Starved Rock State Park, Illinois, 15 March 2006

After sheltering from the rain in Newark a few days ago, I woke up in Chicago on a beautiful, cloudless day - glorious! The night before I’d met up with my second US blogger in three days, the extremely sharp-witted and well-informed Ken of Birding is not a Crime!!!, who’d recommended I visit the intriguingly-named Starved Rock State Park to look for Pileated Woodpeckers and Barred Owls, and then look for whatever else I could find by driving around a grid that covered some secluded farmland on the way home. Given the weather - how could I resist?

Starved Rock State Park is about 100 miles from Chicago, so I strolled down to the closest car-rental company as soon as it opened and got in line to make my choice of the suitable wheels that they’d undoubtedly soon be offering me. And it was at that point that things began to go wrong…Apparently I’d arrived in Chicago at the same time as hundreds of conventioneers and St Patrick Day party-goers, who’d all rushed out and bagged every available car in Illinois for the next few weeks - all except, said the rental agent, “that cargo van over there”. I’m English, I didn’t know what a cargo van was, so I turned round with hope in my heart, and there - lurking almost apologetically in one corner of the huge garage - was a dazzlingly white, scraped and dented van not much smaller than my hotel room. It had no windows down it’s massive flanks, it would probably require six lanes of highway should I need to turn round, and would (I suspected) drink down fuel faster than an Irishman could swallow a gallon of Guinness….the hope in my heart turned tail and fled.

I had a choice though: go back to the hotel and sleep, or gird my loins and hope I wouldn’t hit a metaphorical iceberg in this Titanic vehicle. Oh well, what can a birder faced with sunlight and a new site to visit do? Hire the darn van and go for it of course…

By the time I’d left the city centre behind I’d already lost about three pounds in sweat, almost totalled two drivers who had both unwisely figured that I had could see behind me, and had realised that if I could work out a way to spend a day driving around without ever having to use the reverse gear I would just about survive. My plan had also changed dramatically: get to Starved Rock in one piece, park the van, bird all day, then go straight home taking the shortest and most direct route possible. It meant I’d miss out on a few possible year-birds, but if it meant I stood at least a 50/50 chance of being around to add more at a later date it was the right thing to do. A rare moment of clear-thinking looking back…

So, onto the actual birding.

Starved Rock State Park (SRSP) is one of several closely-grouped forest Parks in the Illinois River Basin. So named because (allegedly) a group of Native American Indians had been pushed up onto a bluff overlooking the river and forced to stay there until they starved to death by members of another tribe, it is a spectacularly beautiful area of oaks and pines, cut through by deep canyons and looked over by a series of corresponding cliffs and bluffs. Easy to get to (whatever vehicle you’re driving) SRSP is a very popular day-trip for Chicagoans, and has - as might be expected in this highly mobile country - more than enough parking spots and “facilities” (should the cold air and those early-morning coffees catch up with you).

Ken had told me that though the Park is large, most birders in winter concentrated on just a handful of sites: the area of (mainly) oak woodland around Starved Rock Lodge, the wide depths of the Illinois River around ‘the dam’, and the picnic-grounds and woodland around the Visitor Centre. Migrant traps like the renowned “Point” would be devoid of trapped migrants of course (unless - like tourists without maps - they’d left the forests of Central and South America on a short trip, had missed a turning, and somehow kept going until they’d almost hit the icy waters of Lake Michigan). There wouldn’t be very much about, he’d said, but there’d be a selection of sparrows, woodpeckers (including the large and unmissable Pileated), and it was one of the Chicago area’s best-known sites for Barred Owl. Definitely enough to be going on with…

Arriving at the Starved Rock Lodge at about 10:30 am (after a quick break at a rest-stop near a town called Minook, where I found my personal first North American Eurasian Collared Doves and a Eurasian Tree Sparrow - more of which later - and having had a quick flight view of a Pileated Woodpecker as it dipped across the road in front of me) I steered the van into a huge parking space and gratefully shut the engine down. I stepped out into a warm breeze, a beautifully bright day - and almost total silence. Except for an American Robin (who eyed the van suspiciously I felt) there was nothing moving, calling, hammering, or hooting. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that Ken didn’t actually say “You can’t miss the Pileated Woodpeckers”, but I have to admit that was the mental image I’d clung to as I’d cautiously piloted those tons of retina-burning steel down the I 80. He didn’t actually say “You can’t miss the Barred Owls” either - but, again, I had visions of owls almost falling out of the trees to give me good views. I should have known better…

