Deep into the Lockport Prairie Preserve on a clear, crisp Saturday morning, Lee Witkowski called out to the sky without using words.
“That’s called ‘pishing,'” he said. “It’s just an interesting sound to the birds that seems to attract them.”
Witkowski, of Lemont, is one of several volunteers for local chapters of the National Audubon Society in the Southland who are surveying avian populations in certain areas this month as part of the Christmas Bird Count effort, which aims to assess the health of the U.S. bird population.
But it has other benefits too.
“It gets me out, and I like to contribute,” Witkowski said.
He said he’s usually accompanied by one or two other volunteers for the census, but on Saturday it was just him. There had been a last-minute cancellation, despite warmer-than-average temperatures.
Witkowski followed a deer path toward the shore of the Des Plaines River, where he set up a telescope on a tripod looking for birds in the distance.
His “pishing” seemed to work as several dark-eyed juncos made their way from an island on the river to a tree on the shore.
“Sometimes if you just stand still, they’ll come back,” Witkowski said.
Besides visual confirmation, he also listens for certain birds.
The sound of the flowing river was broken by the chirping of a black-capped chickadee and a white-breasted nuthatch.
Armed with a camera and an Audubon Society reference book, Witkowski also spotted starlings, a female cardinal — which are brown rather than red — and a bird he said he hasn’t seen in the area for five years, a brown creeper. Another bird he hadn’t seen lately, but which used to be more common, is the goldfinch.
Witkowski said he’s seen a lot of change — some good, some bad — in bird populations and the health of nature preserves during his more than 40 years participating in the Christmas survey.
Some of that change can be spotted in the preserve that is home to several endangered and threatened species, including the Hine’s emerald dragonfly.
Navigating through the forest and prairie terrain, Witkowski spotted several downed ash trees decimated by the invasive emerald ash borer.
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Trying to look on the bright side, he said holes in the trees could make nice winter homes for woodpeckers.
Witkowski said he worked in the preserve earlier in the year chopping down European buckthorn plants, invasive shrubbery that dominates the terrain, creating walls of impassable brush, and crowding out the native plants that are more beneficial to birds and other wildlife.
As a professor of biology and environmental science at Lewis University, Witkowski tries to impart the importance of being nature’s stewards to his students.
Through conservation, Witkowski said, falcons are making a comeback and the American bald eagle population recovered from being virtually extinct to no longer needing endangered status.
A bald eagle was recently spotted near Lake Renwick in Plainfield and, Witkowski said, bald eagles had recently made a home at Tampier Lake in Orland Park.
At Lockport Prairie, Witkowski counted 45 mallard ducks, four cardinals, one robin, seven gulls and 12 dark-eyed juncos in his final tally.
He’ll send his data to the Audubon Society, where it will be combined with other surveys to help provide researchers a picture of how bird populations have changed in time and provide indications of the long-term health and status of bird populations across the country.
The Christmas bird count started in 1900 when ornithologist Frank M. Chapman suggested changing a tradition of hunters killing birds during the season into counting them instead.
More nearby opportunities to participate in the Christmas Bird Count remain. One will be conducted Dec. 23 in the Thorn Creek area in Park Forest, while another on Dec. 30 will be centered at Sand Ridge Nature Center in Calumet City. More information on the bird count and how to participate is at http://www.audubon.org/conservation/join-christmas-bird-count/.
Frank Vaisvilas is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.