Burnham Prairie with Tian
Burnham Prairie Nature Preserve, IL
Sunday 19 July 2020
95 °F
Yesterday, Tian and I were up at the crack of dawn to head to Burnham Prairie to hopefully find some wetland bird species. And that, we did! Although we had nothing too common, we did find a number of GREAT EGRETS:
Painted Turtle:
CASPIAN TERN:
Male WOOD DUCK:
This GREEN HERON gave stunning views.
SPOTTED SANDPIPER was nice:
MUTE SWAN family!
A pair of WILLOW FLYCATCHERS was also great, but perhaps even more interesting was an unidentified flycatcher which winged its way over at one point. Eastern Kingbird? Western Kingbird even? I shall never know, so fingers crossed it wasn’t anything too rare. I snapped one crappy photo of it flying away from me:
I was dismayed to have missed my target bird there which shall remain nameless in order to protect its sensitivity. Darn!
We later swung by Montrose but couldn’t find any parking so called it quits and headed back to Oak Park. It was getting hot out under the sun anyway. Bird-of-the-day to the Green Heron with runners-up to the Great Egrets. Rather slim pickings, though a species count of 41 was pretty good for a July morning.
Good birding,
Henry
World Life List: 1121 Species
I read a book titled " Chasing the Rodeo "; I was riding Amtrack from CA to here-the greatest place on earth. This book noted that the Slim Pickens moniker came about due to his bad luck in the draw of Beast he was given to ride rodeo, during his career - early or the entire career; I dont remember, I hadn't gleamed that from the pages
by stephen fluett