Listing Through Life

calidris (speckled water bird) mauri (given in 1838 by Charles Bonaparte for his friend Ernesto Mauri)

Monday, August 10, 1981 — 8:00 am

Waukegan, Illinois — Waukegan Public Beach — Lake Michigan

About half a mile north of the swimming beach, a small creek comes out of the dunes, crosses the beach and empties into the lake. The edges of this creek were sprinkled with sandpipers, including Least Sandpipers, Semipalmated Sandpipers, Pectoral Sandpipers, Solitary Sandpipers, Short-billed Dowitchers, and three Western Sandpipers. I spent a lot of time looking at the various peeps, and I sincerely felt I was seeing three species. At one point, I had all three in my scope at one time. They were foraging in the sand in and along the creek, picking at the mud, splashing in the water and preening. Occasionally, one would fly up or down the creek past where I stood. I got within four feet.

After this sighting, I went years without seeing another Western Sandpiper. As I got better at birding, I realized Peterson’s Field Guide doesn’t give enough information for separating these birds. I began to doubt that I’d seen one. And then Birding magazine ran an identification article, and I studied it intently. It said, among other things, that Westerns may actually outnumber Semipalmateds in this area in the fall. Perhaps I did see a Western in 1981.

Anyway, in August 1990 I saw several in the slough at Bode and Barrington Roads in Poplar Creek Forest Preserve. I got a chance to directly compare several Westerns with several Semipalmateds, and I went back three or four days in a row to make sure.

bartramia (given by Alexander Wilson for his friend William Bartram, and early American naturalist) longicauda (from longus, long, and caudum, tail)

Monday, June 8, 1981 — 11:00 am

Illinois Beach State Park, Illinois

Like the Piping Plover and the Grasshopper Sparrow, my other two lifers of the day, this Upland Sandpiper was mentioned on the Audubon hot line. It was in the prairie at the extreme southern end of the park. I heard it before I saw it, a rolling, hollow-sounding series of eerie notes. I spotted it just after it landed on a branch of a dead tree approximately 15 feet above the ground. It stood with its wings raised for a few seconds. It then stood on the branch, occasionally tipping forward as if it were about to take off.

I looked at a nearby Grasshopper Sparrow, and when I looked back, the sandpiper had flown to the top of a metal fence post on the south border of the park. Again it held its wings above its back for a few seconds after landing.

ammodramus (from ammos, sand, and dramein, to run) savannarum (meadows)

Monday, June 8, 1981 — 11:00 am

Illinois Beach State Park, Illinois

I also heard about this bird on the Audubon hot line. I drove up after I saw the Piping Plover. I located the Grasshopper Sparrow by its song. It was perched in a small bush at the extreme south end of the prairie about 400 yards from Lake Michigan. It flew low over the grass, landed on a tall grass stalk and began singing again.

charadrius (plover) melodus (melodious)

Monday, June 8, 1981 — 10:30 am

Waukegan, Illinois — Waukegan Public Beach

I heard about this bird on the Audubon hot line. It was just where the information said it would be, but I almost missed it anyway. On the far north end of the beach was a disturbed area where sand was piled into three or four long ridges running parallel to the Lake Michigan shoreline. The innermost ridge was about 100 yards from the water and totally bare of vegetation. The sand was dry and loose and difficult to walk on.

I was walking along this hill looking for the Piping Plover. I spotted a Killdeer running away from me. As I watched it, I noticed a smaller, paler plover running alongside, about two feet away from it. The Piping Plover was almost the exact color of the sand, and were it not for the Killdeer, I doubt I would have seen it. It was very pretty, smaller than the Killdeer, with an incomplete black neck band and a short yellow/orange bill with a black tip. Its legs were also yellow/orange. As I approached, both birds crouched down in the sand. When I got too close, they ran off, then flew down the hill out of sight.

wilsonia (for Alexander Wilson) pusilla (very small)

Tuesday, May 19, 1981 — 10:00 am

Elk Grove Village, Illinois — Busse Woods Forest Preserve

I spent a couple hours birding in the woods. I came out of the trees where a short creek runs a short way across a field and empties into a nearby pond. At the edge of the woods, there was a tangle of bushes near the creek. The Wilson’s Warbler was foraging rapidly around in the branches about six feet off the ground.