Diario de yonatansimkovich

Hi!-my name is Yonatan Simkovich, and I am a 17 year old birder living in Chicago. I was first introduced to birding by my great-grandmother at four years old in Boston, then learned about the world of serious birding from Paul Quintas after moving to Illinois. I got my license about a year ago and began uploading ebird checklists, and now can say that I have a half-decent understanding of how to find birds in Northern Cook County, something I didn't have when most of my birding was walking around my neighborhood before school during migration. I'm writing this from a family trip in Arizona and figured that after procrastinating for a year I should just start writing. I have one last spring migration before going to Israel for two years and then New York for college, where I won't be able to bird as much.
But why go birding? Birding is essentially a treasure hunt that can be conducted in your backyard. There is a large birding community that one can learn from and can spread information with, and often are the friendliest people you will ever meet. Success in birding has to come from your own effort, but that makes it all the more rewarding. There is no other type of animal that consist of such variation (owls to hummingbirds) are widespread (birds can be found in any habitat, at any time) and are awe-inspiring (albatrosses and tanagers). And finally, it's a great excuse to see the sun rise over Lake Michigan on a cool spring morning with no one else in sight.
Another note-I take pictures when I'm able to, but my "camera equipment" is an iPhone held to a scope or binoculars. When a bird is still I can usually take good photos, but generally even if I am able to get a few pictures of the bird they likely won't come out very well.
I intend to regularly post - I enjoyed putting off this post for due to laziness but I also enjoy writing.

APRIL 16 -Phoenix
Throughout the past two weeks I've had multiple cormorant flybys by a nearby canal that I haven't been able to identify. The two regular species of cormorant in the Phoenix area are Double-crested and Neotropic. Double-crested is larger than Neotropic, with a long bill and short tail, while Neotropic has a small bill and a long tail. The former also lacks white on the face, and has orange above the beak with a rounded border.
My last morning in Phoenix began with the usual irritating unidentifiable flybys, but then one flew low and landed on a pipe crossing the canal-Life bird #309!

APRIL 17-Skokie
On Monday afternoon I went to check out the patch that I've chosen for the spring, Lighthouse Beach (More about Lighthouse in a later post). In sharp contrast to previous visits in the winter where I only picked up a few ducks and gulls and maybe a passerine or two, I had 16 species and three new yearbirds. Caspian Terns were patrolling the beach with the usual gulls, two Towhees scratched the leaf litter, an incredibly overdue for the year Northern Flicker flew into some brush, and I had 4 Hermit Thrushes, a good number for a place of this size.
Heading back home, I made a quick stop at Perkins Woods and unsuccessfully looked for Rusty Blackbirds, and then later dipped on a Yellow-throated Warbler that was found at Harbert Park.

APRIL 18 Today was playing catch-up with migrants at Montrose Point. Montrose is hands-down one of the best places to bird in the Midwest, as the peninsula acts as a rarity trap and there's seemingly a little bit of every habitat. All this combines to give Montrose the 29th most bird species of any eBird hotspot in the United States, with 346 species and counting.
While nothing there was that special today, I did see several swallows flying around the dunes and pier, Horned Grebes in breeding plumage, and a Winter Wren in the clump. Cormorants were flying by the lake nonstop, there's a sizable nesting colony that nests on an offshore structure.

APRIL 19 Today was the first day that I've gone birding before school this year, something I’ve been looking forward to all winter. No yearbirds today at Lighthouse Beach, but there was good sparrow activity, five Herring Gulls standing on the breakwall, and a Kestrel that landed on the lighthouse and then took off a minute later, a probable migrant and a good sign for the coming weeks. The biggest surprise though, was an opossum on a tree branch ten feet off the ground!

APRIL 21 The past few mornings I haven't gone birding because my allergies have been terrible, but I started feeling better yesterday afternoon, so I went to Lighthouse Beach to see if some migrants had stayed over from the past few days.
It ended up being an incredible morning, even though there was virtually no migration the night before! There was tons of activity on the lake, as flocks of red-breasted mergansers, gulls, cormorants were flying around. It cumulated with a huge loose raft of mergansers north of the beach and south of Gillson Park. Meanwhile, the dunes finally got some good birds, with a Winter Wren sheltering in the grasses, and some Northern Rough-winged Swallows flew around the dunes for a few minutes. While there was little to no activity in the northern ravine, the southern ravine was full of songbirds, especially sparrows. A sapsucker was drilling a tree trunk on the southwest side, while a pair of Blue Jays were flying around making as much noise as they could. A Red-tailed Hawk sat on a branch until it was escorted out of the area by hordes of blackbirds, and the best part was that I think that this was the most species recorded in a Lighthouse Beach checklist since 43 in a fallout on May 15 2020!

Counting the numbers of easily gettable species, if I had a morning of a similar quality in early or mid May, I would have logged 48, while a truly spectacular morning would have pushed me to 71. Of course, on that same morning, other places would also have high counts, but this place is criminally underbirded and I just want to change that.

I've been trying and failing to get pictures onto this post, might have to use another website but we'll see, anyways I just want to finally get this out.