A Big Sit is good for your Seoul
Time dedicated to birding is time well-spent.
It’s an odd thing to say, but as this year’s Big Sit approached I felt a fair bit of apprehension. The pace of life has been so frantic that I was subconsciously dreading slowing down for a few hours.
A lingering heat wave dampened the mood as well. A high pressure system had hovered over the Great Plains for nearly two weeks. There was an unseasonably warm air mass sprawling north from the Gulf of Mexico. I perceived a sort of birding doldrums on the few occasions I ventured out in the field.
Just check out these temperatures from the 10 days before the Big Sit:
9/11 87 62
9/12 86 65
9/13 84 69
9/14 86 69
9/15 89 70
9/16 89 67
9/17 84 64
9/18 88 66
9/19 89 65
9/20 92 72
That’s a lot of hot weather with little variance in the highs and lows! With winds calm or southerly, there weren’t any great fall movements of birds to speak of. The Big Sit promised to be a Big Dud.
Yet my spirits brightened as I pulled up a chair two Saturdays ago. There’s a mindfulness to birding that is difficult to achieve in other realms. And that turned out to be the case during the Big Sit, as I chronicle in this post.
6:09am
It’s 65 degrees and still civil twilight as I take a seat on the Lake Border Upland. First bird species: Blue Jay. Not a surprise as it seems they are everywhere this year.
6:19am
The next two species are mammals: Gray Squirrel and Eastern Cottontail.
6:27am
My species count is still in the single digits as I detect a movement to my right, in the old lilac. It’s a Ruby-throated Hummingbird, attempting to extract some nectar from a stray lilac blossom. This has been a good year for hummingbirds, as you may recall.
6:30am
I hear the wheezes of a couple Cedar Waxwings before a big flock of more than 20 flies from west to east overhead. It’s an exciting site, and my spirits are rising.
6:38am
Whit. It’s the call of the Swainson’s Thrush, a bird of northern forests that is here in numbers for another week or two.
6:50am
With an assist from Merlin, I catch a few call notes from the top of the American Elm across the alley. These birds, likely warblers, are staying very high in the tree and zipping around fast. Getting a visual in this dim light is near impossible.
6:55am
Kyeer! It’s a pair of Northern Flickers alighting in the nearest Honey Locust. I’m all the way up to 17 species now, counting two of the warblers detected by Merlin: Nashville Warbler and Tennessee Warbler. These are fairly common migrants, so I trust Merlin on these. Others I will only confirm with a visual before I count them.
7:02am
A pair of chattering Chimney Swifts flit over, and I’m pleased because I see them much more frequently in the evening than in the morning.
7:20am
This time I finally get a good look at a warbler in the elm, and it’s a stunning Black-throated Green Warbler, still resembling their look from breeding season.
7:22am
A flycatcher appears quietly in the same tree, and I’m unable to ID it to species. It’s in the Empidonax family and near identical to five other species.
7:32am
An American Goldfinch lands on a coneflower, one of several plants they’ve been enjoying for two or three weeks now.
7:37am
Two European Starlings are sitting high in the locust for species No. 28. I’m already closing in on a new record for my Big Sit with some key species missing. Black-capped Chickadee, anyone?
7:41am
I’m watching six Mourning Doves on a power line, when suddenly two fly off abruptly and the other four go still as statues. Sure enough, a Cooper’s Hawk circles past and heads off to the east.
7:46am
Someone’s up early making breakfast, as I catch a whiff of sauteed onions. My mind wanders to the nearest diner, the White Iris Cafe, which serves heaping portions of corned beef hash. It’s a place where I once ordered a Chicken-fried Steak in a moment of weakness. The cafe’s been there forever and I was once told by a local politico—a “connected guy” in the machine parlance—that the Iris is “a good place, owned by Greeks.”
