March 2020

A Gift from IOS to the Birding Community

March 25, 2020 – As a way to showcase the redesigned Meadowlark Magazine to potential members, and in light of people being stuck at home more during the stay-in-place order, we are happy to announce that the latest issue of Meadowlark Magazine is available online here as a gift to the entire birding community. We hope you enjoy it!

View Meadowlark Summer/Fall 2017 (.pdf)

To our members and those slated to receive this issue of Meadowlark, our printer is currently still operating as an essential business. There may be delays, but we expect you to receive your print copy in the mail within the next few weeks.

If you are not currently a member or let your membership lapse, we encourage you to become a member today and help us continue to grow IOS as an organization. In light of the current economy and the fact that we have already had to cancel outings that we rely on for revenue, we are particularly grateful to those who can join at the “Contributor” level or higher or are able to make an extra donation to support the work of IOS.

Finally, thanks to everyone who contributed to this issue of Meadowlark either through documenting rare bird sightings with IORC, sending us photos, posting sightings in eBird, writing articles, or assisting field reports and field notes.

Matt Igleski
IOS President

IORC Update, 17 March 2020: Records Reviewed

The Illinois Ornithological Records Committee (IORC) recently concluded evaluations of five records of the occurrence of rare birds in Illinois and occurrence of regularly occurring species at unusual times. Among these, IORC accepted two of the records while not accepting three. Among the accepted records was the following addition to the list of species having occurred in Illinois: Small-billed Elaenia.

Paul Sweet, Bob Hughes, and Adam Sell examine study skins of Large Elaenia, Small-billed Elaenia, and White-crested Elaenia in preparation to vote on record 2012-007, the Chicago elaenia.

The records involved are summarized below. For each record, we indicate the species or form, with number of individuals in parentheses if greater than one, followed by date or date range, location, and county. The record number is indicated in parentheses, followed by, for accepted records, names of the documenters. If multiple documenters are listed, those understood by IORC to have been the original finders of the bird(s) are listed first and separated from the others by a semicolon. IORC thanks all the documenters, for accepted and unaccepted records alike, for their submissions. All documentation is maintained in the IORC archives so that there is a permanent record of all these observations. Documentation, regardless of the Committee’s decision, is a valuable part of the record of bird life in Illinois.

Records Accepted

  • Small-billed Elaenia, 17-22 April 2012 at Douglas Park, Chicago, Cook County (2012-007; Aaron Gyllenhaal, Ethan Gyllenhaal; Mark Bowman, C.A. Bridge, Bonnie Duman, Matthew Fraker, Gordon Garcia, Nathan Goldberg, Jerry Goldner, Jim Hully, Stoil Ivanov, Ken Koontz, Nolan Lameka, Joshua Little, Lisa Rest, Ryan Sanderson, Brian Tang, Monte Taylor).
  • Swainson’s Warbler, 3 May 2018 at Northwestern University, Evanston, Cook County (2018-069; Allison Sloan).

Records Not Accepted

  • Barnacle Goose, 25-28 February 2019 at Waterfall Glen Forest Preserve, DuPage County and Bartlett Lake Prairie Wetland, Oswego, Kendall County (2019-002).
  • Mottled Duck (2), 30 May 2013 at Montrose Point, Lincoln Park, Chicago, Cook County (2013-016). This was a resubmission of a previously accepted record, based on better understanding of detecting evidence of hybrid origin in this complex.
  • Mottled Duck, 29 October 2013, 16 November 2013, and 28 April 2014 at Sangchris Lake State Park, Sangamon County (2013-065).

IORC Web Resources and Review Files

The Illinois Ornithological Records Committee (IORC) has recently made publicly available, via a set of web pages, a variety of information related to its work. They are found at http://geoffwilliamson.info/iorc/. Importantly, a section of these pages regarding documentation of bird records represents a portion of the IORC archives. This archival material includes documentary items sent to IORC (mostly written documentation and physical evidence in the form of photographs, videos, and sound recordings, but also a few other items) plus also the evaluation votes and comments of IORC members. The web pages from 2011 to the present are essentially complete with respect to the documentary materials. With regard to votes and comments of IORC members on records, IORC’s practice now is to provide here all votes and comments going forward; however, these are not now available for all records.

Each year’s listing of records includes for all records the serial number, species or form, county, first and last date of observation, and status of the record. Where this or other information on these web pages differs from that in published IORC reports, the latter represent the official record.

IORC members examine Slate-colored and White-winged Junco specimens at IORC’s February 2020
meeting in the Field Museum of Natural History. Left to right: Bob Hughes, Paul Sweet, Adam Sell,
Doug Stotz, Vida Kalina.

IORC is making all this material web-accessible, and hence readily available, to inform better the birding public about IORC’s work and to facilitate access to at least part of its archives. IORC hopes that this material’s availability will encourage the submission of documentation of rare and unusual birds in Illinois, will help to improve the understanding of the documentation and review process, and will by example help to improve the quality of submitted documentary materials.

Question, suggestions, and corrections may be directed via email to the IORC Secretary, Geoff Williamson, at iorcommittee <at> gmail <dot> com.

Additions to the Official Illinois State List of Birds during 2019

One of the purposes of the Illinois Ornithological Records Committee (IORC), per its bylaws, is “to maintain the official Illinois State List of Birds.” Among the various changes and updates to the list, the most exciting are additions of species. Year 2019 was a banner year in this regard, with the species total growing by five. By comparison, the previous five species additions happened over a five-year long period from 2014 to 2018. Four of the five from 2019 represented species unrecorded in Illinois prior to 2019: Limpkin, Little Stint, Lewis’s Woodpecker, and Cassin’s Kingbird. Three of these were long-staying vagrants, allowing many Illinois birders to travel to see them. Only the kingbird was a one-day wonder. The fifth addition, Barnacle Goose, came from evaluations concluding in 2019 of prior records going back to 1983. The species total for Illinois now rests at 449.

Sneaking under the radar in all this was that 2019 included a State List change event of a rarity on a par with that of adding five new species. A family of birds was newly added to the state list! Limpkin is the sole member of Aramidae, a family within order Gruiformes (which also includes the rails and cranes).

Limpkin by Fran Morel.
Limpkin at Borah Lake, Richland County, 6 Sep 2019. Photo by Fran Morel.

Families are added to the State List very infrequently. The last time was, well, 2017, but that event stemmed from Yellow-breasted Chat being split out from the Wood-Warblers (family Parulidae) into its own family Icteriidae. Yellow-breasted Chats have been present in Illinois for a long time. The four most recent family-level additions to Illinois’s list that were precipitated by a bird being newly recorded in the state were spread over a period of about 60 years.

Here are the six latest family additions to the Illinois list.

  • 2019, family Aramidae (Limpkins): Limpkin
  • [2017, family Icteriidae (Yellow-breasted Chats): Yellow-breasted Chat]
  • 1990, family Muscicapidae (Old World Flycatchers): Northern Wheatear
  • 1986, family Fregatidae (Frigatebirds): Magnificent Frigatebird
  • 1983, family Sulidae (Boobies and Gannets): Northern Gannet
  • 1962, family Alcidae (Auks, Murres, and Puffins): Ancient Murrelet
The last family level addition to the Illinois list stemmed from this Northern Wheatear, 12 Sep 1990 in Coles County. Photo by Greg Schaefer.

On the official Illinois State List of Birds there are now 449 species, 62 families, and 21 orders represented.

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