There were good numbers of waterfowl at Montrose this morning, March 5, including Canada Geese, Common and Red-breasted Mergansers, Common Goldeneye, and Greater Scaup. I also had about 25 White-winged Scoters between the fishhook pier and the harbor mouth. Most of these birds were easy to see because of the extensive ice cover, forcing them into open water near shore. The video is from Montrose Harbor, where a pump is keeping a small patch of water open.
Author Archives: rhughes
More White-winged Scoters, March 1, 2015
I checked Montrose this morning, March 1, to see if any of the scoters from the last few days were still around. The only sizable area of open water was off the end of the fishhook pier, which held quite a few ducks, including about 25 White-winged Scoters. It feels like deja vu all over again from last winter, except that I haven’t seen any distressed or dead ducks, so enough open water must be available to keep these birds alive and healthy.
White-winged Scoters, February 25, 2015
White-winged Scoters (click to see the larger version)
The highlight of a walk around Montrose Point this morning were 40 or so White-winged Scoters, almost all concentrated in a small area of open water on the lakeside of the fishhook pier. This reminds me of what happened last winter when the lake froze over, stranding and killing many ducks. I don’t think the situation is as dire as last year but if we continue to have unseasonably cold weather it will be. I took the photo from the base of the fishhook pier; most of the birds are White-winged Scoters.
Belmont Harbor Surf Scoters, February 7, 2015
Surf Scoters (click to see the larger version)
Karen and I had 2 Surf Scoters, an immature male and an immature female, at the mouth of Belmont Harbor this morning, February 7. Both birds got up and flew north while we were watching them and may have landed near Montrose. After a long schlep up the lakefront we got to Montrose and could not relocate the birds, so apparently they kept going.
Our only other birds of note were a Red-bellied Woodpecker in the Marovitz Golf Course, a pretty good bird for the immediate lakefront, and the continuing juvenile Red-tailed Hawk at Montrose. It felt good to be out and about and feel the sun on our faces.
Great Black-backed Gull and Red-throated Loon, January 19, 2015
Great Black-backed Gull (click to see the larger version)
A walk around Montrose this morning, January 19, yielded a couple good birds. While I was scanning the lake from the fishing pier I saw a Red-throated Loon on the water a few hundred yards offshore. The bird was slowly drifting to the north and I thought I could get a better look at it by walking north on the pier as it swam north but I lost sight of it. Red-throated Loons are rare in winter at Montrose, though they are the expected loon at this time of the year.
I also had a first cycle Great Black-backed Gull near the parking lot adjacent to the bathroom building. The bird was actually up on the grass feeding on handouts like a Ring-billed Gull, a behavior I don’t think I’ve seen before for GBBG. The bird also has a bad left foot as can be seen in the photo below. I saw nothing else of note.
Quincy Ivory Gull, January 3, 2015
Adult Ivory Gull at Quincy, Illinois. Photo by Amar Ayyash. (click to see the larger version)
After getting off to a late start Karen and I arrived at Lock and Dam 21 at 3:00 on the afternoon of January 3, 2015 to look for the adult Ivory Gull found a couple days earlier by local birder Jason Mullins. I didn’t need Ivory Gull for anything, having seen the 1991/92 Chicago bird and several others in Iowa and Wisconsin, but Karen needed it for a lifer, so we decided to make the long trek to Quincy, Illinois to look for the bird after reading that it was seen that morning. I was also reluctant to go because of the inclement weather and forecast poor road conditions, but the only precipitation we encountered was liquid, so the roads were just wet and not icy as I had feared.
At about 4:00 a fellow from Kansas spotted the bird standing on a small ice floe about a mile up river and probably in Missouri waters from where we were at the lock and dam. We could tell it was little Pagophila but we wanted better looks so we got in our cars and raced north. Just south of the bridge we saw a group of birders with scopes standing in a parking lot next to the river and when we got closer one of them pointed out over the river, so we knew they had the Ivory Gull. After some fumbling around we were able to get on the bird with our scopes, though it was still a long way off. We watched it preen and bath and nearly become a meal for a couple Bald Eagles (there are a lot of Bald Eagles around Quincy). We didn’t have the same mouth watering looks that others had but we saw the bird reasonably well and Karen got her lifer and I got my second Illinois Ivory Gull.