Bill Jarvis Migratory Bird Sanctuary
/Our first field trip at the Urban Birding Festival in Chicago was at the Bill Jarvis Migratory Bird Sanctuary. We sought out the rest room facilities in the clock tower beforehand. The doorway there was half covered in ivy. There was an unopened protein bar that someone had dropped on the walk nearby…and cicadas and leaves/small branches. Not trash. There were trash/recycle bins…and evidently, they are used. I noticed a young catalpa with seed pods as we walked back toward the sanctuary.
The core of the sanctuary is protected by a fence; visitors have a good view from a platform that is high enough to look over the fence and vegetation….the platform is where our group spent a couple of hours. There was plenty to see!
There were plenty of birds – including flickers, red-headed woodpeckers, Copper’s hawks (which scattered all the other birds when they were about), downy woodpecker, hummingbirds, and goldfinches.
There were monarch butterflies feeding and resting…before they continued their migration south.
A racoon made an appearance…climbing a tree then coming back down and disappearing into what must have been a hole on the other side of the trunk!
Of course, there was a lot of vegetation to look at when the birds were not active enough. The humidity was high so there was moisture on a lot of the leaves. The usual fall color was there – golden rod and pokeweed included!
