Listing Through Life

tringa (a white-rumped water bird) flavipes (from flavus, yellow, and pes, foot)

Monday, July 30, 1979 — 1:00 pm

Barrington, Illinois — Crabtree Nature Center

I arrived at Crabtree shortly after a storm chased everyone away, and I had the place to myself. It was one of those steamy, sticky days that make moving miserable.

Shortly after I arrived, I spotted the Lesser Yellowlegs. It was feeding near a Killdeer in a flooded area in the grassy field along Sulky Pond. I didn’t know what it was, and as I had come straight from work, I didn’t have a field guide. I walked off the trail (violating the regulations) to within 30 feet of the bird and sat down with my back against a large oak tree. I watched it for 20 minutes and wrote down a complete description in a notebook. The bird waded around in the puddle and in the nearby grass. When it wasn’t walking, it bobbed up and down.

butorides (bittern) striatus (unknown)

Sunday, July 29, 1979 — 1:30 pm

Barrington, Illinois — Crabtree Nature Center

Two Green Herons were standing motionless on a fallen tree in the marsh at the end of Bulrush Pond.

I took this photo of a Green Heron on Sulky Pond at Crabtree in May, 2006 — about a quarter mile from where I saw my lifer Green Herons more than 26 years earlier.

ardea (heron) herodias (heron)

Sunday, July 29, 1979 — 12:00 noon

Barrington, Illinois — Crabtree Nature Center

The herons were standing on a mudflat by the water’s edge on the island in Crabtree Lake.

anas (duck) platyrynchos (from platys, broad or flat, and rhynchos, beak)

Sunday, July 29, 1979 — 10:00 am

Barrington, Illinois — Crabtree Nature Center

The Mallards were feeding in amongst the dead trees and stumps in Bulrush Pond about 30 yards from the blind.

Bulrush Pond is about five acres in size. One end of it is open water, the other end is marshy with many tree trunks sticking out of the water. The observation blind was about halfway down the pond near where the marsh starts.

zenaida (applied by Charles Lucien Bonaparte, French zoologist, in 1838, in honor of his wife, Princess Zenaide Charlotte Julie Bonaparte) macroura (from makros, long, and oura, tail)

Friday, July 20, 1979 — 8:00 am

Golf, Illinois — residential area

I was on a roofing job in the tiny suburb of Golf, tucked between Glenview and Morton Grove. The houses were large and spaced far apart with large expanses of lawn in between. The Mourning Dove flew overhead and landed in a tree about 50 yards away.

I was familiar with Mourning Doves from my childhood and had been looking for one since I began listing.  I was beginning to wonder if any were left.  In retrospect, I have no idea where I was looking or how it could have taken me so long.