Month: April 2026

Today I bring you two firsts, well, at least in my adult life starting with our recent trip down to Springfield, IL for a CPE Agility trail at the state fairgrounds. This is a homecoming for me as I was born and raised there and have spent countless hours hanging out at the fair while growing up. Some kids hang out at the malls or local car-hops, Springfieldians have acres and acres of dangerous as hell rides, rigged games, farm animals and temporary carney/fair girls (don’t ask) to keep us entertained. We do not get down there very often these days now that my parents are no longer with us, so a chance to walk the grounds and recall childhood memories is “usually” a fun time – until last weekend. In short I ended up getting “swarmed” by self-important sheriff deputies apparently so bad at their jobs they are reduced to protecting pavement and empty buildings. Glossing over most of the encounter to keep your eyes from rolling too much, but I decided to get a walk in between the boy’s runs heading out to the conservation area having familiar windy paths, a small pond and lots of trees for….yes, birds! Thought I heard a Fish Crow which is unusual there, so whipped out Merlin which confirmed it putting me on the hunt. Walked through the always open gates at the back scanning the trees and water for the rarity. No Crow, but noticed a black car following me around trying to be discrete – not good at it – game on. I’d take a path away from it and it would have to creep back and navigate back to another position to watch me. When the car got to the new place I’d change direction causing another move….this went on for a while – keep in mind I still had my phone out with Merlin hunting birds. Reinforcements were called in and I see an ATV pull up in a nearby parking lot, guy in black car pulls up to it, guy jumps out, has an excited discussion with the ATV occupants, all jump in the ATV and come after me – they got me now. I am practically laughing now as they pull up and demand to know what I am doing – “I’m looking for birds” and show him the list of birds Merlin has already found (and cleverly still recording so I had an audio track for whatever was coming down). He intently looks at the screen and proclaims an individual saw me and said I was acting “suspicious” and wanted to know how I got here. “Through that open gate over there” – mind you there is NO gate on the other end so the state of that gate is irrelevant. I get some okay we are just checking out the situation garble and they leave clearly disappointed they were denied the highlight of their year. This was all rich coming from a declared sanctuary state and apparently it is the victim’s fault if you are gunned down taking a walk in Chicago (link here). Not to mention the humorous fact my grandfather was a police chief of Spfld, uncle fire chief, cousin police dispatcher, youth baseball coaches were sergeants on the force. Saved the Merlin recording of the interaction and continued my walk more confident in my young decision to choose a career elsewhere.

Fortunately, my other first is far more exciting, a breeding Reddish Egret.

Hit the jump to read more about this second installment of Breeding Plumage in honor of April.