"This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it."
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
Saturday was mostly cloudy, but the skies opened up after lunchtime. Sue and I headed to the prairie parcel at Pheasant Branch to look for sparrows, hoping especially for White-crowned. Bird activity overall was astonishingly low, but the east edge — sheltered from the wind behind the drumlin — seemed the most promising. Songbirds don't care much for a stiff breeze. Wind increases heat loss and energy expenditure, makes perching and foraging less efficient, interferes with hearing and communication, and leaves birds more exposed to predators while in motion. On windy days they don't vanish so much as retreat — tucking into leeward edges, shrubs, and terrain breaks, growing quiet and easy to miss.
And that's where they all were ...
I estimated around thirty White-crowned Sparrows, mostly juveniles, mixed in with Dark-eyed Juncos, American Tree Sparrows, Northern Cardinals, Black-capped Chickadees, and, of course, dozens of House Sparrows. Other birds during the hike included Merlin, American Kestrel, Red-tailed Hawk, and Mourning Doves.
On Sunday we returned to the Sauk Prairie Recreation Area to check in on the Northern Shrike we found there back in November. At 3,400 acres, it's an absurdly large landscape to search with any confidence, but optimism has a way of refusing to die for the experienced birder — at least until sundown.
This is very shrike-y habitat. We've had snow, but it keeps getting erased by cyclical warming trends where everything melts back to bare ground again. It's one of the strangest Januaries I can remember — winter present, then absent, then pretending it never showed up at all. It might hit 50 degrees this Tuesday, only to have single digit temperatures return for the weekend.
Ah ha! Shrike!
Some close-up portraits ...
About a half hour before sunset, high clouds moved in, rendering a solar halo — a pale, nearly perfect ring etched into the sky. It's an ice-crystal phenomenon, simple geometry at altitude, and easy to miss if you're not already looking up. Nothing dramatic, just the atmosphere quietly showing its hand before the sun dipped below the horizon.
All images © 2026 Mike McDowell