Illinois Bird Day

by David Hoyt

You may know that this Saturday, May 14, is World Migratory Bird Day. It is also, as of 2022, officially Illinois Bird Day.

“Birds matter to the lives of the residents of Illinois in many ways great and small,” ring the words of the Proclamation, signed by Governor Pritzker on April 13. Of course, for many of us, every day is bird day, or birding day (which includes dusk and twilight and dark, so as not to offend owls, nighthawks, and the occasional perturbed American Robin breaking the overnight code of silence). And to the delight to paleontology fans debating the nature of Tyrannosaurus Rex’s feathers, this brings us but one step closer to the proclamation of Illinois Flying Dinosaur Day.

But it is now official that the State of Illinois appreciates birds of all feathers and welcomes the legions that pass through from out of town every spring and fall. There really is no better strategy for rebranding the label of “flyover country,” and turning a negative into a positive with a bit of tropical glamor. “Our state,” highlights the proclamation, “is world renowned as a major migratory pathway for birds traveling from and to the tropics.” I’ve always said that one of the advantages of living in Chicago is that, sooner or later, all your friends will fly through town.

The same geographic features that make Illinois the site of several key transportation hubs also act as a funnel to bring millions of birds northward, channeling them between the shores of Lake Michigan and adjacent river systems as they head for the southernmost edge of the boreal forests in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota. That’s what ornithology tells us; when you see a Scarlet Tanager on a low branch at sunset in May, molten red like the lantern of a railroad crossing where no train tracks run, you sense the presence of something that really is from another world.

Such intermittent apparitions are a source of joy, a fount of science, and a surprisingly unfamiliar treasure to many residents of the state. Whatever is done to raise awareness of local bird life, and of Illinois’s place in the hemispheric phenomenon of migration, is therefore needed and welcome.