Chicago

A short trip to Chicago allowed for a long morning's birding on the Saturday and some casual birding on the iit campus. Campus brought me a surprise bird on Friday October 12th when a Winter Wren hopped around our feet as we headed for a late lunch.

Saturday was the planned birding day and Pat picked me up from my hotel to join the Wooded Island field trip as I had done a year ago. I picked up several expected species such as Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Downy Woodpecker, Golden-crowned Kinglet, Palm Warbler and White-throated Sparrow but I saw some that I did not expect such as Gray Catbird, Eastern Towhee and especially Red-bellied Woodpecker, while a flock of Pine Siskins was more interesting to the others than to me! Dark skies and some drops of rain brought Chimney Swifts down to eye-level.

Hermit Thrush

White-throated Sparrow

Following this trip, we were joined by top birder Randy and we headed out to McGinnis Slough where we saw many ducks, including Black Duck, and a new ABA for me in Mute Swan. I had seen them before in Ottawa but these were 'gifts from the Queen' and not allowed to count. We also had an American Toad on our walk back to the car and a  Blue Jay from the parking lot as we were about to leave.

American Toad

A trip to see the excellent Extreme Mammals exhibit at the Field Museum on Sunday ended with a surprise Blackpoll Warbler feeding on berries on the ground close to Buckingham Fountain. On Monday and I heard and then saw two Monk Parakeets on the iit campus. These were officially lifers for me although I had seen the colony of these birds in Casa Grande, AZ in 2009. Those birds were also uncountable.

Blackpoll Warbler