American Kestrel 2011

This female American Kestrel was patrolling Northerly Island on a cold but sunny day in February.  From her perch she had a great view of downtown Chicago.  Kestrels are smaller members of the Falcon family that can hover over their prey. 

Long-tailed Ducks 2011

We saw this pair of Long-tailed Ducks in Burnham Harbor on Friday, February 25, 2011.

Red-breasted Nuthatch 2011

Two of these scrappy little Red-breasted Nuthatches showed up on February 20-21, 2011.  They have gone to the hopper feeder and the suet feeders.  This one huddled against the tree for a windbreak long enough for me to snap some photos.  These northern breeders are smaller than White-breasted Nuthatches, which are year round residents.















UPDATE: As of May 8 at least one of the RBNUs has continued to visit the yard.  Their average departure for the Chicago region is May 18. 

Brown Creeper 2011

This little guy has been showing up on my backyard American Linden for several days in mid-February.  I assume he's picking off little insects with his curved bill, unless there's more suet still on the bark.  His tail helps him hop along the bark, never staying still for very long. 

Snowy Owl 2011

For several weeks in early 2011, a Snowy Owl was reported in northwestern Illinois.  Snowy Owls are rare winter migrants into Illinois from their breeding grounds in the Arctic.  Because they nest on the ground, drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife would have a negative impact on Snowy Owl habitat.  In winter they come to places like Illinois not to escape Arctic cold, but in search of food.  Jill, Joe, and I set out see it on Friday, February 11, 2011.  A couple of years ago Jill and I looked for a Snowy Owl in the fields near Ottawa, IL, but we never found it. 

This 2011 owl was easier to locate, however.  We stayed in our car and used it as a blind.  The owl put on a great show.  It started atop a pole next to the road, then flew into the cornfield.  It stayed there for a few minutes, then flew back up to the top of the pole.  I took a bunch of pictures with a telephoto lens (only a few are cropped).  We left shortly after seeing this great display.

Many people have gone to see this incredible creature.  Unfortunately, they have not all used common sense or ethical practices.  After our sighting, I learned that sometimes people have parked long lines of cars along the road to see the bird.  Some people have approached the owl in the cornfield to get a "better" view or to flush it.  The scene has been described by veteran birders as a "circus."  Most disturbing of all, some people have brought mice to "bait" the owl, in the hope of seeing it fly to capture the mice.  All of this human activity is a stress on a wild owl and puts it at risk.

I do not know if my pictures show the owl snatching one of the mice that someone may have previously brought.  I was unaware that this had been done, and I am ashamed that people have behaved so recklessly around a rare and protected bird.  I certainly hope the owl was not exposed to any diseases. 

It is a gift to witness such a beautiful bird, and is not something to be be abused.

Kenai Peninsula 2010

This is the third and final portion of the Alaska trip. Ice is the dominant feature of this region. Out of Seward, we hiked 3,000 feet up and 8-miles round trip to the massive Harding Icefield (300 sq.mi) from which some 40 glaciers are formed. We spent several days at a heated public use cabin, listening to the glacial thunder and creaking and groaning at Kenai Fjords National Park's Aialik Bay and watching lots of seabirds and marine mammals, including 6-7 Humbpack Whales bubble net fishing (rare for south central Alaska) and two colonies of endangered Stellar's Sea Lions.
We paddled a couple of times out on the bay between rain showers. One day we approached the Aialik glacier. Five miles across the bay, it is 1 mile wide and 1,600 ft tall, but we kept our distance. It was eerie to slide alongside the small icebergs that had calved from the glacier. Another day we paddled by the Pederson glacier and toward the Holgate glacier.
The bay is over 800 ft deep, but the water was smooth and calm. The real danger was losing our bearings--on the way back, fog rolled in and we could not see land behind or before us. The combination of a compass and GPS verification kept us on course. Harbor Seals like to haul out and rest on the floating ice. We collected some small chunks to chill the cheese and Chardonnay--now that's roughing it!
Out of Homer, we visited the Peterson Field Station on Katchemach Bay and saw bog species, such as White Swamp Orchid, Star Gentian, and the carniverous Sundew plant, and many intertidal creatures--I even felt the grip of a Giant Pacific Octopus!

Denali National Park 2010

This is the second portion of the Alaska trip. We camped 4 nights at Wonder Lake, hoping to see Mt. McKinley, also called Denali, "The High One." At over 20,000 feet Denali is the highest point in North America and is often shrouded in clouds and fog. Our diligence was rewarded gradually, as the white mountain slowly revealed itself. We loved seeing the Common Loon nest on Wonder Lake and hearing their hauting wail. There were large rafts of Surf Scoters and White-winged Scoters there as well, and we got scolded several times by territorial Wilson's Warblers. We saw a mother moose actually blowing bubbles in a pond not far from her twin calves. Another thrill was staking out a Gyrfalcon nest on a veritcal cliff and seeing a dark-morph parent bring food to its brood (Gyrs are the world's largest falcon and quite majestic).

At Denali we finished Adolf Murie's A Naturalist in Alaska and started Mardy Murie's book Two in the Far North, a chronical of her life in Alaska as a child, her arctic adventures as a young bride to federal biololgist Olaus, and her life-long advocacy of wilderness preservation in Alaska. I loved Mardy's idea of preparedness--once after a plane crash, the first thing she did was dig out her supply of molasses "cry baby cookies" to share with the lucky survivors.

The bears we saw at Denali were brown bears, or grizzlies, and these we saw from the safety of the bus. The park rangers at Denali go to great lengths to teach visitors about bear safety: DO NOT RUN from a bear, but make your presence known. Although bears are mainly foragers of grass and berries (and the occasional ground squirrel), they do not like to be startled. Author Jonathan Waterman has noted that humans are far more deadly to bears, and that a person is more likely to die from bee stings, a lightning strike, dog attack, or homicide than from bears. One of the places we reliably saw bears was at Sable Mountain. Adolf Murie wrote about observing a sow and cubs from this very same location many decades ago. Like Adolf, we were treated to the play-fighting of twin bears. How excellent that this place has been protected so that generations of brown bears may continue to live wild.

We got a wilderness camping permit to explore the heights of Cathedral Mountain and the views of Igloo Mountain and the Teklanika River basin. I learned not to put all my trust in the GPS and USGS maps, because the thin blue line we thought was a stream turned out to be a bed of dry rocks, so we had to hike 1 mile down the mountain and over tundra tussocks to the river to get our water supply, and hike back up a mile to our camp. It really made me aware of how precious water is, and thankful for abundant access to it at home.