The rivers and backwaters of central Illinois are right on Owen’s doorstep and are a wildlife haven. On a recent trip to the Illinois River Valley, he captured a fresh set of photographs, including an especially exciting personal discovery.
The Illinois River has helped shape the Valley region for thousands of years, extending across fertile lowlands, bluffs, and seasonal wetlands. Beginning where northern tributaries converge, the river winds southwest toward the Mississippi, carving a landscape of floodplains, oxbow lakes, and backwater sloughs. This open water, mudflat, and woodland mosaic is naturally irresistible to birds.
As you can see from Owen’s amazing photos, there were many species to delight in. American White Pelicans spiraled in great white flocks through the clear blue sky, their flight patterns mirrored in the river’s slow and broad curves. Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks gathered among surface vegetation, their calls carrying across the backwaters toward emerald-green duckweed where Canada Geese slowly cleaved the floating mats, whiling away the hours.
Like many animals passing through, European Starlings use the cool water for bathing and refreshment, then gather in murmurations above the reeds at dusk before descending en masse to roost. Elsewhere, a Red-bellied Woodpecker was spied, eyeing up an eastern black walnut as it weighed the effort-to-reward ratio to wedge it in a crevice, pound the shell with its bill, and extract the nutmeat with its barbed tongue.
The city of Dixon sits along the Rock River, a tributary of the Illinois River, a little further north. Founded in 1828 when Joseph Ogee settled there, the introduction of a ferry crossing two years later by “Father” John Dixon created a trade stop, and the town grew as the river provided an opportunity for commerce, the development of mills and bridges creating a hub for local farming communities. Today, the Rock still forms a green corridor through farmland, its bends marked by limestone cliffs and ravines that offer refuge for people and wildlife.
Migrating songbirds rest and refuel among the trees, and a Common Yellowthroat flashed bright yellow from the undergrowth, Owen’s camera capturing its brief respite. Nearby, a Downy Woodpecker tapped along a sycamore trunk, zygodactyl feet nimbly gripping the pale bark, and an Eastern Wood Pewee slurred its signature pee-a-wee tune from an open branch. Most exciting of all, Owen’s camera captured a rare Lawrence’s Warbler, a striking hybrid named after the American ornithologist George Newbold Lawrence. This unusual bird is the result of a union between a Blue-winged Warbler and a Golden-winged Warbler. Though hybrids are uncommon, they are occasionally recorded where the ranges of the two parent species overlap, making Owen’s sighting particularly memorable.
Further south, Illinois’ capital, Springfield, is situated in the gently rolling agricultural landscape of the Sangamon River basin, a vast watershed that drains into the Illinois River. Dominated by corn and soybean fields with a mix of forests, prairie remnants, and wetlands along the river and its tributaries, these glacially smoothed hills offer superb habitat along the edges of farmland. The city grew from these fertile plains in the 1830s, yet beyond the downtown grid, little remains of the vast tallgrass prairie that once blanketed Illinois; more than 99% was lost to farms and towns. But here and there, restored patches ripple again in the wind, alongside woodlands that still trace the creeks feeding the Sangamon.
In these revived landscapes, Owen found birds thriving where suburbs gave way to prairie and wooded margins. A Barred Owl watched from the shaded limbs of an old tree, its gaze curious yet calm and steady; a Carolina Wren filled the morning with its ringing song. The muted orange glow of a distant streetlight created a perfect halo around an Eastern Phoebe, perfectly encapsulating this small bird on its perch. Elsewhere, a female Summer Tanager rested among vibrant sprigs of pokeweed, and a Tufted Titmouse came in to land on a trapeze of branches, an acorn brandished in its beak, preparing its autumn cache as winter approaches.
Owen is never complacent about living so close to such diversity. These places together sketch a portrait of central Illinois in motion, a landscape that has always been alive with movement. The same rivers that carried trade and settlement are still—and will hopefully always be—home to the wingbeats of migrants and the songs of resident birds. Each photograph reminds us that such wild beauty doesn’t always require distance, only attention, and that all of these creatures and more thread their way through even the most familiar ground.
