When we visited Rollins last Friday it was overcast and threatening rain the entire time. Luckily we finished the loop trail just as the drizzle turned into full-on rain. Along the way we spotted these two young Eastern Kingbirds calling to their parents.
Later we saw this Mallard female leading eight ducklings through the overgrown stream.
This Sedge Wren teased us in the field. We were unsure of the ID until we came home and could compare the song.
On our drive back from Florida last month we took a detour to stop at the Unclaimed Baggage Center shop in Scottsboro, Alabama. On the way we stopped for breakfast in Ft. Payne, Alabama, where we saw a colony of Cliff Swallows.
They were perched on service wires and flying around a man-made stream. The birds also frequently made stops under a pair of small pedestrian bridges that crossed the stream.
These Cliff Swallows were life birds for us and it was a lot of fun to watch their antics.
Bird Photography Weekly is a regular collection of user-submitted bird photos from all over the world. The new edition comes out every Sunday. Thanks to Birdfreak for hosting this great blog meme – go have a look!
Waterfall Glen is a DuPage County Forest Preserve, located southwest of Chicago and about 90 minutes driving from our home in the northern suburbs. We visited this odd-shaped preserve today after reading Owlman’s post about his recent visit. Go read his post Indigo bunting oasis! to find out why we were so intrigued (and to view better photos than below!).
Prior to reading Owlman’s post, I had never heard of Waterfall Glen. I had, however, heard of Argonne National Laboratory. The forest preserve property surrounds the lab’s property, making the preserve doughnut-shaped. Argonne is a U.S. Dept of Energy research facility focused on national security, energy and biological & environmental systems.
The main trail at Waterfall Glen is a nearly ten-mile loop. There are several parking areas around the preserve and smaller looping trails are available. We walked about 3.5 miles on the northwest side of the park, taking the Tear-Thumb trail shortcut from the main trailhead parking lot.
First, as expected, we were eaten alive on the grass path.
The gravel main trail was much better – no mosquitoes but plenty of birds and other creatures.
The main trail was virtually crawling with these slugs and tiny thumbnail-sized frogs.
And we also saw & heard Indigo Buntings, yes! Unfortunately most of our views were like this:
After this little hike we drove to another area of the park to see the waterfall.
We had a lovely morning there and will surely visit this preserve again. Many thanks to Owlman!
My dad made us this great suet log feeder to add to our back yard feeders.
He used a piece of oak firewood about 16″ long and drilled four 1 3/8″ holes for suet logs or suet dough.
With a hook screwed in on top we can hang this almost anywhere.
We’d seen our resident Downy Woodpecker struggle a bit on a cage suet feeder, but she has no trouble with this one.
Yard bird #20 scared away all of the other birds enjoying our feeding station.
Arthur noticed the feeder birds scatter and even the resident bunny high-cottontailed it out of the yard. Because of this Arthur was on the lookout for a hawk when Coop landed in the tree behind our yard. It had a look around and did a bit of preening in the tree.
Next it dropped down behind the fence for a few seconds and then flew into a tree in our neighbor’s yard. Just a few seconds after that, it landed on our fence where we oohed and aahed (more like “Where’s the ?$&#!?! camera!?” and “Try to get the scope on it!!”) over it for a short, precious minute.
There’s something light and feather-covered in one of the Coop’s talons, but it looks much too small to be an entire bird. Probably no more than 30 seconds passed from the hawk flying between the tree, ground, tree and fence again, so what’s in the talon and what was left behind (and where?) is a bit of a mystery.
We love our feeder birds – all of them! Welcome, Coop!
This is a late addition to this week’s Bird Photography Weekly. BPW is a regular collection of user-submitted bird photos from all over the world. The new edition comes out every Sunday and everyone is welcome to participate. Thanks to Birdfreak for hosting this great blog meme – go have a look!
On June 16th we visited the Nature Conservancy’s Disney Wilderness Preserve near Kissimmee, Florida.
First we did some leisurely birding from the car on the drive in to the parking area.
Despite this lousy photo, we did have a pretty good look at this lifer Swallow-tailed Kite as we approached the parking area.
The Preserve, established in 1992, spans 12,000 acres and includes several different habitats including swamp, wetlands, scrubland and flatwoods. Parts of the preserve are home to the endemic Florida Scrub Jay, but this area of the park is normally off-limits to visitors.
Again it was hot so we limited ourselves to a short walk on the John C. Sawhill Interpretive Trail.
Our second lifer of the day a Brown-headed Nuthatch, which we saw along the trail shown above.
When we left the trail we signed out of the preserve’s trail register and noticed the only other recent visitor had been on the trails the day before, for just 15 minutes. We lasted about an hour and a half in the heat.
This morning we biked to Round Lake after watching the local Independence Day parade. At the lake we visited a newly dedicated (June 6) part of Lakefront Park. The little park has an interpretive path and even a small restored wetland!
Part of the park is woodland. An interpretive sign showed aerial photos of the land taken in 1939, when the former forest was cleared as farmland. In another photo you could see that by 1993 the farmland was gone and the woods were returning.
Yay for suburban parks and restored habitats! Have a great Independence Day, fellow Americans, and a great July weekend to everyone else!
While in Florida last month we spent a day at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. It was all about astronauts, rockets and space exploration that day, but we did see these Black Vultures hanging out by the family/press bleachers. They would’ve had the best seats for the launch, if it hadn’t been scrubbed.
And we saw this Laughing Gull back at the complex, standing close to a digital sign that gave updates on the launch status. Sure, you’ll be at Kennedy for the next launch window (July 11), even if we aren’t. What are you laughing at?
While waiting out the time between the scrubbed STS-127 launches in mid-June, we spent a couple of days around Kissimmee, Florida. One morning we visited Tibet-Butler Preserve in Orlando, a stop on the Great Florida Birding Trail.
Before we were chased out by the man-eating mosquitoes, we followed a bit of the Pine Circle Trail, where we were dwarfed by a forest of Longleaf Pine.
We were interested to read that seedlings of this tree have a so-called “grass stage” where they are easily mistaken for clumps of grass. Is that what we saw on the path, or are these simply fallen needles from the tall trees that surrounded us?
Our lone bird on the short walk was this Red-bellied Woodpecker.
We also glimpsed the greenest lizard I’ve ever seen (my guess – Green Anole [Anolis carolinensis]).
No photos of the mosquitoes but trust me, they were there. Have a great weekend and a safe Independence Day to my fellow Americans, wherever you are. Be sure to check out the other posts submitted for Skywatch Friday this week.
Here are some of the more interesting search terms that brought visitors to this site during June. You can see previous editions of this monthly post here.
One disturbing kind of search that brings visitors to this blog are those that are looking to harm or deter birds. Pigeons were the target last month with searches for anti pigeon gel and pigeons ate poison. Someone also stopped by after searching for bird feeders that ward off large birds.
The most interesting and funny typos for the month were bird house dimentions, fedding oranges to the birds, and morphing owel.
The following ID-related searches also led to this site: looking for a white breasted gray-blue bird found in wisconsin not a nuthatch; did i see a falcon or a hawk in fox valley illinois; do orioles live in illinois. The answers: Blue-grey Gnatcatcher; Yes; Yes.
Future design inspiration came in the form of the search for prairie chicken gifts.
Someone searched for how to find out how visitors came to blog. I use statcounter but there are a lot of similar services out there.
My favorite search for June was bird feeder microphone. Dude, don’t settle for a microphone – you can get a whole video & still bird camera for your feeder!
