For the first time in almost two months, all four of the computers we use to post to the blog are working at the same time. Rejoice! Keep letting us know about those late fall rarities, there seems to be a bit of a push by Mountain Bluebirds into the Midwest this year, and one of the Midwest hawkwatch sites had a Gull-billed Tern a few days ago.
Today we observed something very unusual: a Hermit Thrush hunting, at night, by the light of the Chicago streetlamps. One other person has previously reported to us seeing this nocturnal hunting technique being used by a Hermit Thrush is the very same neighborhoood. There are plenty of sparrows around but we've never seen them hunting at night.
So, has anyone else seen this before? Are we witnessing the early steps in the evolution of the Chicago Hermit ThrushOwl?
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Regarding nocturnal passerines, have you heard of what I like to call the Great Stadium Fallout at Cornell in the fall of '05? I tried googling for online posts about it and got: http://www.birderblog.com/post.php?id=666
I wasn't there for the great fallout that started stadium birding, but I've been to multiple much lesser fallouts and observed passerines feeding in the lights of the stadium and surrounding streetlights. Truly a spectacle.
Cheers,
Nick
With all this self referencing as "we", your starting to sound like Gov. Blago.
Oh you young whipper-snappers...
Nighttime fallouts in brightly lit areas were hardly discovered in '05. It's been documented by old farts for decades.
Haha... nobody told us... it was new to me :)
Nope, nothing like Governor Blagwhorovich. No one here has been indicted yet.
We had forgotten about the Cornell thing. Not exactly the same as a habitual night-feeding Hermit Thrush, but still pretty cool. And although we have lived in the bright lights of the big city for many years, we have never seen anything like what those folks saw at Cornell that night.
We have seen something even cooler, but we'll leave that for later;)
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