Dim prospects for birds. Dampened even further by impending rain.

By Christopher Cudworth

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The Christmas Bird Count comes around once a year, usually in the second week of December. Having worked both the Christmas and Spring Bird counts (technically part of the Fermi Circle Count) here in Illinois for the last 30 consecutive years, I try not to miss doing my part. Sometimes it is small. Just me and a bike path, counting birds as I go, trying to find an unusual species or two as I trudge or ride along. Sometimes I’ve joined a group of several other people, fanning out across a forest to find long-eared owls lurking in a pine grove, or looking for a lingering hermit thrush in the thickets.

Hoping something unusual turns up

Birding on the Christmas Bird Count goes on rain or shine. If the temperature is 6 below zero, you dress warm and go out. But it hasn’t been like that for the last 15 years or so. The coldest I remember it getting on Christmas Bird Count day in the last 15 years is about 15 degrees. And windy. Not exactly fun weather or productive weather in which to bird, but even on the worst days something unusual often turns up.

For the last few years my assigned area has been a stretch of bike path leading from the Leroy Oakes Forest Preserve in St. Charles, Illinois west almost to Wasco and back. But before I head out on the trail there

A rock from a different age still lingers on the burnt, wet prairie.

is a loop around the restored prairie at the trailhead that must be ridden to check for sparrows and cardinals that like the underbrush. This year the prairie has been burned with nothing but black stubbled tufts and glacial rocks to consider. The birds know better than to hang here. Only a lonesome red-tailed hawk slouches in the cottonwoods above.

Out on the trail 

One of the old train markers. 39 miles west of Chicago.

It is a humble and strange little tract of turf, this trail I ride. I can actually recall when the trains still used to blast through this corridor, headed west toward Iowa and east toward Chicago. The Chicago and Northwestern Line used to deliver to the lumberyards west of St. Charles, with spurs heading off to lumberyards and factories along the way. That industrial strip went soft 30 years ago as well. Finally the train line itself went under. That left a long railroad bed open for development into the Great Western Trail, the most popular section of bike trail in all of Kane County.

Nearly bird less

Still, I wipe off the binoculars and check out every bird. They all count on the CBC.

But in winter the trail can be pretty dead in terms of birds. The trees on either side of the path are most junk trees. Overgrown buckthorn and species that throw their leaves down at the first winds of autumn or else cling to them all winter. There even used to be a large homogenous pine forest at the start of the trail where we could count on finding long-eared owls in winter, and great horned owls as well. A developer mowed those trees down 5 years ago, and with them all hope of finding the owls, hawks and pine forest species we looked for each December.

An orphaned territory

It is an orphaned territory, this stretch of land I now bird on the annual Christmas Bird census. It is a linear territory, so I ride my bike because to walk out and back would take hours, and there just aren’t that many birds between the hotspots to justify hoofing it.

I have walked it nevertheless, in other years, making calculated side trips onto the long strips of farmland that sit on the north side of the trail. One of the farms is technically an Indian reservation: says so on the sign leading into the property, which also bears multiple No Trespassing signs.

So I don’t, except on the far stretches too far from the house to see. But there’s nothing much there to find in most years anyway. I know. I’ve tried. An occasional kestrel or belated thrasher might show up in the thin woods, but I’ve learned it is just as efficient to ride slowly down the trail, looking and in particular, listening for the slightest tweet or tseeep that indicate a song or white-throated sparrow, cardinal or chickadee making its way alongside the bike path. I check the wet ditches below the railroad grade for the wayward snipe or killdeer. Once in a while you stumble on such a bird, if you’re careful and go slow enough to notice.

Slow ride

Going slow and stopping often is the bike by bird method.

Pedaling slow on my Specialized Mountain Bike, in other years I have left tracks in newly fallen snow in some years. Other years it has been a balanced act trying to navigate fat knobby tires over hard packed snow with an icy patch now and then. This year it was just wet and soggy. Rain fell intermittently throughout the two hours I birded.

Here was the day’s list. Not bad for a 40 degree day in December in the rain:

Sandhill cranes are one of the expected yet prized species on the Illinois CBC.

Cardinal, hairy woodpecker, downy woodpecker, red-breasted nuthatch, white-breasted nuthatch, house sparrow, black-capped chickadee, house finch, red-bellied woodpecker, harrier (marsh hawk), red-tailed hawk, common crow, Canada goose, mallard duck, blue jay, dark-eyed junco.

Count ’em, common or not

The dark-eyed junco or snow bird is one of the most common winter birds in Illinois.

Those are all common birds for Illinois in winter. The hairy woodpecker is about the best find, not as common as the downy. I knew he’d be there–– you can tell it’s a “he” by the red patch on the back of his head–– because the feeders by the houses along the bike path always attract birds. Everything else you find in the territory is pretty much left to chance, dumb luck and good ears and eyes.

The Indian reservation has yet to kick up any real surprises over all these years, although I did find a hermit thrush in the tangles along the former railroad bed once. The hermit thrush has a warm brown plumage, spotted breast and rufous red tail, which it twitches, like a magic wand, whenever it sits still long enough for you to see it.

Just a rider in the rain

As the birding wore on today (Saturday, December 15, 2012) the rain fell heavier and the wind picked up. My rain pants shone and my North Face hat nearly soaked through. Thank goodness for the fleece lining under the knit cap. It kept my bald head warm despite the cold rain pelting through on occasion.

The cross country girls pass by. I’d rather have been running. It would have been over quicker.

Small groups of runners were still out training on the trail. A group of 3 high school girls, all fit and thin and surely recently finished with their cross country season came running by.

A little later their 4th partner came jogging  behind by a quarter mile, looking nervous at being by herself when approaching a stranger all soaked from head to toe, carrying binoculars around his neck and perched precariously on a soaking wet bicycle. I was a sight, I admit. So I waved as she approached and hollered out, “Not much of a day for a Christmas Bird Count, I must admit.” She looked at me like I’d been speaking in tongues. Ah well, you can’t explain yourself to everybody.

It’s a tradition

The end result. A lot wetter. But not much fitter. But it’s a tradition. One you keep.

And I’m sure the cars passing me on Dean Street as I pedaled my miserable way back into the southeast wind and rain wondered what the hell a guy in a wet winter coat was doing riding out in that kind of weather.

“It’s a tradition, goddamnit,” I laughed as one after another car passed. Suffering is a goddamned tradition. And I plan to keep it that way. Rain or shine. Birds or not. Just a rider in the rain. With a purpose. However obscure or insane it might appear to be.