Chicago Wildlife News

Endangered whooping cranes headed to Chicago area

2011-03-20T09:59:00.001-07:00

(POSTED: 3/21/11) Endangered whooping cranes may soon be flying through the Chicago region as they migrate from Florida to their home turf in central Wisconsin.

A few of the 5-foot-tall, brilliantly white birds with black wingtips have already been reported around Whalon Lake in the far western suburbs.

“People are on the look-out for them now,” said David Willard, collection manager of the Field Museum’s bird division. “It’s certainly a magnificent bird.”

The popular birds -- once on the brink of extinction -- have become known as the “flagship species” for the country's wildlife conservation efforts.

There were as few as 15 whooping cranes worldwide in the early 1940s, according to Liz Condie, spokeswoman for Operation Migration, an organization dedicated to saving the species.

“That is pretty much the closest you can get before going extinct,” Condie said.

For the last 10 years, Operation Migration has been working to restore the whooping crane population in the U.S., which only has one remaining natural flock -- about 270 birds that winter in Texas.

In Wisconsin, however, the conservation group has been raising chicks every year, acting as a surrogate mother. People adorned in all white clothing maneuver a crane puppet while conditioning the baby birds and later pilot an ultra-light airplane to lead the cranes on a migration path to Florida.

After winter, the flock -- which currently numbers just over 100 birds -- heads back home to Wisconsin on their own.

During their return trip, the cranes sometimes stop in the Chicago area for a few days, according to Bob Fisher, president of the Illinois Ornithological Society.

In past years “they’ve settled down in some marshes or wetlands for the night, sometimes waiting for favorable winds,” Fisher said.

If the cranes are spotted, though, most birders do not share specific locations until after the birds have left in order to protect them from harm. Just last winter a total of five whooping cranes in Georgia and Alabama were shot dead, seemingly out of malice, Fisher said.

Carolyn Marsh, a Chicago Audubon Society board member, also urged caution in reporting the cranes' whereabouts.

“Because the whooping crane is such a popular bird, people want to see it,” she said. “We don’t want people getting closer and closer. They are not used to the human element.”

Whooping cranes -- North America’s tallest bird – are likely to be found flying among sandhill cranes, which have recently been passing through Chicago suburbs in large flocks.

“We love [whooping cranes] and we want them to survive. So whenever we see them, it’s a good thing,” Marsh said.

By Katie Drews, for ChicagoWildlifeNews.com
Contact: [email protected]

Shipment of illegal fish seized at O'Hare

2011-03-05T12:42:00.001-08:00

(POSTED: 3/7/11) A shipment of tropical fish commonly found in pet shops was recently confiscated at O'Hare Airport for breaking the City of Chicago’s invasive species ordinance, officials said.

During a routine customs inspection at the airport, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife agent discovered approximately 350 Oriental weather loaches imported from China by a fish wholesaler based in Norridge.

Weather loaches, which are dull brown fish that resemble eels with whiskers around their mouths, are illegal to possess in Chicago because the fish are considered a potential threat to the native environment if released into local waterways.

“They are really not preying on other fish, but they could compete for food with native species and that could be the concern,” said Jim Robinett, vice president of legislation and regulation at the Shedd Aquarium. “We don’t know at this time if they are a problem or not. Because we don’t know, we don’t want to find out the hard way.”

Chicago’s Department of Environment issued a $100 ticket -- the minimum fine -- to the wholesaler for violating the city ordinance, which passed in 2007.

Weather loaches, however, are legal to own in the suburbs and elsewhere in the state. In fact, the fish are fairly popular in household aquariums.

“They are thought of as scavengers so they help keep the aquarium clean,” said Robert Rung, a stream biologist with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. “They are kind of cute. They’ll burrow down in the gravel and their head will peek out. It’s an interesting fish to watch, and it will usually outlast your other fish.”

Rung said he has already seen several weather loaches in local waterways, including the Chicago River, Des Plaines River and Calumet River, and it appears they are “benign.”

Even still, “it’s never a good thing to bring a fish or another organism in,” he said. “It’s never going to be a free ride; you are going to have some sort of complications.”

As for the seized weather loaches, some will be displayed at the Shedd in the museum’s invasive species exhibit and others will be used for research.

