Joe took Friday (10/04) off so we could join a bird walk at St. James Farm but it was raining when we woke up. We drove out that way in case the rain let up, but it was still drizzling at the start time, so we decided to go to the arboretum instead. They didn’t cancel the bird walk since the rain was light, but we don’t own rain jackets and I didn’t want to chance getting my camera wet, so it didn’t make sense to go on the walk. As for the arboretum, we decided to stop at every parking area along the roads and just wait to see what wildlife might make an appearance. We ended up seeing a lot of squirrels and five hawks!
The rain eventually stopped so we decided to head to nearby Hidden Lake to see if we could find the Sage Thrasher again. Sure enough, it was there, in almost the same spot as before.
This bird is not shy at all, so I got even more photos of it. It has a growth on its toe I noticed when editing the photos, so I contacted an organization to go take a look and capture it if it needs medical attention.
Saturday (10/05) we attended a guided bird walk at Trailside Museum in River Forest with John, the same guide we had last time. The first half of the walk was pretty uneventful other than spotting a yellow-bellied sapsucker (a type of woodpecker) in the distance, but on the latter half of the walk we saw Yellow-rumped Warblers and a Northern Waterthrush which is also a type of warbler.
Yellow-rumped Warbler
After our walk, which ran over the allotted time, just like last time, we headed to K’s house to hang out with her and the dogs she was dog sitting, and J joined us too. I’m sure Joe loved listening to us all afternoon!
On the way to her house we took Harlem Ave and was surprised by how many Starbucks and Taco Burrito King restaurants we passed. We also passed a very large cemetery and one of the street names that ended at said cemetery was Farewell Ave which made my eyes go wide.
We were going to attend a kite glow that evening but by the time we got home we were too tired to go back out so we made ourselves home on the couch and watched Scream instead.
We were unable to visit the Itasca bird sanctuary on Sunday (10/06) because they are doing construction on the baseball diamonds near it and had everything gated so you could not get to the path. We thought maybe we could cut through the big dog park, but the gate on the end where the bird sanctuary is was locked. Bummer!
So we ended up going to Springbrook Nature Center which is also in the same town. We were there about an hour and got to look inside the actual nature center (which we usually can’t since we typically visit much earlier in in the morning before they open). They have some turtles, toads, etc in cages there.
The highlight, however, was adding another bird to my life list – the ruby crowned kinglet! Look at that little red stripe on top of it’s cute little head!
When we were ready to leave we saw an identical Subaru Crosstrek parked next to ours. The owner said “nice car” and started chatting with us about how much he loves Subarus; his Crosstrek was the 5th Subaru he has owned. He asked what year ours was and when we told him 2018 he was impressed with how good it looked. That’s because I rarely drive it! I think it has 8000 miles on it. His was model year 2019 though so they basically look the same.
When we got home we put up the outdoor Halloween decor.
Update: The person I spoke to about the Sage Thrasher went to observe it but didn’t feel the toe growth was affecting it enough to attempt to capture and treat it.