April Water & Shore Birds in Northern Illinois

Blue-winged Teals winging it over the Nygren Wetlands, Rockton, IL; 4/5/2012.

Blue-winged Teals (Above & Below) arrived in droves and were all over the place when I visited the Nygren Wetlands in early April. They are one of our water birds that will spend the summer in Northern Illinois.

Another Blue-winged Teal, Nygren Wetlands, Rockton, IL; 4/5/2012.

Other water birds that swooped in with the Blue-winged Teals were Wood Ducks (Below Top), and Greater Scaups (Below Bottom). Usually late February and March are the heavy migratory traffic for water birds in our area. Blue-wings and Wood Ducks would be a couple of the later migrants.

A flock of Wood Ducks in Nygren Wetlands from last Fall; 10/15/2011.

Greater Scaups joined a flotilla of Ruddy Ducks and Blue-winged Teals, Nygren Wetlands, 4/5/2012.

A Solitary Sandpiper, Espenscheid FP; 4/21/2012.

One of the more common Shore birds we get around here is the Solitary Sandpiper (Above). My first sighting of this guy this year was in Espenscheid Forest Preserve along the banks of the Kishwaukee River. Another common shorebird (although not exclusively found along water edges), Killdeers also arrived in the first week of April.