White-winged Scoters
A brief walk around Montrose this morning yielded the following birds:
Mute Swan – 5 (3 adults, 2 immatures) flying east
Black-bellied Plover – 1
Sanderling – 2
Semipalmated Sandpiper – 1
Yellow-bellied Flycatcher – 2
Alder Flycatcher – 1
Mourning Warbler – 2
Wilson’s Warbler – 1
The fat lady still hasn’t sung.
Montrose wasn’t very active this morning, as is to be expected for the first week in June, but I had a few goodies. A male Hooded Warbler was singing in the Magic Hedge. I never saw him but others did. I also had a Northern Mockingbird in the willows in the dunes. Other birds seen or heard include Semipalmated Plover, Yellow-bellied and Willow Flycatchers, Eastern Wood-Pewee, Veery, 8 migrating Blue Jays, Wilson’s, Magnolia, and Chestnut-sided Warblers, Ovenbird, and American Redstart.
Mottled Ducks. Photo by Kanae Hirabayashi (click to see the larger version).
Kanae Hirabayashi and Luiz Munoz found two Mottled Ducks, both apparent males, at Montrose Beach on May 30. This is an unexpected and extraordinary sighting. Illinois has a handful of Mottled Duck records but this is a first for Cook County, and obviously Montrose. Unfortunately for other birders, a careless photographer got too close to the birds and they flew off. They haven’t been seen since. This is the 337th species of bird recorded at Montrose.
Addendum: The photos of these birds show evidence of hybridization with Mallards, specifically, curled uppertail coverts and white in the outer tail feathers. Therefore, Mottled Duck has been removed from the list of birds recorded at Montrose.
To see a list of the birds recorded at Montrose, please refer to the Birds Recorded at the Montrose Point Area in Chicago page.
Montrose was fairly birdy this morning, especially for Empidonax flycatchers, American Redstarts, and Common Yellowthroats. Here’s some of what I saw in about an hour and a half:
Lesser Scaup – 1 male in Lake Michigan just off the beach
Horned Grebe – 1 in full breeding plumage just off the beach
Semipalmated Sandpiper – ~50
Pectoral Sandpiper – 1
Semipalmated Plover – 1
Yellow-billed Cuckoo – 1 seen and heard giving the “rain crow” call
Ruby-throated Hummingbird – 1
Olive-sided Flycatcher – 1
Eastern Wood-Pewee – ~5
Yellow-bellied Flycatcher – 6
Least Flycatcher – 3
Willow Flycatcher – 3
Willow/Alder Flycatcher – ~4
Philadelphia Vireo – 1
Blue Jay – ~40 migrating west
Swainson’s Thrush – 3
Veery – 1
Yellow-rumped Warbler – 1
Cape May Warbler – 1
Magnolia Warbler – ~4
Black-throated Green Warbler – 1
Black-throated Blue Warbler – 1 female
Canada Warbler – 3
Wilson’s Warbler – ~6
Ovenbird – 1
Common Yellowthroat – ~15
American Redstart – ~15
Lincoln’s Sparrow – 2
White-throated Sparrow – 1
Orchard Oriole – 1
Photo by Kanae Hirabayashi (click to see the larger version).
On May 30, 1994, Chicago birder Kanae Hirabayashi found a Black Rail at Montrose. The bird put on quite a show for the dozens of people who saw it, walking around in the open and giving mouth watering looks. This bird was a lifer for many birders, including myself, and I haven’t seen one since. On a side note, all of the rails that have been recorded in Illinois have been seen at Montrose.
Digiscoping – The practice of using a digital camera with a telescope for magnification.
In March, 2003, I bought a Fujifilm A303 digital camera to use with my Questar telescope for photographing birds and other wildlife. The Fujifilm A303 is basically a point-and-shoot camera that doesn’t have many bells and whistles, which is just as well – the less time I have to futz with the camera’s settings the more time I can concentrate on taking pictures. Besides, the camera does a reasonably good job of automatically adjusting the Fstop, shutter speed, and other settings.
Photo by Kanae Hirabayashi
The most popular camera that birdwatchers use for digiscoping is one of the Nikon Coolpix models. I decided against buying a Coolpix because of the cost and the fact that it’s a big, bulky camera that almost requires an adapter to use with a telescope. By comparison, the Fujifilm A303 is small and using it with my Questar is fairly straightforward and easy: I center and focus the subject in my scope and hold the camera up to the eyepiece and shoot. Unfortunately the resulting images aren’t always stellar so an image editing program such as Photoshop is necessary to make corrections.
The main problem I have with using the camera with my Questar is that there’s a perceptible delay between depressing the shutter and recording the image, a problem that doesn’t occur with SLRs or high-end digital cameras. This delay is most noticeable (and most annoying) when a bird moves out of view just before the image is recorded. Another problem is that the autofocus on the camera sometimes gets confused about what exactly to focus on. This happens, for example, when I’m trying to photograph a bird in a tree and there are branches between the camera and bird. The resulting image has the bird slightly out of focus but the branches in focus. Finally, photographing flying birds is almost impossible – it’s simply too hard to follow a flying bird with the scope and hold the camera at the same time. Despite the shortcomings, I’ve had good results (and good luck) photographing birds and insects with this camera/scope arrangement.
Update
My Fujifilm A303 digital camera died in July, 2007. In August I purchased a Fujifilm A610 digital camera, which is similar to the A303 but has more megapixels (6.3 versus 3.2) and a larger LCD. In November, 2007 I lost my A610 and I bought a Fujifilm A820 to replace it. Hopefully I won’t lose this one.