Slogging through the Wetlands

Bartel Grassland, IL

Thursday 30 April 2020 50 °F

Today I planned to do a thorough search at Bartel Grassland for two annual but extremely elusive Cook County birds: Yellow Rail and LeConte’s Sparrow. I started at Butterfield Creek Headwaters, at the suggestion of Isoo, to check for migrants and anything that might happen to be there. And I had good luck! It started with a very photogenic NORTHERN WATERTHRUSH — starting off the trip with a migrant warbler is a great sign!

My first GRAY CATBIRD of the year:

And then I struck gold! I looked out across the lake and there were some huge white blogs, in the form of AMERICAN WHITE PELICANS! 31 of them in total — super cool for Cook County!

With RUDDY DUCKS & a DOUBLE-CRESTED CORMORANT swimming in the foreground:

Now, joined by a photobombing TREE SWALLOW:

Another nice migrant duck to see was a pair of BUFFLEHEAD — getting a smidge late, huh?

HERMIT THRUSH:

And my first-of-the-year SWAINSON’S THRUSH! Cool to see these two species relatively close together — note the complete olive back (with no hint of reddish color) on the Swainson’s.

As I drove into Bartel, I had to pull off to the side of the road because another AMERICAN WHITE PELICAN caught my eye sitting in one of the entrance ponds — beautiful! Their bill knobs are only present during the breeding season.

There were also RING-NECKED DUCKS:

PIED-BILLED GREBE:

This GREATER YELLOWLEGS flew over at one point:

And a VESPER SPARROW flushed up from alongside the road:

Next course of action: trudging at times almost knee-deep through flooded grassland & wetland in order to have probably my best chances at finding a LeConte’s Sparrow or Yellow Rail for the spring. My feet almost immediately got completely drenched, which was at times rather unpleasant, but the birds certainly made up for it. A large rail took off from almost underneath me and to my delight, I had my first-of-the-year COMMON GALLINULE in flight! Awesome — a very uncommon migrant!

“Whatcha doin fool?” asks the EASTERN MEADOWLARK as I continue to slog through the wetland.

GADWALL was a nice addition:

SWAMP SPARROWS were everywhere:

Also unphotographed were a number of HENSLOW’S SPARROWS which were heard-only several times and made several brief, flushed appearances — not cooperative today.

This rail gave me a good fool — it was very tiny and rather light, but after a good amount of discussion and posting on “What’s this bird?” it indeed turned out to be a SORA — the rare Yellow Rail would have white patches on the trailing edges to the wings. Dang it!

The habitat where I flushed it — perfect for Yellow Rail though!

SANDHILL CRANE:

BOBOLINKS have arrived! This male was performing his display-flight for any females who might have been watching.

SAVANNAH SPARROW:

BLUE-WINGED TEAL — love how this photo turned out; you can really see why they’re named that way.

Another flushed SORA — I counted twenty-three of these today, incredible!

LESSER YELLOWLEGS:

Ah, finally a decent pic of a WILSON’S SNIPE!

What a shnoz!

This SORA also gave incredible views and I was happy to point it out to another birder, Linda.

I was also afforded with some GREAT photo opportunities of both SEDGE:

And the similar MARSH WRENS:

This female/immature (because it’s brown) NORTHERN HARRIER winged overhead from time to time:

One of my favorite parts of the day was hearing the “Boom! Boom! Boom-a-chunk!” call of an AMERICAN BITTERN from deep within the marsh — I had always wanted to hear that in the wild, and that wish came true today. So cool!

And a sunset put a lid on a wonderful afternoon of birding. Despite not finding my target birds after all, it was a very productive day!

One disheartening sight was a bunch of young men gathering together (not practicing social distancing whatsoever) and drag racing in the forest preserve entrance drive to Killdeer Wetlands. So I called the police and busted them. Unfortunately this officer was lenient — I would have liked to have seen some handcuffs and teary eyes.

Bird-of-the-day to the Common Gallinule with runners-up to the American White Pelicans and American Bittern. A great day out! Our next push of southerly winds is tomorrow night so I will definitely be out and about on saturday in hopes of picking up some more warblers.