For the next couple of hours I walked up and down the forest, peering into every tree, determined to find either a photographable Pileated or a Barred Owl(photographable or not). I saw hundreds of Red-bellied Woodpeckers and White-breasted Nuthatches (actually I probably saw the same two or three hundreds of times, but I was trying to make up the numbers with some ‘creative accounting’), my first Blue Jays of the year, a couple of American Robins (including a part-albino that was spotted white in such a way it looked like dappled sunlight was falling on its back), and a few Tufted Titmice giving their triple-whisted calls from the bare trees. Of a large, black woodpecker I saw nothing more.

Female White-breasted Nuthatch Sitta carolinensis

American Robin Turdus migratorius

American Robin Turdus migratorius - partial albino male

Tufted Titmouse Baeolophus bicolor

That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy myself. SRSP is truly idyllic, thick woodland where old snags and fallen trunks are left to rot down naturally (perfect, so you’d think, for Large Woodpeckers), the air is clear, and the views from a number of well-located platforms overlooking the Illinois River (off which I saw a couple of Bald Eagles and a surprisingly large flock of about 100 Tree Swallows) are spectacular.

The trails at SRSP are very well-marked, and much of the sensitive habitat (which includes rare flora) has been protected from trampling by well-weathered boardwalks that loop from the Lodge car-park through the trees and alongside small running streams and gullies - and from which it is “illegal” to stray.

To be honest, I spent much of the time here imagining how alive the woodland would soon be as the northern-breeding migrants flooded back - possibly because there were so few birds, or possibly because spring was in the air - and no matter how hard I looked I didn’t see an owl and I didn’t find another Pileated…

By about 14:00 I had (to my mind) thoroughly searched the area and was hot and hungry. I’d only added a few more birds - the most notable being a wedge of 6 American White Pelicans flying towards the River (apparently 400 once staged here for a couple of weeks in 1998), and two Fox Sparrows foraging with a Dark-eyed Junco on the edge of an overgrown gully in front of the Lodge - where because of ongoing restoration or some such thing there was nothing to eat except ice-cream from a vending-machine. (Incidentally, whose decision is it to broadcast loud music through tinny loudpspeakers from the Back Door Lounge at the back of the Lodge? I can’t be the only visitor here to find it intrusive and totally inappropriate surely…).

It was time to buckle up and drive to pastures new (or at least pastures just down the road) - and just hope that I could get there on wide roads without having to turn round much…

American White Pelican Pelecanus erythrorhynchos

Dark-eyed Junco Junco hyemalis

Pointing the barge of a van downhill, I ended up in the picnic-grounds by the visitor centre (which I’d passed earlier in the morning on my way up the hill to the Lodge). The swampy woodland at this site - bisected by what appears to be fairly-recently installed telegraph poles - is recommended in Sheryl De Vore’s excellent book “Birding Illinois” that Ken had kindly lent to me. Birds said to be found here included Pileated Woodpecker (which I doubted, but I was determined to keep looking). Barred Owl (ditto), Red-shouldered Hawk (which I saw), and Carolina Wren (ditto).

The car-park is right down by the river, so is not bad for wildfowl (it’s much better about a mile downstream, but you can see wildfowl here either on the water or following the River north), Great Blue Herons and Double-crested Cormorants, and was where I picked up my one Belted Kingfisher of the day. It was also the route followed by enormous numbers of Red-winged Blackbirds flighting in to roost towards dusk: I estimated over 100,000 of them flying in waves of low, loose flocks towards the dam before I got too cold and left just before dark (it’s always thrilling to see so many birds, but if only they’d been Passenger Pigeons…).

However, dusk was still a good few hours off when I arrived and I started birding by going over a small wooden bridge into the woods between an old tarmac track and the main road at the western end (ie the far end) of the car-park. I’m not too good at identifying trees, but it was obviously a different habitat to the drier woodland on the upper slopes I’d been in earlier and held different tree species.

