Several species — a great example is Smith’s longspur — have become very hard to find in Ohio in recent decades, and others — for example the greater prairie-chicken -— are extirpated in the state. Because the prairie-chicken’s springtime leks are so spectacular, and any appearance of the aforementioned longspur worthy of mention, and because these events coincide in time and space in early April not so far away in Illinois, we planned a trip to see them there in 2005.
Accommodating as many schedules as possible, we started the trip not at the usual Worthington Mall location, but at a pre-dawn lek (communal mating display by males) of the chickens near Newton, Illinois. Some of us drove out the previous day, some left later and drove all night, and still others came from elsewhere. Eighteen of us made the meet, and after a futile wait for the ticking of yellow rails (they would be likelier a week later) at a nearby wetland, we convened near the lek. Despite murky skies and gusty winds, and most chickens’ decisions to cavort on the far side of a green bank in the distance, everyone got good looks at courting birds, with their leaps and strutting and pulsating neck-sacs and constant hooting that sounded like a beer-bottle band.
We got some instructive information from Prairie Ridge Natural Area staff on the scene, including news that our other target species, Smith’s longspur, had been reported at a field not a mile away within the previous few days. This was very welcome, since only one report of this species had been posted on mailing lists for Indiana and Illinois in previous weeks, and we hurried over. A vast field, striped with rows of cornstalks and littered with husks from the autumn’s harvest, lay before us. On the weedy ground, millions of shucks wavered in the chilly wind, mimicking birds. We couldn’t see any foxtail (Setaria sp.), said to be almost indispensable for success in finding Smith’s locally, but we spent an hour futilely scoping the empty lanes between the corn-stubble.
Futilely scoping became a theme for the rest of the morning. We drove numerous back roads, ignoring interesting prairie habitat lovingly restored by the Prairie Ridge folks, concentrating all our attention instead on corporate-scale cornfields. Sure, we felt foolish, and passersby must have thought us a bit dotty, staring so raptly into empty fields. Other than horned larks and the occasional red-winged blackbird, you don’t see a whole lot of species with this strategy, and, lacking longspurs, failure becomes a habit. We talked to some Illinois birders, and they all said to look for foxtail; so unanimous was this advice that our quest turned botanical, and our day-list ground to a halt.
Hours later, reckoning we’d studied all the corn in the county, we took a break to visit the grain elevators in the small town of Newton. Eighteen of us walking the streets nearby, in all our winter finery, caused townspeople driving by to slow and stare, and some to ask what was up. We were looking for the Eurasian collared-doves known to nest nearby, and finally we found four of them. These successful pioneers have spread from Florida to California, but in Ohio and states to our east they are still quite rare. Ohio has but one accepted record -— a bird shot by hunters four years ago -— and it was good practice to scrutinize their field-marks, and perhaps also a magical attempt to induce more to visit closer to home.
Understandably enough, these exotic creatures in this tame environment failed to revive the spirits of our seekers. Some of the “Midnight Chicken Express” folks, who had driven all night, were being caught napping in their vehicle. And no one was happy to find that a fast-food joint that shall remain nameless was the logical choice for lunch. I of course bit my tongue, not invoking the iron law of Avidity that lunch is to be brought along and not purchased en route, especially in a sitting position. It must have been the local price for gasoline that started the mutiny, and before we had a chance to pitch an afternoon plan for more stimulating cornfielding, three carloads of alleged Avids had decided to call it a day, citing the long drive back home. Some even mentioned the eared grebe rumored to have appeared at a Franklin County park.
Maybe just because the sun had emerged, six of us stuck it out in Illinois, choosing a park more or less on the way home, near Danville, which the Illinois birding guide effusively described as having diverse habitats -— here we could perhaps find the common birds we’d missed in the prairies -— and in early April “flocks numbering in the thousands of both American golden-plovers and Lapland longspurs, as well as fewer numbers of American pipits and Smith’s longspurs.” A virtually bird-free hour and a half on freeways brought us to the park, where a pleasant walk among trees -— what strange and lovely things they seemed now —- beside a marsh remedied some very embarrassing empty spaces on our collective checklist, and an hour spent creeping along a lane amid a sea of corn-stubble gained us a half-minute look and listen at a Smith’s longspur in flight, then a long and mostly puzzled scrutiny by three of us, and just a glance for the rest, of what upon consultation proved to be a first-spring female Smith’s, one of nature’s least flashy bird creations, I can tell you. There were no plovers or Laplands, it will be no surprise to hear.
I believe this is the first Avids trip ever to miss American goldfinch and downy woodpecker, and this is only the beginning of embarrassing voids on the field checklist that lies before me now. We usually find a hundred or more species on an April trip back home, but on this one — thanks mainly to that last-gasp effort in the county park, where we finally teased out chickadees, etc. — we found what we went for, in a daily total of but 72. Here it is:
Pied-billed grebe
Great blue heron
Turkey vulture
Canada goose
Wood duck
Gadwall
American wigeon
Mallard
Blue-winged teal
Northern shoveler
Green-winged teal
Canvasback
Ring-necked duck
Lesser scaup
Northern harrier
Sharp-shinned hawk
Red-tailed hawk
Rough-legged hawk
American kestrel
Greater prairie-chicken
Ring-necked pheasant
Northern bobwhite
American coot
American golden-plover
Killdeer
Lesser yellowlegs
Pectoral sandpiper
Long-billed dowitcher
Common snipe
Bonaparte’s gull
Ring-billed gull
Rock pigeon
Eurasian collared-dove
Mourning dove
Short-eared owl
Belted kingfisher
Red-headed woodpecker
Northern flicker
Eastern phoebe
Loggerhead shrike
Blue jay
American crow
Horned lark
Tree swallow
Carolina chickadee
Tufted titmouse
Carolina wren
Sedge wren
Golden-crowned kinglet
Eastern bluebird
American robin
Northern mockingbird
Brown thrasher
European starling
Eastern towhee
American tree sparrow
Field sparrow
Vesper sparrow
Savannah sparrow
Fox sparrow
Song sparrow
Swamp sparrow
White-throated sparrow
Lapland longspur
Smith’s longspur
Northern cardinal
Red-winged blackbird
Eastern meadowlark
Common grackle
Brown-headed cowbird
House finch
House sparrow