Out on Lake Michigan
/We had signed up for birding out on Lake Michigan on the last day of the Urban Birding Festival in Chicago. We had to be at the dock by 5 AM so we were leaving our hotel about 4:30…checking out and loading everything into our car. Both of us were feeling a bit sleep deprived.
Everyone that had signed up for the trip appeared and we were heading out of the harbor by 5:30 AM. The boat was a fishing boat. It wasn’t a windy morning, but I appreciated the extra handholds that the rod holders provided when I tried to move around. I sat most of the time!
Everyone that had signed up for the trip appeared and we were heading out of the harbor by 5:30 AM. The boat was a fishing boat. It wasn’t a windy morning, but I appreciated the extra handholds that the rod holders provided when I tried to move around. I sat most of the time!
We saw the sunrise on the lake. We passed several of the water intakes for the city that are a ways out into the lake and often host colonies of cormorants.
The guides were throwing chum (fish, bread, popcorn) to the birds from the back of the boat. There were more Herring Gulls than Ring-billed Gulls already. We saw a few terns. The hope was for some rarer birds – like a Parasitic Jaeger. That didn’t show up so I focused on observing gulls at various stages of development and how they used their tail feathers to control their flight/landing behind the boat.
The rocking of the boat was calming…at least while I was sitting…not so much when I was moving around.
The skyline of Chicago was always present…although we were at least 15 miles out on the lake. The air around the city was hazy. The air in the city and on the lake was humid and the air quality was yellow (small particulates). It is a big city and there are a lot of cars.
The surprise of the trip was seeing a Monarch butterfly – flying south – when we were between 10 and 15 miles from shore. I had assumed that they took the land route south from Canada…but some of them obviously don’t.
