Location of the Month: Busey Woods

View from the Powerline Trail in early spring!

By Colin Dobson, CCAS President

This is a new series that will be showing up in monthly newsletters and the website, and I want to thank our VP, Roger Digges, for starting up the ‘bird of the month’ series! It has been great and has received a lot of attention! I thought a good spin-off could be highlighting somewhere different every month within fifty miles of Champaign that may be worth checking for birds during that month. These can be as small as Carle Park or as big as Middle Fork River Forest Preserve. Each ‘location of the month’ will feature a very short description of ‘how to bird’ each site along with a few key species or groups of birds to look at during that month.

This month I wanted to start with a site many of you may know and have likely visited, Busey Woods. Busey Woods is a 59-acre forested tract along the Boneyard Creek on the north side of Urbana (Urbana Park District). This beautiful tract has numerous trails to explore the different areas throughout the park: from the wet swampy areas on the north side, the brushy areas along the Powerline Trail (the main trail that cuts across the central part of the park), or the higher terrain along Boneyard Creek itself. Don’t forget about the small observation platform at the west end of the Powerline Trail (just to the south) that overlooks a small bottomland swamp!  In addition, the Anita Purves Nature Center is always a great stop to check out educational displays, a few live animals on display, their large feeder setup, a small nature gift shop, and so much more. The Anita Purves Nature Center is located at the start of the Powerline Trail on the east side of the park. This is also where we gather every Sunday during migration for bird walks!

Because Busey Woods is mainly a forest tract, most birds found within the property are passerines (songbirds), although occasionally a few ducks or wading species can be found in the sloughs of water on the north side or in the creek. Sometimes in early spring, a woodcock can be flushed (particularly in March) or perhaps you can spot the pair of Cooper’s Hawks that usually nest just north of the Powerline Trail! The best time to bird Busey Woods is during migration, especially late April to early June in the spring and mid-August to mid-November in the fall to observe the migrants, especially those tougher neotropical migrants such as warblers, throughout the park. This can be one of the best locations outside of Chicago in Illinois to see many species of warblers, especially Black-throated Blue and Mourning Warblers!