Superior Mirage

Fata Morgana Superior Mirage

Superior Mirage reflected distortions.

 

April 17, 2017 – On the morning of April 17, 2017 in Iroquois County a few miles south of the Kankakee county line I saw something that I have never witnessed before. On the horizon to the south and southwest there looked to be many buildings, a vast metropolis that looked like some mythical city or a wall stretching out across the landscape rising maybe 10 degrees off the horizon. There before me was the most distorted, stretched out inverted mess I have ever seen. Some barns had peaks that seemed to rise up higher than the barn was tall. One cupola looked so stretched out on the peak of the building that it seemed to be reaching upwards like a cathedral spire.

Superior Mirage Fata Morgana

Superior Mirage

 

The normally flat prairie looked to have a long tall bluff with some rolling hills and a dense forest and some oddly shaped structures that made no sense. One could have perhaps imagined that this must have been what the edge of the ice sheet looked like thousands of years ago. What I was actually seeing was an optical phenomenon called a superior mirage or Fata Morgana mirage. This is a more rare type of the mirage phenomenon caused by a temperature inversion, warmer temperatures above cooler temperature with the light being refracted or bent as it passes through layers of varied air temperatures which causes a view of reflected distortions with the stretching of objects.

Superior Mirage

Superior Mirage reflected distortions.

The Fata Morgana has a history in sailing lore with stories of ghost ships, uncharted land masses that don’t exist, phantom islands and floating cities. The haunted visions of early mariners and the sudden appearance of a city that is miles away coming into view and seen by hundreds are recorded events that inspire the imagination and I feel very lucky to have witnessed a superior mirage that held me spellbound for a time on that morning of the 17th.

The Greater Yellowlegs Sandpiper

Greater Yellowlegs Sandpiper

Greater Yellowlegs Sandpiper

April 14, 2017 – The Greater Yellowlegs Sandpiper is considered a medium sized shorebird standing up to 15 inches tall, they are an elegant long-legged wader that is a migrant through our part of the Midwest in the spring and in the fall. Currently they are on their spring migration and we can find the birds in the flooded fields and the shallows of ponds and lakes as the Midwest becomes a staging area for many shorebirds including the Greater Yellowlegs as they head into Canada where they will spend the summer months, the breeding season, on the marshy areas and the tundra from southern Alaska to Newfoundland. I was able to watch six Greater Yellowlegs and five Lesser Yellowlegs feeding in a small flooded area south of Herscher.

Greater Yellowlegs

Greater Yellowlegs

The Lesser Yellowlegs looks very similar to the Greater Yellowlegs but are noticeably smaller when observed side by side, The Greater Yellowlegs has a 26 inch wingspan and certainly appears somewhat lanky as it steps through the shallows with those long yellow legs. All of the birds in the group were moving mostly the same direction as they waded through the shallow water with some zigzagging, some darting and even crossing each others path. The Greater Yellowlegs would appear to push the Lesser along if it slowed its’ progress. At times the birds would pause to stick their faces and that long slightly turned up bill into the water and with a swiping motion they would move their heads side to side as they searched for prey. The birds seemed to have one thing in mind and that was to find food, many of these birds have come a great distance and still have a long way to go as they make their way to the nesting grounds. The Greater Yellowlegs spends the winter months along the coasts of North America from New York to California including the Gulf of Mexico and Central and South America. Even though their population is believed to be stable the loss of habitat in the winter range is the biggest threat to the Greater Yellowlegs

Tired Travelers

American Golden Plover

American Golden Plover

April 9, 2017 – Last week some remarkable birds, the American Golden-plover, had been seen resting and feeding in the agricultural fields of Iroquois county as they are on their spring migration crossing the United States on their way north to the high Arctic for another breeding season. Well over a 100 of these birds were sharing a wet field near Ashkum with nearly 70 Pectoral Sandpipers that also winter in South America. For more then a week as the miserable weather conditions and relentless northerly winds held them fast the plovers could be seen spread out and walking across the wet field hunting in their typical method of run, stop, run, stop, look then grab a worm or bug. The plovers’ are very well camouflaged, they quite easily blend into the surroundings and they most likely go unnoticed.

American Golden Plover

American Golden Plover

When they bed down for a midday nap they locate a little nest-like depression in the field and they seem to disappear as they settle down into it for some sleep. A smaller group, less then 50 were resting about four miles west of Askum this past Sunday. I was able to observe them for nearly four hours as they hunted the field until about 12:30 pm when I noticed about fifteen of them fly out of the field and stand on the roadway for about ten minutes until they slowly walked to another field and out of sight. Others, about ten, bedded down about twenty-five feet from where I was located. These little birds seemed really tired and over the next three hours there wasn’t much activity, only the occasional getting up to stretch, with a few walking around at times but quickly they would find a spot to lay.

American Golden-plover

American Golden-plover

Most of the birds were still in their winter plumage with a few showing darkening feathers as they transition to their beautiful breeding colors of a coal black face and chin and underparts with a bright white stripe that runs from their forehead above the eyes down the side of the neck to the breast. Their backs are browns with gold spots. It is a remarkable migration cycle that takes these Robin sized birds over 20,000 miles on their amazing journey. The plover spends the winter months on the grasslands of Argentina and the summer, their nesting season, on the rocky tundra of the high Arctic.