Bird of the Week

Chimney Swift, Chaetura pelagica Bill Rowe You hear high-pitched, chittering calls overhead; you look up, and there is a small brown bird darting across the sky, its body, head, and tail all seemingly rolled into one tube-like shape with narrow,…

Green-winged Teal, Anas crecca Bill Rowe You’re watching a wetland, trying to see the ducks hidden in the grass, when an eagle swoops over the area and flushes them all up, bigger ones like Mallard and Gadwall along with a…

Western Sandpiper, Calidris mauri Bill Rowe World-wide, there are seven species of small sandpipers that are collectively called “peeps” by us and “stints” by the British. Three of these are North American, and two, the Least and Semipalmated Sandpipers, are common…

Yellow-breasted Chat, Icteria virens Bill Rowe Most birders will agree that the Yellow-breasted Chat is a cool bird—it’s handsome, interesting, and …different. Through many decades and many iterations of field guides, it was classified among the warblers in the family…

Bonaparte’s Gull, Chroicocephalus philadelphia Bill Rowe Bonaparte’s Gull, the smallest of our four common gull species, breeds far to our north, in the Canadian and Alaskan taiga (a Russian word meaning the boreal forest of pine, fir, and spruce). There, unlike…

Savannah Sparrow, Passerculus sandwichensis Bill Rowe The Savannah Sparrow could compete for a prize as Most Abundant Bird That No One But Birders Ever Heard Of. It doesn’t nest around here, and the numbers that spend the winter are variable, but during…

Canvasback, Aythya valisineria Bill Rowe North America’s ducks come in a wide assortment of shapes, colors, and sizes; here in the Midwest, late fall, winter, and early spring are the prime times for enjoying the greatest variety of ducks before most…

Baird’s Sandpiper, Calidris bairdii Bill Rowe Above, you see another of the Olympic-level migrants among our shorebirds—not as famous as, say, the American Golden-Plover, but every bit as astonishing in the scope of its annual journey from the Arctic tundra to…

Red Phalarope, Phalaropus fulicarius Bill Rowe It’s time to introduce the phalaropes, a colorful group of three small shorebirds. One species, Wilson’s Phalarope, is strictly North American and also the commonest on migration here in the Midwest. The other two, the…