April 11, 2022 – As spring continues to battle a winter that seems unwilling to step aside, the unstoppable woodland wildflowers have brought new color to the drab understory along the streams and trails of Illinois. This year in southern Illinois, Western chorus frogs sang their love songs under starry skies with an incredibly piercing volume lasting well into the chilly late February night. Waves of many thousands of noisy Snow geese have moved out of the southern part of the state, working their way towards their breeding grounds on the vast lands of the Arctic tundra. Every year American white pelicans that are becoming a more common sight in Illinois can be seen during the winter on the large lakes and river bottoms of Southern Illinois. American white pelican population has grown along with its nesting habitat from the northern Great Plains of the United States and Canada and south and east into Northern Wisconsin. The male and female pelican develop a flat plate that sticks up like a horn on their upper bill during the breeding season, which falls off after the season is over. The American white pelican has a 9-foot wingspan that easily carries the large body of those remarkable birds, having an average weight of between 11 and 30 pounds. Large flocks of these bright white birds with black flight feathers, circling in unison in a graceful formation, high over the lakes and wetlands illuminated by the sun, is a sight to behold, truly breathtaking. As spring arrives and winter musters its last bit of icy effort during its final curtain calls, those large, strange, delightful-looking pelicans will show up in small numbers here in Northeastern Illinois. Reports of sightings have already been recorded this year in Northern Illinois; I witnessed four low flying pelicans from my backyard in Kankakee within the last few weeks. For a brief time before moving further north and west to their summer nesting areas, the American white pelican will rest, feed and take flight on and over the rivers and lakes of Northern Illinois.
