At 6 a.m., with drizzle clouding the lenses of our binoculars, started the annual spring bird count, held throughout Illinois the first Saturday in May.
The dark skies made every one of the 25 different warblers at the top of the trees at a Lake County forest preserve look the same. I did manage to pick out a golden-winged warbler, but the rest were just flying blurs.
Overall, my husband and I — who have done this count together for many years — were convinced this would not be one of our better ones. But the morning drizzle melded into a spectacular sunny afternoon that had us finishing the count full of joy.
All week long, the winds had been from the north, pushing any potential migrants southward, which is not the way they want to go this time of year. With a southerly wind shift the day before the count, we were hopeful.
There were birds there. But they were just difficult to find and see. Our ability, especially my husband’s, to recognize birds by their songs, enabled us to add woodland species to the list.
“Wheeep,” called the great crested flycatcher.
“Eeolay,” came the song of the wood thrush, whose flutelike notes echoed in the woods.
“Witchety-witchety-witchety,” remarked a common yellowthroat from a shrubby wet area.
Still, when the rain increased, it was rather dismal out there. The birds stopped singing. We walked in a Rachel Carson-type of silent spring. When we learned there might be thunderstorms around 2 or 3 p.m., we feared we would not be able to make our annual four-mile round-trip trek to wetlands in northern Lake County.
The wetlands were down a gravelly road, near a forest preserve, but the road we needed to be on was closed, as it always is, and we had to park and get out and walk. By then, our feet were writhing from the five miles we had already walked, but we pressed on. The sun was out, the sky had cleared to a delicious blue, and it wasn’t too windy or too cool.
A pair of adult bald eagles soared over us, foreshadowing more avian sights and sounds.
As we walked the gravel road bordered with some agricultural land, shrubby areas, oak woodlands and wet areas, we documented five different brown thrashers singing. This species is a mimic and repeats various songs and call notes of other bird species, typically once or twice. Listening to its varied tones while I walked by a native prairie crab tree was nirvana.
When we reached a small lake south of the wetlands, we expected to see a breeding pair of trumpeter swans as we did last year, or some unusual duck species that hadn’t made it all the way to their northerly breeding grounds yet.
Our expectations fell way short, and we knew we had at least another mile to walk back to the car. But we pressed on to the wetland. From the road, it looks like a bunch of small puddles interspersed with some sedges and grasses, devoid of any birds.
But then we heard the unmistakable call of a sandhill crane. It got louder and more insistent. We pointed our binoculars to where the sound was emanating and saw an adult crane scolding, badgering and pecking at a Canada goose. Without walking any farther, we knew what was happening. A pair of cranes likely had young in the wetlands, and there was no way they were going to allow the goose to get any closer. The cranes chased the geese away and settled down.
Other sounds came from the wetlands, including the whinnying call of the sora rail, and the deep, grunting call of the Virginia rail.
We glimpsed each of these species as they ran out of the cattails and then back into cover. My husband also heard the call of the least bittern, an Illinois-threatened species. We documented five soras and two Virginia rails in that wetland, and confirmed nesting sandhill cranes.
It was about 7 p.m., an hour before sunset, and we reveled in the moment, far away from the sounds of traffic and noisy suburbia in a place that seems to me to be worlds away from Lake County.
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Sheryl DeVore has worked as a full-time and freelance reporter, editor and photographer for the baiduhai and its subsidiaries. She’s the author of several books on nature and the environment. Send story ideas and thoughts to [email protected].