful mountain scenery (all of us).
Bird-of-the-day to the SPRUCE GROUSE (my only lifer today), and runner-up to the beautiful BLACK-AND-WHITE WARBLER I photographed.
Stay tuned!
Henry
World Life List: 675 Species (1 life bird today: Spruce Grouse)
