Author Archives: Oliver Burrus

Oliver’s Birding Blog | Florida 2019

Feb 14 After months of waiting, the day finally came when we drove to Southern Florida, a 20-hour drive from Chicago. Just about 4 hours into the trip, I spotted a field covered in white specks. They were Snow Geese; thousands of them! I immediately started looking with my binoculars outside the passenger window forContinue reading “Oliver’s Birding Blog | Florida 2019”

An Introduction to iNaturalist

Hey all, sorry for not posting in a while (you can expect a lot more posts in the future). What is iNaturalist? iNaturalist is a platform somewhat similar to eBird, a citizen-science project dedicated to documenting life on Earth. Although, there are a couple of significant differences between iNat and eBird. First,  is that eBirdContinue reading “An Introduction to iNaturalist”

Oliver’s Birding Blog | Camp Colorado

Yes, I did publish this a bit later then I intended to but better later than never! Day 1 – we met at 3 PM at the YMCA of the Rockies to begin camp. While we were waiting for everyone to show up, we found Black-billed Magpies and many Violet-green Swallows & Broad-tailed Hummingbirds flyingContinue reading “Oliver’s Birding Blog | Camp Colorado”

2nd annual WBC Big Day

This was one of the weirdest birding days of my life. We seemed to get almost every target but missed many very common birds (for example, White-breasted Nuthatch). Perhaps the funniest was that we got Yellow-crowned Night-Heron but missed Black-crowned, lol. We started the day off at Spring Lake. As soon as we got there, weContinue reading “2nd annual WBC Big Day”

Oliver’s Birding Blog | Carpentersville Dam and Brunner Family FP

Today, I was leading a walk for a different birding group, the Tuesday Birders. Unfortunately, I twisted my shoulder this morning and did not want to lug my camera around so that is why I did not take any photos. We started at Carpentersville Dam, looking for various passerines, although we failed to find any kinglets,Continue reading “Oliver’s Birding Blog | Carpentersville Dam and Brunner Family FP”

Necedah Overnight

  (tentative) July 21st and 22nd Leader: Oliver Burrus Important Details —————————————————————— Meeting Time |(tentative) 12:00 PM, July 21st Meeting Location | Necedah NWR – Visitors Center See more details below Necedah NWR may be best known for their re-introduced population of Whooping Cranes, however, most people overlook the many other marvelous birds that call the refugeContinue reading “Necedah Overnight”

November Illinois Falcons Trip Report

Today, we started bright and early at Swallow Cliff Woods with hopes of spotting some continuing crossbills! We scanned the coniferous trees for quite a while, finding nothing more than a few goldfinches. And although we never did locate any crossbills we did encounter a nice flyover Rough-legged Hawk. We moved on to our next stop,Continue reading “November Illinois Falcons Trip Report”

Are You Ready for Winter Gulls? You Will be After This!

Gulls are considered by some as the most challenging group of birds in the ABA area to identify. As challenging as it is, why not try to learn today how to differentiate these marvelous creatures!  This time, we will go deep into the identification of six gull species (Herring, Ring-billed, Iceland, Glaucous, Lesser Black-backed, andContinue reading “Are You Ready for Winter Gulls? You Will be After This!”

September 9th WBC walk

Today we started at Gilson Park, a fairly small park on Lake Michigan but good for migrants. Winds did not seem to be in our favour for passerine migrants but looked good for jaegers and Sabine’s Gulls so Lucas and I scanned for those rare seabirds but to no avail. Next, we met up withContinue reading “September 9th WBC walk”