Birding Midewin Tallgrass Prairie

I took a short three day trip with my family to Michigan and Illinois and made an effort to visit a natural area called Midewin Tallgrass Prairie --- which is about 30-40 minutes south of Chicago.

Midewin has an interesting story - it was historically a large tall grass prairie, which was turned into farmland, then the military used the land for making and testing bombs. And most recently, it was turned back into a national tall grass prairie. The name Midewin is derived from a native word meaning "healing" or "recovering". Yes, the ecosystem could be recovering, but also the people that get to visit this wonderful habitat could be recovering and healing as well.  Read more at: https://www.fs.usda.gov/midewin

PLANTS

My visit was essentially limited to a 1 hour walk at the iron bridge trailhead pathway. Lots of great plants were seen - Rattlesnake Master, Royal Catchfly, Prairie Blazingstar as well as countless yellow flowering plants such as cup plant, compass plant, and countless varieties of dark eyed susan type plants.

BUTTERFLIES

I was hoping for better butterfly diversity - and better luck with perching butterrlies: some seen were:

Buckeye

Northern Cresent

Silver Spotted Skipper

Red Spotted Purple

Cabbage Whites

Clouded Sulphur (or Southern Dogface?)

Birds

Dickcissel

Indigo Bunting

American Goldfinch

Barn / Rough Winged Swallow

Blue Grosbeak

Song Sparrow

Field Sparrow

Henslows Sparrow

Buteo Hawk

Chimney Swift

Overall - it was a brief visit to this park - but very nice. I was surprised to see Blue Grosbeaks. I was not expecting to see them there. I was also happy to find Henslows Sparrows- which I have only seen a handful of times at Point Pelee. I dipped on a few area specialties such as Eastern Meadowlark, Upland Sandpiper, Loggerhead Shrike and Bells Vireo. 

Good Birding,

Dwayne

Henslow's Sparrow and Some Early May Birding Highlights

Henslow's Sparrow - 10:09AM May 4th, 2014 Point Pelee

Wow, I've had some great luck with rare Sparrows this weekend! First a Clay coloured on Friday evening, then today, a Henslows! It goes to show you that every dog has his day!

I had been birding by myself, occasionally meeting up with friends then separating from them.  At one point I crossed paths with Josh & Jeremy and birded momentarily with them. I had to leave the park today early to catch a family gathering so I left Josh and Jeremy, only to find this bird, a few hundred meters north of them! I found this bird so simply. I had seen a few Winter Wrens along this west beach trail then I saw this small bird on the path in front of me. It flushed from the path into a tree about 4m away from me. It stayed there for several minutes while I called Jeremy, who was 150m south of where I was on the trail. I didn't so much as "pish" to find this bird.

A few notes:

1. For the life of me, I could not get a good photo of the bird. I had all the wrong settings for exposure, metering, mode, white balance, even my camera was on the 7m, not 3m minimum focus distance! ( I might have to bug Josh for any good photos he may have gotten).
2. It was exciting to Ontbird this bird and see people flood in to see the bird. I was worried that people might stress out the bird though. Many people got a chance to see this bird though and I hope the bird's welfare was respected by those that saw it throughout the afternoon.
3. I can't believe I found this. I have seen Henslows at Pelee on two other occasions and I always asked myself how the heck someone found such a bird. I guess its just good timing!

Clay coloured Sparrow - May 2nd, 2014 Point Pelee

As I was driving home from Pelee today (I drove home at 1pm, had a family commitment) I re-read my ontbirds posting and was horrified to see that my phone auto-corrected Henslows-->Helsows ... WTF?!?!?

I've had two or three such mis-naming of birds species:

1- "Red shouldered Blackbirds" (that was my fault... Just tired)
2- My phone also auto-corrected "8 Golden Plovers along road E" to "8 Golden Lovers along road E"
3- and now: Henslows-->Helsows Sparrows.