By Katie Drews, for ChicagoWildlifeNews.com
Contact: [email protected]

Man tries to save infected coyote near Elgin

2011-02-19T22:39:00.000-08:00

(POSTED: 2/21/11) A couple weeks ago Bob Ruffer discovered a sick coyote laying motionless in his barn in unincorporated Elgin.

"I just felt so bad," Ruffer, 57, said. "I thought, 'I can't leave him here to freeze to death.'"

Ruffer (pictured left) tried to lure the animal with a piece of bologna, but the coyote could barely move. Fearing the coyote was going to die, Ruffer picked it up to bring it inside his home. The animal smelled terrible and had diarrhea while being carried, Ruffer said. He also noticed the coyote had four or five raw sores about the size of a quarter.

"It's like the skin was gone," he said. "It was just the raw, red meat there."

Ruffer figured the coyote was suffering from mange -- a skin disease in which mites burrow deep into the animal's skin and cause severe irritation. Depending on how bad the infection, mange can be "very detrimental," according to Sandy Woltman, vice president of the National Wildlife Rehabilitators Association.

"Many times the mange gets worse and worse and it weakens the animal so it can't find sufficient food or sufficient housing," she said.

Mange often causes death, according to wildlife experts, because it makes the animal more susceptible to other infections and can shut down the animal's organs. What's more, animals with the disease sometimes scratch so much that they lose their fur.

"Their coat is what keeps them alive during the winter so most of the animals that die from mange die from exposure," said Stanley Gehrt, associate professor of wildlife ecology at The Ohio State University who also heads the Cook County Coyote Project. Gehrt estimated that fewer than 10 percent of the thousands of coyotes in Cook County have mange.

The disease can be transmitted from one animal to another, but the mites cannot live long without a host. Typically mange is spread if animals share the same den.

Rose Augustine, a wildlife specialist at Willowbrook Wildlife Center in Glen Ellyn, said her group usually finds mange in foxes, coyotes and squirrels. However, dogs -- and even humans -- can get mange if they come in direct contact with it. If people become infected, they usually will get a rash and it is fairly easy to treat.

"If a homeowner sees a coyote with mange then they'd want to make sure to keep their pets away" and call a wildlife center, Augustine said.

After Ruffer cleaned and cared for the coyote he found, he took it to Flint Creek Wildlife Rehabilitation in the Barrington area. Flint Creek did not return phone calls, but according to its Facebook page, the coyote died a few days later.

"He's just a dog, a dog that needed help," Ruffer said. "I was hoping that he'd make it. .. That's God's way, I guess."

By Katie Drews, for ChicagoWildlifeNews.com
Contact: [email protected]

Will Chicago remain a 'green' leader under direction of new mayor?

2011-02-07T13:25:00.000-08:00

(POSTED: 2/9/11) Beyond the peeps of the juncos, our Sunday morning walk in the woods was quiet with only the baying of beagles to disturb the peace as they welcomed us walking toward them on a path. Last week’s journey north provided more with a drive-by glance of a red-tailed hawk gobbling a squirrel along I-94 and, at Linne Woods, the surreal sighting of a doe and a squirrel sharing white bread crumbs sprinkled on the snow. Later we saw a small mouse or vole in the meadow there, which leapt from his snowbound corridor to escape the snuffling nose of the hopefully-harmless black lab mix walking with us.

That wildlife is all around us if only we look is becoming truer all the time. Since the early 1970s, for example, fish species in the Chicago River system have sky rocketed, beavers are back and the much maligned white-tailed deer are everywhere.

Many of the creatures making their way back to the region have been invited and encouraged by the work of countless partners: Volunteers, environmental groups, neighborhood associations and city government, with the help of strong laws such as the Clean Water Act and the vision of leaders, including Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. Daley established the Department of Environment and made real advancements in land acquisition, restoration, studies, ordinances and policies such as the Chicago River Agenda that laid a strong foundation for restoration and stewardship.

