At our new home in an older section of Macomb, Illinois, I’ve taken to beginning most days sitting quietly with a cup of coffee just outside our back door, listening and watching for birds. I fully expected there to be differences in the breeding bird communities between our new urban location and our former home in rural Mason County along the Illinois River valley. In the more manicured setting of Macomb, with less habitat diversity than the country, I knew there would be less species, but I also expected some overlap. Species such as the house sparrow, European starling, northern cardinal, and American robin are simply a given for any Illinois town. So I could not help from mentally making lists of those species seen and those that I eventually expected.
But now that the spring migration was over, where almost any species is at least possible, I was not exactly sure which species I definitely should not expect to see. By the middle of June, I had still not logged a rose-breasted grosbeak or a Baltimore oriole, which I found surprising. So I started thinking more about habitats. I would not, of course, expect true grassland species, such as a Henslow’s sparrow or dickcissel, in town, nor would I expect wetland species like a black-necked stilt. On the other hand, Killjordan Creek, less than a block from my home, could be a wild card. I had already seen, for example, a great blue heron flying high overhead apparently following the creek through town. With that thought, a belted kingfisher is high on my list of expectations. When a flash of yellow in a nearby spruce tree caught my attention, I immediately knew it as an American goldfinch, but the deep yellow made me think of the prothonotary warbler. That was certainly a bird I would not expect in my neat little neighborhood, because if any bird can be considered the quintessential floodplain forest songbird, that species is it. I should also not expect forest songbirds that require large expanses of unbroken mature forest, such as the cerulean warbler or veery. But what about shrubland species? I had already checked off the brown thrasher, gray catbird, and eastern towhee; so more shrubland birds might be expected. Blue grosebeak? Common yellowthroat? Not yet.
From a bird’s perspective, the in-town environment must seem like a simplified type of savanna: large scattered trees within a mosaic of grasses, shrubs, and large open areas. If that is, indeed, the case, then I should be looking for birds that can also be found in savannas and habitat edges. The key word, however, is “simplified”: much of the open area is pavement; the short-clipped lawns and trimmed shrubbery in town are a far cry from a prairie grass-forb mixture with hazelnut thickets; and the standing dead timber found in natural areas, so useful to species such as the red-headed woodpecker, does not last long in an urban environment, especially when a fall would likely be over a house, road, or overhead wires.
Do birds perceieve this environment as a simplified savanna?
Birding in town is a challenge not just because there are less bird habitats than in the country, but because one cannot simply roam around at will pointing a pair of powerful binoculars toward wherever an interesting bird might be. I can just imagine the reaction if a not-quite-recognizable bird song made its way over from the smokebush across the street, which also happens to be in front of a neighbor’s living room window. “Officer…seriously, you’ve never heard of a white-eyed vireo?” So I’ll continue to adjust my expectations to town life, and perhaps have a nice surprise once in a while near the back door—like the hermit thrush during migration or the Cooper’s hawk that I had a glimpse of for about two seconds.
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