Birds of Illinois

A wonderful day for birding today. OK, that was a lie, it was cold, overcast and there was fine mist or rain most of the day. But apart from that it was a great day for birding! Jeff and I birded several Lake County hotspots and came up with six gull species and three goose species!

A wonderful day for birding today. OK, that was a lie, it was cold, overcast and there was fine mist or rain most of the day. But apart from that it was a great day for birding! Jeff and I birded several Lake County hot spots and came up with six gull species and three goose species!

The three goose species were Canada, Cackling and Snow Geese! At Van Patten Woods we were picking through the geese and ducks on the lake when a flock of geese flying by caught my attention and turned out to be 37 Snow Geese - some in White phase and some in Blue-phase and some in between.

And just to prove there were 37 in all....

At Independence Grove this morning, a single adult Glaucous Gull flew in and stayed for about 2 minutes before flying off, heading west. The other gulls are Independence Grove were Herring and Ring-billed and there's weren't that many of either. At Illinois Beach State Park's South Unit there were two Lesser Black-backed Gulls on the beach with some other Herring and Ring-billed Gulls. At North Point Marina there were two Thayer's among the much reduced (compared to last weekend) numbers of gulls.

The most interesting gull of the day was an adult "Kumlien's" Iceland Gull which was at the beach at the north end of North Point Marina. Click on any one of the below for larger versions of the images.

The shots above are all of the same bird (the one front & center). What is hard to show here is that the primaries were significantly paler than the black of the surrounding Herring Gulls - they were gray rather than black. The right-hand shot shows the lack of color on the underside of the primaries. There was also at least one Thayer's Gull and a Lesser Black-baked Gull on the beach.

The shot below is for any of you gull experts out there that would like to work out which gull is the Kumlien's Iceland gull and/or to find any other non-Herring or Ring-billed Gulls. If you find it or any others, add a comment below.