The ground underfoot here is also much boggier, and there are several small ponds (which held Mallards and about 20 Wood Duck which flew off giving their oddly raptor-like calls). I also found a small group of 6 American Tree Sparrows foraging in some damp scrub - wintering birds that would soon be heading further north. The trees and open spaces here held large numbers of American Robins (some must be migratory, but apparently most Illinois “woodland” Robins - as opposed to Illinois “garden” Robins - are non-migratory), what I’m sure was a (very early) Eastern Wood-peewee (Ken suspects that Eastern Phoebe would be much more likely, but I’m pretty certain), and - personally-speaking my “best birds” of the day - a pair of beautiful Eastern Bluebirds prospecting for nesting-sites around unused woodpecker holes (my third bluebird species of the year).

Male (left) and female (right) Eastern Bluebird Sialia sialis

Another good area I found right in the middle of the woodland was a small pond fringed with cattails. I saw very few sparrows before coming to this spot (bar the Fox and American Tree Sparrows I mentioned earlier), but I pished up at least 4 Song Sparrows, 2 Swamp Sparrows, and 4-5 White-throated Sparrows - nothing unusual, but more passerines in one area than I’d found anywhere else during the day!

Song Sparrow Melospiza melodia

Swamp Sparrow Melospiza georgiana

I wondered around here for a couple of hours before heading (reluctantly) back to the van, but added very few more birds to the day-list (certainly no owls anyway).

Back at the car-park, and with dusk falling as fast as the temperature and my nerve - I had to steer that van home in the dark! - I decided enough was enough and made my way back to Chicago.

Would I go again? For sure - though perhaps this time in Spring, in a compact, and with a bag of sandwiches to keep me going…

For more information online:
http://home.xnet.com/~ugeiser/Birds/Birding.html

Day List:
American White Pelican Pelecanus erythrorhynchos 27 (6,21); Double-crested Cormorant Phalacrocorax auritus c)20; Great Blue Heron Ardea herodias c)10; Canada Goose Branta canadensis 100+; Wood Duck Aix sponsa c)20; American Wigeon Anas americana 4-5; Mallard Anas platyrhynchos c)10; Lesser Scaup Aythya affinis c)10; Turkey Vulture Cathartes aura 1; Bald Eagle Haliaeetus leucocephalus 3; Red-shouldered Hawk Buteo lineatus 1; Red-tailed Hawk Buteo jamaicensis 3; American Kestrel Falco sparverius 2; Ring-billed Gull Larus delawarensis 400-500; Eurasian Collared Dove Streptopelia decaocto 2; Belted Kingfisher Ceryle alcyon 1; Red-bellied Woodpecker Melanerpes carolinus c)10; Downy Woodpecker Picoides pubescens 6-8; Hairy Woodpecker Picoides villosus 1 (2); Northern Flicker Colaptes auratus 2; Pileated Woodpecker Dryocopus pileatus 1; Eastern Wood Pewee Contopus virens 1; Tree Swallow Tachycineta bicolor c)100; Carolina Wren Thryothorus ludovicianus 1; Eastern Bluebird Sialia sialis 2-3; American Robin Turdus migratorius 100+; Black-capped Chickadee Poecile atricapilla 4-5; Tufted Titmouse Baeolophus bicolor 3-4; White-breasted Nuthatch Sitta carolinensis 10+; Brown Creeper Certhia americana 4-5; Blue Jay Cyanocitta cristata 3; Common Starling Sturnus vulgaris ; House Sparrow Passer domesticus 1+; Eurasian Tree Sparrow Passer montanus 2; American Goldfinch Carduelis tristis 1; American Tree Sparrow Spizella arborea 6; Fox Sparrow Passerella iliaca 2; 100+; Song Sparrow Melospiza melodia 4+; Swamp Sparrow Melospiza georgiana 2; White-throated Sparrow Zonotrichia albicollis 4-5; Dark-eyed Junco Junco hyemalis 3-4; Northern Cardinal Cardinalis cardinalis 4; Red-winged Blackbird Agelaius phoeniceus 100000+; Common Grackle Quiscalus quiscula 10+