In 2019, our team continued to evolve. My wife decided not to come this time. My brother joined for his third blitz and his wife was coming along as well. We competed in the Dawn to Dusk category once again. This was our best effort yet and I don’t think we even won this time. The rain stayed away for the most part but now we had wind. This was going to make for an especially challenging day as the birds stayed fairly low and inactive beyond the morning hours.
Once again we started at our favorite birding spot, Ferne Clyffe State Park. I separated the ebird lists into dark and light. We had good luck getting Chuck Will’s Widow counting at least 3 individuals as well as Barred Owl. A Wild Turkey called from the woods. Louisiana Waterthrushes were singing from the little campsites next to the trailheads. We still did not get a screech owl for the blitz while others always seem to get them at this site. Perhaps we never arrive early enough. We were unsuccesful finding a Whip-poor-will this time.
We went on a speed hike through a trail because I wanted to get to Fort Massac State Park while it was still morning. We counted 40 species during the hour it was light. We had a total of 6 warblers including Pine Warbler which in my opinion is good to get anywhere. The trail is always a reliable spot to get Worm-eating Warbler as well so we made sure to hike far enough for that one as well. Someday I’d like to do a big day at just this park and see what all we can get.
Along the road to Fort Massac we saw a strange shape crossing up ahead. I was thinking roadrunner. My brother’s wife must have thought the same because she said it out loud. As we got very close to the bird we realized it was actually a pheasant. It seemed like it was domestic but there was no place around that we could see it came from. We didn’t know if we should count it but later on we were told to go ahead and count it. We also saw an American Kestrel early on which seemed to be a difficult bird for us to get on these country roads in the past.
We stayed at Fort Massac for three hours. We really added on some birds. We figured out that we could get a lot of migrants on the bike trail. We got all of the woodpeckers except Hairy Woodpecker and Yellow-bellied Sapsucker but that one is usually gone by this time of year. We also had 4 thrush species. We counted 13 warbler species. One of the last ones was way at the end of a hiking trail. It was a life bird for me, a Wilson’s Warbler. My brother was surprised that it took so long for me to ever see this bird but I also don’t live next to Tower Grove Park in St. Louis. There were some big opossums on the trail which really creeped out my brother’s wife. One was hiding in a hole along the trail that she looked in and almost had a heart attack. Another one was just chilling on the side of a tree sitting very still as we walked past. Big misses for the site were Blackpoll Warbler, Scarlet Tanager, and Orchard Oriole. Looking back, we also have never had much luck with flycatchers.
Before heading to Mermet Lake we bummed around Metropolis to get some urban birds. Purple Martins is always a big one and we were successful finding a residence that had a few gourds. At Mermet Lake, I finally got the scope out but only to check out some shorebirds. There were only Lesser Yellowlegs and Solitary Sandpipers that we could find. There were a few Spotted Sandpipers on the rocks along the road. The only duck we had was a Bufflehead which was a first for us on the Blitz. Osprey and Caspian Tern were true to history and did not disappoint us this time. We still struck out on Scarlet Tanager and Orchard Oriole.
Since we had visited our big places for the morning, we spent the afternoon goings to sites that historically had target species for other teams and tried to add some of them to our list for the first time. The first was a Barn Owl box along Porter House road that I had tried the week before. I only had binoculars then and could not see far enough to look in the box. I had a scope with me this itime and believed I could see inside without getting too close to disturb the birds. This proved unsuccessful. Either the bird was not there or I just could not see it. We did add a Prairie Warbler and Wood Duck. Next, we stopped at Buttonland Swamp which seemed pretty dry. We made sure to listen to Horned Larks along the way which we were able to count at least 4. Next up was the Bellrose Observation Deck which seemed deserted. The wind had really picked up and my scope wobbled as we looked out. We managed to see a good amount of Bald Eagles which we did not have yet at this point.
We kept driving looking for more places to look out from. I don’t believe we ever stopped to eat anywhere which I know my brother was really wanting to do. I didn’t know where to stop and felt like I just couldn’t because we needed to get up to Crab Orchard before it was too late. We had the best list we ever had and I didn’t want to give up on adding to it too soon. We found a group of Hooded Mergansers in a pond along the highway. Waterfowl are always a welcome addition in the Spring in Southern Illinois. We really wanted to find a pigeon because we never had in previous years. Driving through the small town of Anna we found an all white pigeon on a rooftop. Being from the St. Louis area, it is comical to us how hard we have to work to find a pigeon. Driving along Grand Tower, we saw some cool little fluddles that had shorebirds and a duck, a Blue-winged Teal foraging in them. We added a Greater Yellowlegs but looking back I’m not sure if we should have counted this bird. We may have drove across the border into Missouri and I don’t remember exactly what point we saw the bird.
It was after 5 PM when we made it up to Jackson county at Oakwood Bottoms to try and find a bittern or some of the less common waders. We found none. Crossing the bridge at Crab Orchard we added our lone gull, Ring-billed, along with some Black Vultures and a Northern Mockingbird. We ended by spending 20 min at the meadow overlook where we had the Bobwhites the previous year. We added maybe 1 species. I wanted to keep birding until 8:45 but I was outvoted and we headed back to Mt. Vernon. It was probably a good call because I had a hard time staying awake on the drive back which was over an hour long.