....I know of at least three LLB's that are going to chide me about this auto-correcting and typographical error prone ontbird/wepbird postings ...LOL!

Other good birds seen today were:

Blue headed Vireo (FOS)
Blue winged Warbler (FOS)
Black and white Warbler (FOS)
Hooded Warbler (FOS)
Red headed Woodpecker (FOS)
Nashville Warbler
Yellow Warbler
Horned Grebe
And lots of Winter Wrens!

Hooded Warbler

Blue Headed Vireo

Red Admiral Butterfly

Blue winged Warbler

I wanted to see the Female Cerulean warbler as well as the Yellow Breasted Chat, but I dipped on those! I saw a Red-headed Woodpecker (distant) while birding "Cactus Field" which was really nice. Red headed Woodpeckers are one of my favorite birds!

Good Birding!
Dwayne Murphy

I took this photo as I left the scene... Lots of people showed up to see this bird!

Henslow's Sparrow and Other Early May Migrants

Wow, its been a great spring migration so far. Of course, work has been getting in the way of me being able to spend large swaths of time at Point Pelee, but I still have made an attempt to get out and bird every day (if only locally) for the last week or two. On Tuesday April 30th, I stopped by Point Pelee after work, mainly to try and find a Worm eating Warbler at Kopagaron Woods (unsuccessful) but then went to PPNP to walk the West Beach Footpath from the visitor center to the tip parking lot (and perhaps take the tram back). Lots of cool birds to look at. It wasn't crawling with birds, but there were some nice birds every now and then. Savannah Sparrow, White crowned, brief looks at Red headed Woodpeckers, White eyed and Blue headed Vireos, Brown Thrashers and Palm Warblers were nice birds to see. But, just as I was nearing the tip parking lot, I saw David Bell waving me over  to see what Josh and himself had found... A Henslow's Sparrow crawling through the grass! What a beautiful Sparrow. It was difficult to photograph because it was never really out in the open, and also, my lens has a 3.5m minimal focus length.

I faintly saw the white tram through the woods make its last trip to the visitor center and realized I was going to have to briskly walk the 2.5km walk back to the visitor center, (I was hungry and I knew my wife would be a little upset about me getting home late) ... but how could I complain? This is a bird I had conceded that I would probably never have found... A mega rarity... So Dave and Josh ...thanks!

According to ROM, the Henslow's Sparrow is endangered in Canada and Ontario, due to loss of old-field habitat from changing agricultural practices, urbanization and succession of grasslands to forests. I encourage anyone to read more about this bird at the following two links. Perhaps more awareness could increase the chance that suitable habitats could either be preserved or regenerated.

http://www.rom.on.ca/ontario/risk.php?doc_type=fact&id=130
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Henslows_Sparrow/lifehistory

Josh mentioned seeing a Northern Goshawk, moments before I had arrived, and I had myself noted a few Accipiter Hawk species flying overhead... I'm not sure but perhaps we had seen the same bird? I'm inviting any corrections or confirmations on this bird... Goshawk? My caution in the ID stems in the lack of marking on the lower belly, but, it does seem to have a faint white eyebrow, as well as buteo-like wings.

I could be wrong! :-)

Another post-work Pelee walk this week (on Thursday May 2nd) had shown a noticeable increase in bird diversity. I had my own awesome moments viewing: Wood Thrushes, Veery, Winter Wren, Red-eyed Vireo, Warbling Vireo, Nashville Warbler, Hooded Warbler, Blue-winged Warbler, Black and white Warbler, Least Flycatcher (my first northbound), Brown Thrashers, Scarlet Tanagers, Eastern Kingbird among many others. Many self found!

I've noticed that Blue headed Vireos are have been abundant this year, I don't know if I have just gotten better at finding them, or if my timing was better, but I had never seen this many in any of my previous three years of birding.

Good birding!
Dwaynejava

Henslows Sparrow - 330