iridoprocne (from iridos, bright color, and Prokne, mythical daughter of Pandion who was changed to a swallow) bicolor
Sunday, April 6, 1980 — 4:30 pm
Barrington, Illinois — Crabtree Nature Center
These birds were flying back and forth low over the surface of Bulrush Pond.
passerella (sparrow) iliaca (flanks)
Sunday, April 6, 1980 — 4:15 pm
Barrington, Illinois — Crabtree Nature Center
When I spotted this bird, I let my wife obey the stay-on-the-path rules, while I took off into the woods in disregard for the law. I chased the sparrow for quite a ways before I got a satisfactory look. It was foraging in the underbrush in the woods near the apple orchard. Sundays draw large crowds, and I was somewhat worried about getting caught in my lawlessness. As soon as I had a positive i.d. on the Fox Sparrow, I rejoined my wife on the straight and narrow path.
podiceps (from podus, foot, and caput, head) auritus (eared)
Sunday, April 6, 1980 — 2:30 pm
Barrington, Illinois — Baker’s Lake
On the Friday before this, the day that I saw my lifer House Wren, the naturalist at Crabtree told me about Baker’s Lake. I drove over to see what there was to see. What I saw was hundreds of ducks and coots. I brought my wife with me on this Sunday afternoon to share my discovery. The ducks and coots were still there. In among them were four Horned Grebes, swimming in the lake. Later they slept, with their heads tucked into the feathers on their backs.
Baker’s Lake is a fairly large lake for this area, about 60 acres or so, I’d estimate (which I do very poorly). It is quite shallow, and at times numerous mud flats are exposed. Most of the area around the lake is forest preserve covered with scrubby woods, marshes and fields. One side is lined with homes and a park that consists of an open oak wood lot on a bluff above the lake.
In the center of the lake is a small island. It can’t be much larger than 80′ x 15′ in area. When I first began birding there, it was thoroughly covered with scrubby trees, most of them not more than 15 feet tall. Since then, a huge, mixed flock of herons has built a rookery, and the weight of their nests have crushed the smaller trees and broken most of the branches off the larger trees. A monstrous scaffolding of two-by-fours has been constructed, and the herons have adopted this as their nesting platform. Their large stick nests cover every inch of available space. This makes for a cluttered, unsightly, albeit interesting mess.
troglodytes (creeper into holes) aedon (Queen of Thebes in Greek mythology, who was changed by Zeus into a nightingale)
Friday, April 4, 1980 — 11:45 am
Barrington, Illinois — Crabtree Nature Center
I spotted this bird foraging actively in the bushes and vine tangle along the dam at the end of Bulrush Pond. It was hopping along the ground and in the bushes, chipping as it went. It came within four feet of where I stood. I remember that this was the first House Wren seen at Crabtree this year.
anthus (bird) spinoletta (titlark)
Thursday, April 3, 1980 — 4:45 pm
Evanston, Illinois — Northwestern University
Once again, I drove east to Lake Michigan after work, this time by myself. As I got closer to the lake, the sky got more overcast. By the time I got to Northwestern, things looked like the inside of a sauna. There was clearly (?) no point in birding in that weather, but since I was there, I decided to take a walk. I headed around the path that circles the lagoon and runs along the shore. Visibility was nil.
To my surprise, I spotted a bird foraging on the grass and rocks near the edge of the lake. As I approached, it walked ahead of me and disappeared into the gray. I followed, and in time I got enough close looks to identify it as an American Pipit. For a short time, a Song Sparrow was also poking around in the area.
I took this photo a few years later. It shows the location of the pipit sighting, but definitely not the weather conditions.
