Northern Mockingbird at Grant Park Beach 4/17/23

JeremyAdd comment

After work today, I thought I’d head down to Grant Park and see if the feeder area had any good birds. When the weather is brutal, like it was this afternoon, the feeders usually host some good birds. On my way to the feeders, I stopped at the beach parking lot and decided to walk out to the concrete pier and see what was around. No more than 30′ from my truck and I find a Northern Mockingbird! I didn’t even bring my camera with me. I ran back to the truck and got it setup. I walked to where I last saw it but I could not find it. I figured it had to be in the grasses somewhere, so I walked towards the lake. As I walked farther, there is a gap between the grass dunes and there it was! So, I circled back around towards the parking lot, to try for a better view. As soon as I got over there, it flew right out in front of me and fed for several minutes. It was quite active, moving very fast over the grassy areas, feeding. It was hanging with 7 American Robins, 1 Savannah Sparrow and 1 Field Sparrow. I watched it go from the sandy area of the beach, all the way to the west side of parking lot and then across the outlet to the yacht club side. Eventually, it ended up on the parking lot side again. It was extremely windy and very chilly, especially compared to the last week of beautiful weather. This was a completely unexpected bird for the day, which makes it all the more rewarding. Photos below are from the afternoon. Enjoy!

Road Trip 12/27/19

Jeremy4 Comments

My friend Lorri and I were planning a road trip on Friday 12/27. We were originally going north to find some of the winter birds. However, in combination with the negative reports and warm weather, we decided to try for the Varied Thrush instead. We arrived at the UW-Stout parking lot 21 at 7:15am, where it was apparently feeding with a group of robins. It was still fairly dark, so we parked facing the berry trees, in case they came in before sunrise. Sure enough, about five minutes later, the thrush came in with the robins. This was a life bird for both of us! They were feeding on berries in the snow, that got knocked off the trees. The trees were right alongside the road, so they would fly up into the larger trees, when trucks would drive past. We pulled up right next to the trees and waited for them to come back down. After 20 minutes or so they came back down. They would go up and come back down about every 30-45 minutes, and would disappear and then reappear into the larger trees. We then caught some bad luck. A woman was plowing the parking lot with a front end loader with a large plow, scraping across the asphalt and making a lot of noise. We waited it out, but the thrush never came back. We did see a flock of robins head off to the south, during the snow removal. We spent the majority of the morning there, and before heading out, we decided to take a ride around the block, to see if we could relocate the thrush. We did! It was with several robins in parking lot 30, between the fire and police departments. We didn’t stick around to see if it would come down to some of the berry trees over there.

We then thought we would head over to the Buena Vista Grasslands, hoping to see the male Snowy Owl, that has been around. We didn’t find any Snowy Owls, but did see several Rough-legged Hawks, Northern Harriers and American Kestrels. We also saw 38 Greater Prairie-Chickens, which were lifers for me. They were very far out, but were flushed by something and flew a good distance, that we could watch them. We drove around the area for the rest of the afternoon, but there wasn’t too much activity. We did get 3 Short-eared Owls just after sunset. They were in the field southeast of the intersection at Hwy W and Taft Rd. The photos below are from the day.

Townsend’s Solitaire at Whitnall Park 12/15/19

Jeremy2 Comments

Today while watching the Packers game, I saw a post about a Townsend’s Solitaire being seen near the Boerner Botanical Gardens, at Whitnall Park. I’ve seen these birds many times before, but it’s a great county bird for the year, so I decided to try for it. Whitnall Park is only 10 minutes from me, making it an easier decision. I work from dark to dark during the week in winter, and my only time to take pictures is on the weekend, so it was today or nothing. I’m glad I went, because I found it fairly quickly, and was able to help several others find it too. At first, I saw a bird fly up to the tops of the trees. Based on the size of it and flight, I thought it might be the bird. I got my binoculars on it and it sure was! It sat way up high for about 15 minutes, singing softly and preening. Then it turned and flew down to the berry trees below. After eating a few berries, it again flew way up high, and did the same thing again. After about another 15 minutes or so, it flew down the opposite way of me. I walked around the tree line to the other side and didn’t see it. All of sudden, it pops out in the berry tree, right in front of me. It ate a few berries and a Hermit Thrush chased it off. Must have been “his” berry tree. The solitaire again few up high and did the same thing. I watched it for about 50 minutes and it went down for berries 3 times. It was pretty active. It was sunny and cold with temps in the low 20’s. Pictures below are from today.