Your April 2026 newsletter is here!

Tree Swallows are the most remarkable fliers, wheeling high over prairies, fields, ponds, lakes, or swamps, twisting and turning suddenly to catch a tasty insect.

March has come in with a flourish of wingbeats and cacophony! Huge flocks of Canada, Greater White-fronted, and Snow Geese have been making their presence known in Champaign and neighboring counties around lakes and in agricultural fields.

Your March 2026 newsletter is here!

The male Wood Duck is one of the most beautiful waterfowl that spends time in our area, with a dark green face dramatically patterned with white, chestnut breast, rakish crest, and other eye-catching plumage. Find them in bottomland forests, wooded swamps and ponds, and slow-moving wooded streams of all sizes.

A Townsend’s Solitaire, a large thrush just a little smaller than an American Robin, was a one-day wonder in Savoy, but gave good looks to birders who could get over there quickly when the word got out.  

Your February 2026 newsletter is here!

There were already tens of thousands of geese in the fields making an enormous racket with Vs backed up to the north as far as the eye could see. The fields were so packed with geese I wondered how any more could fit in, but, with much squawking, they did. Marvelous.

More daylight for birding! Keep your feeders and water features stocked, especially if we hit some cold snaps or get a decent snowfall.

The most memorable sighting of the day was what looked like a snow squall off in the distance. But it became obvious as they drew closer that it was a flock of more than a thousand snow geese swirling in a vortex that approached the lead car and engulfed it like a snow goose tornado.

While the number of Bald Eagles we have seen has varied from as few as 8 to as many as 49 in the areas we are able to count, just seeing 1 perched in a tree or flying overhead makes the survey well worth the long trip.

American Kestrels are elegant birds. In flight they show their light-colored undersides and fly rapidly with swept back wings. On a windy day you can identify a kestrel by seeing a bird facing into the wind, flapping its wings to stay in place.

Congratulations to this fall’s 2025 Mini-Grants for Educators awardee!

CCAS needs a program chair and other volunteers with good ideas. If you like the idea of shaping our Society’s programs to make them interesting and instructive, visit https://www.champaigncountyaudubon.org/volunteer and volunteer. We’ll be glad to support you.

Your December 2025 newsletter is here!

New CCAS T-Shirts!

Winter winds are whipping through and it’s finally feeling like late fall! The winter finch forecast looks good this year so be on the lookout for Pine Siskins and Redpolls to show up at feeders and in trees with seed pods, such as sweet gums.

So, I am finally writing about the American Crow, a bird almost everyone has seen, probably even from your car. You already know these big black birds that caw.

Your November 2025 newsletter is here!