Listing Through Life

setophaga (from setos, moth, and phagein, to eat) ruticilla, from rutillus, red, and cilla, tail)

Tuesday, September 18, 1979 — 2:00 pm

Glenview, Illinois — residential area

I was on my roofing job when I saw this bird.  It was foraging and fly-catching, flitting from branch to branch in a large evergreen and oak in the backyard of the house on which we were putting gutters.  I didn’t have my binoculars, so I had to stalk it.  I managed to get fairly close without any of the guys on the crew seeing what I was doing.

podilymbus (from podi, rump foot, and kolymbos, diver) podiceps (from podus, foot, and caput, head)

Thursday, September 6, 1979 — 4:30 pm

Barrington, Illinois — Crabtree Nature Center

I saw these birds from the blind on Bulrush Pond. The grebes were swimming and diving in the open end of the pond. They often swam with just their head and neck above the surface.

carduelis (thistle) pinus (pine)

Sunday, September 2, 1979 — 12:00 noon

Boulder Junction, Wisconsin

There was a small jack pine grove next to an antique store with many feeders. The Pine Siskins were eating sunflower seeds on a feeder hanging off the eaves of the building. This was the same place where I had seen my lifer Evening Grosbeak, Rose-breasted Grosbeak, and American Goldfinch earlier in the year. The Evening Grosbeaks and American Goldfinches were still around.

tringa (a white-rumped water bird) solitaria (solitary)

Sunday, September 2, 1979 — 10:00 am

Oneida County, Wisconsin — Rainbow Flowage

My fiancée and I went to the flowage beach-comb and bird. The water level was low, and a lot of sand and mudflats were exposed back in the bays. A few Solitary Sandpipers were foraging in a loose flock on mud flats and in shallow water in a small bay. Occasionally, one would make a short flight to another spot.

picoides (from picus, a woodpecker, and eidos, appearance) villosus (hairy)

Sunday, September 2, 1979 — 7:30 am

McNaughton, Wisconsin

My college roommate and I were standing in a yard at the edge of the woods watching a Red-eyed Vireo (a lifer) that was singing in the top of a tall, dead white pine in the woods. The Hairy Woodpecker landed in the same tree, very close to the vireo, stayed for a few moments, then took off.