Winter Birding: Carlyle Lake

This is Carlyle Lake in Illinois where I worked as a park ranger, my first job out of college, and a very good one at that. It led to a career with the US Army Corps of Engineers, first at the lake, then in the district office in downtown St. Louis.

At present the Corps is releasing a large amount of water through the dam. That creates a boiling action that brings fish to the surface where they are easy pickings for gulls that spend the winter at the lake. After grabbing a meal, they fly to the ice north of the dam to rest, and do so in large numbers.

Most of these, around 99%, are the numerous Ring-billed Gulls, but a few other species are present, such as Herring Gulls, the next most common species. Others migrate through or irrupt from areas north, particularly the Great Lakes during harsh winters. A Herring Gull is seen below--the dark, slightly larger bird, which is an immature. Adults more closely resemble Ring-billed Gulls. 

 

A more infrequent visitor is the Lesser Black-backed Gull, which winter off the Atlantic coast and the Great Lakes. When the Great Lakes freeze some of them, as well as other species, venture south and find Carlyle Lake. Here's a Black-backed Gull resting among the hundreds of Ring-billeds. (I like the gull flying through the foreground.)

 Snow Geese:  Over the course of the past decade or so, thousands of Snow Geese have wintered at and near the lake. Two flocks of Snow Geese are seen in this photo, one closer and the other more in the distance, which shows up as a horizontal white stripe on the ice. Shortly after taking this, some of the geese in the farther flock took to the air, and made known their enormous population. The camera captured less than a third or fourth of the flock.

From a closer vantage point the next day. Here I was close enough to hear them. We've heard Snow Geese honk as they fly over, but it came as a surprise that they do that as well while resting on the water or ice. It sounded as though all of them were honking at once.

Another species increasing in numbers at the lake are these White-fronted Geese, which appear a uniform dark at a distance. They've previously been seen in small numbers mixed with other species of geese, but now they appear in flocks.

White-fronted Geese mixed with Canada Geese. The White-fronted are the ones with orange legs and feet. Some in the center have their heads tucked.

Chasing Rare Birds:  The federal property around Carlyle Lake is an island of wildlife habitat in an ocean of agricultural fields. Because of that it's a good spot to find lots of species of birds including some occasional visitors or rare ones.

Northern Shrike:  A friend reported seeing this species along a saddle dam on the east side of the lake, so I went to investigate. It was an easy find; the bird was perched at the top of a small tree silhouetted against the sky. Hard to miss. It was a lifer for me--a bird species I'd not previously seen.

Harris's Sparrow:  While on an Audubon outing, I spotted a bird that flushed and landed in the branches of a small tree. It remained there for several minutes, giving us a good view. But it took a while to figure out what it was, or rather what I think it was. It was obviously a sparrow but different than the ones I'm used to seeing. The closest I could come in a field guide was a first-winter Harris's Sparrow. I was unfamiliar with the first-winter plumage of this species, so wasn't sure what to look for. Such are the challenges of birding.

 From Sibley Guide to Birds:

And another illustration from National Geographic's Field Guide to the Birds of North America. The plumage version in question is the bottom one labeled immature.

But following the process of elimination I concluded that the sparrow I'd seen must have been a Harris's. Several attempts to relocate the bird failed, but a week later I received a phone call from a friend who reported that he was in sight of a Harris's Sparrow. He wasn't far away, and I joined him. Sure enough, an adult, winter plumage Harris's hopped out of the shrub he'd been observing. That sighting strengthened my conviction that it was indeed a Harris's Sparrow I'd seen the week before. It's possible that several are in the area that have not yet been observed.

And I was able to take my granddaughter out to see the Snow Geese, which are still putting on a show in huge numbers of individuals. On the way to see the geese, we passed the spillway for the lake, and spotted a Bald Eagle sitting near the top of a tree not far from a parking lot. I mounted my scope on my car window, and Granddaughter watched an adult Bald Eagle for about fifteen minutes, loving every moment.

Here's the eagle she was watching--taken through the spotting scope:

The Bald Eagle population has recovered nicely in the past few decades. Autumn and I counted about 30 of them over the course of an hour, most of which were on the ice out in the middle of the lake, not far from areas of open water.