Diario de asmolens

This morning's bird walk began at 10:40 am at the Prairie Wolf Forest Preserve in Highland Park, Illinois. The sky was overcast and gray when we set out down the winding trail that wove in and out of a prairie wetland and a deciduous forest. In the distance, a pair of medium sized birds sailed from tree to tree. As I approached, I began to suspect they were woodpeckers because of the way they were moving vertically up and down the trunk. My suspicions were confirmed when they flew overhead and landed on a nearby branch where their proportionately long bills identified them as Hairy Woodpeckers.
After walking a little further down the trail, I approached a bridge crossing over a frozen marsh, but I could hear drumming nearby. Flitting between the tall reeds and stiff grasses alongside the bridge was another Hairy Woodpecker that appeared to be pecking at some of the more rigid stems within the dense cluster. It moved up and down the stems like it would on a tree trunk, despite the much smaller circumference. Continuing down along the marsh, I scared two American Goldfinches into flight. They flew out from the thick stems in the marsh and flew upwards to the safety of canopy-level branches.
After watching these two species in flight, I noticed several differences in how they flew through the air. The Hairy Woodpeckers seemed to take deep, slightly prolonged flaps, resulting in a fairly level glide. The American Goldfinches, however, seemed to take much shorter, faster flaps in short succession, and then sail through the air for 1-2 seconds before flapping again. As a result, the American Goldfinches appeared to ascend in the air while flapping, and then briefly drop while gliding before flapping and regaining their height.

As I continued my walk, I managed to identify the warning call of a Black-capped Chickadee and a few chirps from a House Sparrow, however I was unable to locate the individuals and compare their flight patterns to that of the Hairy Woodpeckers and the American Goldfinches.