The birds are returning to Northern Illinois! I went out to Nelson Lake Marsh (Dick Young Forest Preserve) this morning and got the following shots: a male Redwing Blackbird and a flock of Sandhill Cranes. The Cranes circled the lake in their usual noisy fashion, then went off to parts unknown – I think they were looking for open water. It’s only March 8th and there’s plenty of bad weather a head, but things are looking up!
Red Wing Blackbird (male)
Sandhill Cranes from Nelson Lake Marsh
Well, I have to study today – since I’m back in school my “Daily Photograph” is going to be even less daily than before. Here is a photo of a Hairy Woodpecker I took at the CCC Cabin on the crest of the Sandia Mountains just east of Albuquerque, New Mexico in late October, 2006. Once I get going with school I will post my papers here, if they’re any good, anyway!
Hairy Woodpecker-Sandia Crest, New Mexico
Here is one of my better bird photos, taken at the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary near Fort Meyers, Florida in February of 2007. I was actually able to get close enough to get a pretty good shot – and he stayed put for long enough too! Corkscrew is a great place for birding, and seeing many other critters as well.
Red-bellied Woodpecker
Northern Cardinal
I took this photograph of a male Northern Cardinal at Starved Rock State Park, near Utica, Illinois in early May, 2009. He is in an interesting position, for some reason his left foot is up in the air! These are pretty, and very common, birds here in Illinois. When I lived in New Mexico I was surprised that they had no Cardinals – their range is only in the far south-west, IE “Boot heel” of the state – although they are common in Arizona. I saw a pair of Cardinals at the Gila Lower Box in south-western New Mexico once and was so surprised that I had to look it up in the bird book to make sure that it wasn’t some new and exotic species! Speaking of the Lower Box, that is a great place to go birding – it straddles two different ecosystems and has some 280 different species. I was also quite surprised once at seeing a Great Blue Heron in the Gila River there – it seemed so strange and incongruous to see a water bird in the middle of the desert, river or no river!
Lots of birds in this photograph, which I took at Nelson Lake Marsh on May 1st, 2008. We have an adult Sandhill Crane (Grus Canadensis) on the right. The flying bird in the background could be anything. The bird on the left I thought was a sparrow, however I have been unable to identify it, even with my trusty National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds – it may be a sparrow but it’s beak is quite large, it could be a Grosbeak of some sort. Note: I have been informed that this bird is in fact a female Redwing Blackbird. The marsh reeds were just starting to green up on this trip, as can be seen. I hope to get out there more often this spring, especially to see the American Pelicans. A saw a few last year but I was a little late, and there were only six or eight on the lake, conveniently on the other side, of course!
Sandhill Crane - Nelson Lake Marsh, Batavia, IL
Downy Woodpecker
For lack of anything better to do this evening, and in order to give me a new project for my daily photograph, I’ve decided to start digging out some photos of birds I have in my files, cropping them, and posting them to my blog. Most were taken with a telephoto lens, but not a long one so they have to be blown up quite a bit. However, that should be OK for the purpose of this blog, as all the images are low resolution anyway. This will also give me an excuse to break out the old bird book and identify them – I was quite into birding about ten or fifteen years ago but have let that hobby slip for some time. So now, if I can’t think of anything too profound to post, I’ll just dig up a bird!
This is a male Downy Woodpecker (Picoides pubescens)(with a bug in his beak) that I photographed at the nearby Nelson Lake Marsh last April 10th. Nelson Lake is probably about the best place to go birding around here, and it’s only four miles from my house. I’ll have to get out there more often, and bring my binoculars and bird-book as well as my camera!
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