An Epic Day of Birding and Herping

Hey all,
Sorry it's about a week late, but I just kinda had to do a post for it. Henry Griffin(@henrygriffin), Oliver Burrus(@whimbrelbirder), Peter Tolzmann(@hazelgrouse4) and I were going to meet up last Saturday in SW Cook County to look for some continuing Red-necked Grebes. My family and I got there a few minutes earlier, and got the grebes right off the bat. Then we moved to a better angle a bit farther down the road at the slough and saw that the grebes were much farther away than 5 minutes before, and were paddling away pretty fast. Then we lost them. I called Oliver and told him that we just lost the grebes. A few minutes later he and his dad pulled up and started scanning with us. After about 15 minutes, Oliver and I were looking at a picture of a Spotted Salamander he flipped at a nearby forest preserve earlier that morning when his dad called his name. He called his name again, and Oliver finally went over to their scope to see what he was looking at. His dad said "Hey Oliver, what's this small gull?" My immediate thought was a Bonaparte's or even a Franklin's Gull. FRGU would be a year bird and BOGU would be a photo year bird. I get on the bird and am looking at it for a few seconds and I had a feeling it wasn't what I originally thought it was. I waited for a few more seconds for it to turn to the sun so it wouldn't be so backlit. Just from the shape alone I had a feeling it was something, but I just needed confirmation. Then it turned and I shouted out "SABINE'S GULL!!" We put it out on the RBA's and soon enough dozens of birders were there looking at the bird. Oliver, Peter and I began to walk around to the other side of the slough to try to get a completely non-backlit look at it. We walked out onto a log and just 100 feet away it was sitting there with the Ring-billed Gulls. Such a cool bird! The best part was that it was the first chaseable and first inland for Cook County ever.

Then Oliver, Peter and I moved locations a bit and were walking to a possible flip site I scouted out from Google Earth. Right before the possible site, just off the path, we were flipping rocks and logs hoping for a Red-bellied Snake or something. Then Oliver said "Oh, there!' I whipped around and there was a NEONATE EASTERN MILKSNAKE sitting on a mossy rock!!! It felt like redemption for the hours I spent in downstate Illinois looking for the "Red" Milksnake, and failing to find it. This little snake looked just like the pictures I'd seen of them. Such an awesome snake. After that we tried to find a Queensnake, but failed at that also. We met up with Henry and went off to the next spot.

Then we were off to another possible flip site, but it actually ended up being terrible. It was walking through a swamp to get to an old, scary looking Mountain Biking course along the I&M canal. Cool to see, but no snakes. We did find Oliver's lifer Unisexual Mole Salamander though.

Out of impulse, we decided to go to the best location to find salamanders in all of Cook County (in our opinions,) to look for more herps. We found 4 species and 31 individuals. Peter, Henry and I said goodbye to Oliver and his dad and we decided to hit up one more place that we haven't really ever explored before.

After that Henry, Peter and I said goodbye to Oliver and his dad to go to one last place before the sun set completely. We only found 4 salamanders, but the ravine that we dropped into was more impressive I'd say.

I'll attach some observations from the day of some cool stuff we found.

That basically concludes and epic day of birding and herping, so thanks for reading!
Simon

Publicado el octubre 16, 2020 04:03 TARDE por brdnrdr