Chicago Ramblings: Starved Rock again

I went to Starved Rock again on Saturday. I just went by myself to see the Bald Eagles. I did truly try to do research to confirm that they were actually there this time, but couldn't find any real-time info and everything said that they show up around mid-October. Well, the reason they come down here, turns out, is that when the rivers up in Wisconsin and Minnesota where they live freeze over, they come down the river to eat at the dam. Guess what hasn't frozen over yet? So no Bald Eagles, or really much anything else to speak of, but I had a lovely time hiking! And I'm sore to prove it! I did see a few new species and a few old however. I saw a Red-Bellied, Downy, and Hairy Woodpeckers. The Downy and Hairy are nearly identical except for size of both their body and beak. I saw them in the same clearing so it was easy to see the difference. I saw tons of Black-Capped Chickadees, Blue Jays, Grackles, and Starlings. There were these huge swarms of Starlings and Red-Winged Blackbirds flying overhead. Not as big as I saw in Oklahoma, but still. One swarm of Red-Winged Blackbirds went right over my head when I was up on one of the cliffs, and it looks so neat because of the uniform red patches on their wings. Hard to describe, I guess. I also saw a Brown Creeper, which behaves just like a White-Breasted Nuthatch and has the same body type. He was whistling at me for a long time and then just flew up to me essentially. Has a really high pitched, short whistle as a call. I also saw a few Tufted Titmouses (I really want to say Titmice for plural, but I know it's wrong). I think I saw one of those at Eagle Creek the other weekend, but this time the ID was more definite. They have a gray crown, amber belly going into white, and a little black spot right between their eyes. They are actually slightly larger than I thought. I thought they would be around the size of a chickadee, but they're almost as big as a Cardinal. Then as I was leaving the park I drove down another road that borders the opposite side of the Illinois River as Starved Rock and saw a hawk up in a tree. I turned around and parked across the road from him and looked through the car window and was able to see an American Kestrel. I was able to see him up close and not backlit so I could see his coloring and the markings on his face. That was very cool. I've been able to identify Kestrels due to behavior more than once, but never got to see their fancy coloring. Sorry the pictures aren't organized, I'm just tired and didn't feel like doing it :( So here are my birds, and then a few pictures of the park. The picture w/ the waterfall is one of the canyons, the one w/ the stairs is Council Overhang (where the Indians that lived in this area had meetings), and the one of the river is the view from Eagle Overlook. There are two islands in the picture which are Plum Island and another one that the Eagles nest on in the winter.

American Kestrel