Birds of the Sycamore Greenway - Regular, Large and Jumbo

This week is a continuation of the "Birds of the Sycamore Greenway" posted last week. Today will be all about the bigger birds that can be seen along the Greenway trail.

A wonderful resource for identifying birds and learning more about them is the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's All About Birds website. Each species' page has photos of similar birds to help with identification, as well as audio of calls and songs and various tidbits of information.

As always, all photos were taken along the Sycamore Greenway or Sycamore Wetlands.

Regular
(robin-sized birds) 

Mourning Dove	Cardinal (female)	American Kestrel
Blue Jay	Common Grackle	Eastern Towhee
Tree Swallow	Red-winged Blackbird	Brown Thrasher
European Starling	Downy Woodpecker	Killdeer
Gray Catbird	Eastern Meadowlark	Baltimore Oriole
Brown-headed Cowbird	Northern Flicker	Red-bellied Woodpecker
American Robin	Orchard Oriole	Rusty Blackbird
Black-billed Cuckoo

Large and Jumbo
(crow- and goose-sized birds)

Great Horned Owl	Trumpeter Swan	American Crow
Bald Eagle	Great Blue Heron	Ring-necked Pheasant
Sandhill Crane	Red-tailed Hawk

 

Birds of the Greenway - Minis

When I first began the Sycamore Greenway Friends page, I wanted to find names for all the amazing flowers that I was seeing along the trail. They were all new to me, so I set out taking photos and, with the help of an assortment of printed and online guides and identification forums, matching names to their faces.

I had a little more experience with birds, but there were still plenty that needed research to name. I hope having all the common birds you might see on the Greenway here on one page* will be helpful to others trying to learn more about our neighbors who share the trail with us.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, and excludes most of the waterfowl you will see at the Wetlands, but it does include many of the birds that are most often spotted along the trail. All photos were taken along the Sycamore Greenway or the Sycamore Wetlands.

*After getting into it, I decided to split this into two or three posts given the number of birds. Tune in next week for another batch!

Mini
(sparrow-sized birds)

Common Yellowthroat	American Goldfinch	Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Yellow-rumped Warbler	Black-capped Chickadee	Lark Sparrow
House Finch	Purple Finch	Dark-Eyed Junco
Least Flycatcher? (tentative)	Dickcissel	House Sparrow
White-crowned Sparrow	Song Sparrow	Brown Creeper
Chipping Sparrow	Palm Warbler	White-throated Sparrow
Yellow Warbler	Indigo Bunting