7:59am
The early morning din has been increasing minute by minute, mostly made up of cars on a faraway expressway and a nearby thoroughfare. I think I hear a Chipping Sparrow, though I can’t be sure it isn’t a truck backing up in the distance. I turn on Merlin and somehow it picks out a Chipping Sparrow so I chalk up species No. 30.
8:22am
We’ve hit a bit of a lull. I can still smell the onions.
8:28am
I’ve been hearing chip notes in the elm, and scan it closely until an American Redstart is revealed. I’m a bit pleased with myself because I ID’ed it just by looking at the underside of its tail, which is longer and more deeply notched than other warblers’ tails.
8:32am
Someone’s already at it with a combustion-powered lawn mower! Too early, in my opinion.
8:44am
What is that moving in the tree? Another warbler? No, this one is moving more slowly than a warbler and is a touch larger. It’s a PHILADELPHIA VIREO! New bird for the day and a new bird for my all-time yard list. It pays to wake up early and focus solely on birds!
8:51am
Time for an old birding joke. I look up and it’s an American Gashawk flying over! Get it, a Gashawk instead of a Goshawk? I identify it as Bombardier CRJ-200, on its way from Columbia, S.C., to Chicago O’Hare.
9:03am
This time an American Redstart is much more apparent, hawking insects high in the elm. And this one is a bright male, orange-and-black in breeding plumage.
9:08am
There is another warbler flitting around. This one is a small one (aren’t they all?) and has white wing bars and an orangy-yellow upper chest. It’s a NORTHERN PARULA! A new bird for the day (No. 35) and a new one for the all-time list.
9:11am
There’s a big gashawk overhead, this one a Boeing 777 on its way to O’Hare from Seoul. The flight left at 11:29am local time — on Saturday — and is landing at 9:12am local time — on Saturday. So it’s gone back in time theoretically.
9:33am
Things are really getting slow now, and the mind begins to drift to other pursuits and responsibilities. I think about how many birds have shown up in that one elm today. I admit it is not the most aesthetically pleasing elm, oddly shapen and dying in places. But I think about all the caterpillars, spiders, and flies finding a home there, and all the birds it attracts. Then I think about the impact of one tree. Recently, I’ve been following an Instagram account that’s highlighting some of the longest-lived trees in the area. Here’s a “legacy” tree, a 308-year-old White Oak. This tree was growing here when Indigenous people were the primary residents and the American Bison was plentiful.
The White Oak and that sickly neighborhood elm are still with us, providing both sustenance and a connection to the past. And the next time I’m fretting over the small stuff I’ll think of the impermanence of it all.
Postscript: This year’s total of 35 species was a new high for me, topping last year’s total of 25.
Postscript #2: In case you missed it, I shared some news on Friday about a new film project related to the exhibition I’m curating for next year. Learn more about The Best-Known Grouse of the Western States.
If you enjoyed this post, you might like last year’s Big Sit post:
Big Sit experience redefines yard work
Birders from across the state participated in a Big Sit this past weekend. If you don’t know what a Big Sit is, it’s when birders sit or stand in a 17-foot circle and identify as many species as possible during a specific time period. While not part of a team, I took the opportunity to sit in my backyard as part of the sit for the second consecutive yea…
Aha! I've been trying to identify a vireo I saw in McDowell Forest Preserve in Naperville on Sunday. I thought it was maybe a blue-headed vireo; I didn't really see the blue, but the light was bad, and everything else seemed to match. However, your post makes me think that maybe it was a Philadelphia. Although I really didn't think it had as much yellow as the Philly seems to.
I also considered Tennessee warbler but considered that less likely for the reasons you mentioned: this bird was sitting on a low branch for a good two minutes fluffing itself, and I didn't think a warbler would move that slowly.
None of these birds are on my life list. The caveat to it all is this wry note I found near the bottom of Merlin's entry on blue-headed vireo: "Some birds are better left unidentified."
Thank you for writing this after your Sit. I loved it, maybe because I am a woman of a certain age, I have this question: during the lulls, especially during the civil twilight, how do you not doze off?