The Plum Creek Forest Preserve walk started in the meadow and got great looks through the scope at Henlow's and Grasshopper Sparrows, as well as Dickcissel, Eastern Meadowlark and Bobolink.
The evening was looming, the birders were tired and the temperature had dropped. I was especially ready to go home and go straight to bed. But you know if you leave too soon, you’re going to miss something, so I waited it out as Walter continued to scope the water from the golf club balcony. Then, all of a sudden, we spotted a large shape in the sky.
Flatwoods flourish in the plains left by retreating glaciers millennia ago. They don’t quite feel like upland or bottomland forests. The trees are not necessarily all coniferous or deciduous or even all native. They are just as their name suggests. Flat. Woods.
“As flat as a pool table,” says Tom Lally of the woodlands.
With the growing interest in the success of the federally endangered Great Lakes population of Piping Plover, we thought it’d be good to get a quick refresher on where they’re at going into 2019.
