Field Trip Recap: Lincoln Park Zoo Beginner's Walk
Black-crowned Night Heron. Photo by Emily Tallo, Jackson Park, April 14, 2022.
words by Lauren Kostas
What’s better than a warm June morning, a noisy rookery of Black-crowned Night Herons and a friendly group of new birders to enjoy it all with? Not much, according to the group of 12 novice bird fans who joined Sammy Cabindol at the Lincoln Park Zoo on June 16. Sammy was an energetic leader, answering our questions and helping us observe 27 bird species.
We met up at the bridge overlooking the Lincoln Park Zoo nature boardwalk. As part of our introductions, we shared spark birds—a new term for many of us. The Barred Owl, Mourning Dove and Northern Cardinal were just some of the species that first “sparked” our interest and motivated us to pay more attention to birds. After a quick primer on binoculars and passing around some field guides, we started our morning excursion.
Baltimore Oriole (female). Photo by Ima Akagawa, McCormick Nature Area, Sept. 22, 2024.
On our walk we used our ears, eyes and (when we neared the heron rookery) sense of smell to identify several summer migrants and year-round residents. We spotted male and female Red-winged Blackbirds, a singing Song Sparrow, a Baltimore Oriole and its dangling nest, Barn Swallows, Chimney Swifts, and American Goldfinches.
We spent lots of time admiring the aerial acrobatics of Cliff Swallows. The industrious flyers gathered mud from the banks of the pond, repaired nests clinging to the underside of the bridge, and fed demanding nestlings. Birds weren’t the only kind of nature on display. We marveled at the water-bearing properties of cup plants, listened to a sonorous bullfrog, spied soft-shell turtles and visited the local beaver dam.
We wrapped our trip with an extended visit to the Black-crowned Night Heron rookery, where we saw juvenile and adult herons preening, feeding and tending to their nests high in the trees over the zoo’s wolf enclosure. The rookery at the zoo is the largest in Illinois (by a significant factor) and this rookery hosted more than 700 birds, including close to 300 chicks. The rookery starts to empty out in August, as the birds leave the nesting sites to forage further afield, with some migrating to wintering grounds in Louisiana, Florida or as far south as Central America.
Black-crowned Night Heron (juvenile). Photo by Dustin Wiedner, Lincoln Park Zoo, June 24, 2024.
The rookery is the object of study by Lincoln Park Zoo's Urban Wildlife Institute, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Illinois Department of Natural Resources. The goals are to better understand why the zoo location is such a successful breeding space and identify what can be done to entice birds to other viable nesting sites—reducing risk of colony collapse. To learn more about these endangered birds and become part of their support network, follow the Chicago Black-crowned Night Heron Project on Instagram and Facebook.
Keep an eye on the COS calendar for more trips around Cook County. Don’t forget to save the dates of September 12-14, 2025, for Chicago's second annual Urban Birding Festival. The festival will have all kinds of workshops, guided trips and social events. Whether you are new to birding or you have recorded hundreds of eBird checklists, the festival will have something for everyone.