Sunny Sunday

Not many words to go with this post. All the birds below were at Glacial Park in McHenry County this morning. It was a great day to be out!

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Volo Bog Sep 22 2007

This is a follow-up post to the Great Horned Owls that I posted earlier. A productive day at Volo Bog with several species I didn't expect to get including Red-breasted Nuthatch, Red-Shouldered Hawk and Blue-headed Vireo. Of the fall Warblers, I saw Common Yellowthroat, American Redstart, Magnolia, Tennessee and Yellow-rumped...

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Volo Great Horned Owl

I got off to a lzay start this morning but the weather was too nice for me to stay at home. Because of the time I stayed local and went to Volo Bog thinking there may be some fall warblers. There were some warblers - most common were the Yellow-rumped but I also saw Common Yellowthroat and Magnolia Warblers.

As I continued I saw large numbers of Swainson's Thrushes and both Red-eyed and Blue-headed Vireos. However I was attracted by two Great Horned Owls I could hear calling in the distance....

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Rollins Sep 20 2007

After spending more than a week out of state working I really wanted to pick up my camera again (it was getting lonely!). I decided to go to Rollins hoping that the water levels had dropped enough to allow some shorebird habitat. The shorebird tally was very low but I did pick up a few other interesting birds...

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Amazing Godwit Migration Recorded

A Bar-tailed Godwit has made an incredible 7,200 mile non-stop journey from Alaska to New Zealand in 8 days according to the USGS Alaska Science Center who had placed a satellite tracking device on the bird along with 15 others in February this year....

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Ruby-throated

Following up on my post yesterday about "my" hummingbirds, I spent some time today seeing if I could get some better shots of the hummingbirds as they came to my feeder. While trying to photograph them I learned that there are at least five different individuals as I could tell differences in their plumage....

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My Hummers

I am not sure how many hummingbirds frequent my feeders or even whether the birds that I do see are the same ones, but I do know that I can look out at just about any time of day and see a hummingbird within a few minutes...

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Hawkwatch August 31 2007

Today was my first day of the Illinois Beach State Park Hawkwatch for 2007. The last time I did it, it was very cold (like freezing) and I saw very few raptors. That was at the end of the season last year. Fortunately today was much warmer and we saw a number of raptors...

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