June 10th is Annual Breeding Bird Blitz Day

The 4th Annual Breeding Bird Blitz will focus on shrublands

One of the most-counted birds on last year’s Breeding Bird Blitz Day.

Between June 9th and 19th, and especially on June 10th, the official 4th Annual Breeding Bird Blitz Day, hundreds of citizen scientists will count the birds in the shrublands of the Chicago region, collecting valuable data on shrubland birds and their populations.

Chicago Wilderness, an alliance of 185 public and private organizations working together to study, restore, protect and manage the precious natural resources of the Chicago region, has designated shrubland birds as a top priority for breeding bird data collection in spring 2006. This new emphasis on shrubland birds is based on the release of a regional report card that showed insufficiencies in data on the numbers and distributions of shrubland bird species. By putting a special emphasis on shrublands, Chicago Wilderness, which coordinates data collection for the Breeding Bird Blitz, has added 70 sites to the existing list of annually monitored grasslands.

Volunteers are needed to identify all potentially important shrubland sites and count the birds in as many of these sites as possible. Chicago Wilderness officials hope to learn the relative population size and distribution of rare and important species, and identify and describe sites that have great potential for shrubland bird habitat. In the future, volunteers will track changes in shrubland bird populations and learn how habitat management efforts are affecting shrubland birds.

The Annual Breeding Bird Blitz collects data that tells scientists the status and distribution of breeding birds on a region-wide scale. Grassland and shrubland birds are a top priority of Chicago Wilderness because of their global rarity and dramatic declines in the last century. The Chicago region has some of the largest and best-protected habitats for these birds. In 2003 and 2004, monitors counted 1,653 Bobolinks (the most recorded species of this study), 457 Grasshopper Sparrows, 258 Henslow’s Sparrows, and three Northern Harriers (a species rarely found east of the Mississippi River). Volunteers found 12 grassland species (out of 18 that historically have occurred here) in ten counties.

If you can identify shrubland birds (see list below) and would like to spend a morning counting them with a team or on your own, please contact the county Breeding Bird Blitz coordinator in the region you would like to count in:

• Cook – Alan Anderson; 847/390-7437; casresearch@comcast.net

• DuPage – Bob Fisher; 630/985-2956; Bfisher928@aol.com

• Indiana – Barb Dodge; 219/992-2413

• Kane – Roger Hotham; 847/697-7484

• Lake – Donnie Dann; 847/266-2222; donniebird@yahoo.com

• Will – Dick Riner; 708/720-5683; rrinersprint5@earthlink.net

If you already cover a shrubland for the BCN Census, your June 2006 data will be included in this season’s Breeding Bird Blitz.

Shrubland birds of Chicago Wilderness: Bell’s Vireo, Blue-winged Warbler, Brown Thrasher, Black-billed Cuckoo, Eastern Kingbird, Eastern Towhee, Field Sparrow, Golden-winged Warbler, Lark Sparrow, Loggerhead Shrike, Northern Bobwhite, Orchard Oriole, Prairie Warbler, Willow Flycatcher, Yellow-breasted Chat, White-eyed Vireo, American Redstart, Chestnut-sided Warbler, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Yellow-billed Cuckoo.