Spring has Sprung/Sage Thrasher at Montrose???

Ah, it is a beautiful time to be alive.

All across North America, our feathered little friends are on the move.

Birds that wintered in the tropics are now in Florida, and birds that wintered in Florida are now here in Chicago.

There has been a very nice migration of warblers, tanagers, etc in the Dry Tortugas, the Florida Keys, and the various migrant traps in mainland Florida.

Up here in the Midwest, migration had been "stalled" a bit; on Friday we were still seeing primarily early-spring migrants like Brown Creeper and Northern Flicker. But that changed with a nice push over the weekend, with great warm weather to boot, and today even more birds arrived. Sparrow migration is now fully underway, and we are getting our first trickle of warblers as well. This will only get better for about the next month.

There have been a few rarities, too. A Barn Owl today at Montrose, and a Sage Thrasher was reported on Saturday from Montrose. We know that the Thrasher was looked for by a few people (fewer then you would think), who used every possible effort to coax the bird out of hiding, but it could not be re-found. There was no photo taken, so who knows if it will ever be accepted by the records committee, but it is what it is.