MENDOTA — The president of the Starved Rock Audubon Society chapter has gone through all of the findings of the groups who went out three times over the holidays on the annual Christmas bird count.
As reported in a NewsTribune account of a hike with one group on New Year’s Day, some of the groups saw far fewer birds than they would have a decade ago. But not all of the groups had that experience, said Alyssa Rod, chapter president.
She said going out for a walk with one group shows a “piece of the pie, but not the whole picture.”
For example, all together, the groups spotted a remarkable number of geese, in particular the greater white-fronted goose. Participants in the count on New Year’s within a 15-mile radius of Starved Rock State Park saw a huge group on the river between Utica and Buffalo Rock State Park and another large gaggle in near Oglesby. In all, the count came up with 474 of those geese.
A second unusual sighting was a pair of trumpeter swans. Perhaps a warm December made them linger in Starved Rock Country during their migration southward.
“This is the second count out of 51 years we’ve had trumpeter swan … They’re typically migrating through but should have migrated past here by now,” Rod said, speculating that they were “easily finding food.”
A third unusual sighting, and exciting for birders, was a glaucous gull. A large, grayish, mottled immature glaucous gull was seen hanging out with smaller, whiter ring-billed gulls. Rod said she and her parents, Gene and Diane, spotted the large gull near Route 71 about a half mile west of the west edge of Starved Rock State Park in the shallows.
“This is the fourth year in the past six years in which the count circle has had sandhill cranes,” Rod also noted.
“As a whole, we had 64 species which was only four off of our high count. Tack in 1998 we had 68 species,” Rod said.
This was the 120th year for the Christmas bird count for the Audubon Society nationally. The Starved Rock Circle has participated since 1959.
“There were 16 species we have seen on this count 51 years in a row,” she said.
Rod echoed some of the worries that have been expressed nationwide in recent months. Studies have shown forest and prairie birds in decline. The Starved Rock group has found song sparrows on 50 out of 51 counts, but they only saw one this past December-January count.
“This year we did not have any red-headed woodpeckers. This is the seventh count that we did not have any … six of those times have been in the last 15 years, Rod said. “That’s a good indicator species … when we go back to 1971, they had 63.”
Road said this year she also did not see red-headed woodpeckers at Woodhaven Lakes, where she serves at Nature Center Coordinator.
The group has been seeing a lot of other sorts of woodpeckers, however, including downy and pileated woodpeckers.
Along the Illinois River, the group saw American white pelicans again, and saw fewer bald eagles than they do some years. With no ice on the river at the time, the eagles spread out throughout the Illinois River valley rather than congregating to fish and pick up dead fish in the vicinity of open water below Starved Rock Lock and Dam.
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January 23, 2020 at 11:04AM
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Starved Rock area Christmas bird count yielded surprises - MyWebTimes.com
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