A pleasant surprise came last week when the candidates for Chicago mayor almost exclusively answered YES to a list of 20 questions developed by a coalition of environmental and conservation groups. Setting the stage for the Green Growth Platform, the questionnaire covered a broad spectrum of essential environmental topics ranging from developing clean energy and cleaning up old highly polluting coal plants to improving recycling citywide, conserving water, protecting Lake Michigan and the Chicago River, promoting clean transportation and better mobility, as well as creating more parks and open space.

Several of the YES answers directly connect to better protecting wildlife and their habitat, including mitigating climate change, sewage effluent disinfection, using green technologies for stormwater management, stopping aquatic invasive species and preserving Lake Calumet.

That the mayoral candidates are on board and educated on so many issues (click here for more info) bodes well for what happens next in Chicago. Many conservationists fear we may lose the momentum brought on by Daley’s leadership. Yet instead of a fumble on the environmental front with a new mayor, the candidates appear to agree that Chicago’s recognized role as an environmental leader should be capitalized on not thrown under a bus as someone’s else pet project.

Maps of Illinois show us that the area surrounding Chicago has some of the most wonderful and most remaining natural lands in the state. With 68,000 acres of Forest Preserve in Cook County alone, and a goal for thousands more, we have opportunity to continue to improve.

At this point we are a long way from perfect — like the squirrel and the white-tailed deer dining on white bread crumbs — but there is still adventure to be had and wonder to experience. And because of that I am always up for a Sunday morning walk in the woods.

Margaret Frisbie is the executive director of Friends of the Chicago River, a nonprofit organization that works to improve and protect the Chicago River for the people, plants and animals who share our watershed. A lifelong wildlife enthusiast who grew up hiking our forest preserves and canoeing our streams, Frisbie lives on Chicago's Northwest Side where, despite its urban environment, wildlife is never too far from her door.

Rare Asian seagull found near Chicago lakefront

2011-02-07T05:27:00.000-08:00

(POSTED: 2/7/11) Drawing great excitement among Illinois and Indiana birders, a rare type of seagull was found hanging out around Lake Michigan in late December.

A slaty-backed gull, which is primarily a Siberian bird that spends its winters in Japan, was first spotted in Indiana and then in Chicago's Calumet Park during the annual Christmas Bird Count, a program of the National Audubon Society. The count is a non-scientific survey in which volunteer bird watchers – dubbed “citizen scientists” – record the birds they see from Dec. 14 to Jan. 5.

When reports first came in about the slaty-backed gull, a number of local bird watchers headed out to the lake hoping for a peek.

Among them was 32-year-old Amar Ayyash, who packed a pair of knee pads, three loaves of bread and a bucket of about 25 dead fish to try to lure the bird to the shore. The anticipation was building as the Frankfort resident scoured the ice shelves trying to pinpoint the gull with the characteristic gray coloring on its back.

“It’s not easy to identify from far away, which made it a pretty big challenge,” he said. "It is easily confused with two other species."

Suddenly he heard other birders cheering and high-fiving each other, and then finally he spotted the slaty-backed gull (pictured above and below) about 100 feet away.

"All of sudden he was right next to me," said Ayyash, who is a member of the Illinois Ornithological Society. "It was a fun time."

The bird is fairly rare anywhere in North America, aside from Alaska, though recently sightings across the United States have been on the rise, according Marshall Iliff of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

So how did this little guy end up in Chicago?

“Nobody really knows the answer to that,” Ayyash said. “It’s a mystery. He could have either been lost or pushed over through some strong storm.”

Either way, the gull – which experts say should survive Chicago’s climate – was a special treat for dedicated bird watchers.

“It’s just the kind of bird that generates a lot of excitement in the bird community,” Iliff said. “Some people drive five to eight hours just to see it.”

The slaty-backed gull “should have been on another continent,” said Bob Harrison, president of Sand Ridge Audubon Society. “This might be one you never see again.”

By Katie Drews, for ChicagoWildlifeNews.com
Contact: [email protected]

Photos courtesy of Amar Ayyash.

The Nature of DuPage: Human activity is not all that bad for nature

2011-01-24T08:50:00.000-08:00

(POSTED: 1/24/11) Winter reduces the landscape to its simplest appearance. Gray and brown plant stems, with a few exceptions, stripped of their green leaves are stark against the white, snow-covered ground. The buzz, flutter and squeak of animal activity is reduced to its lowest level. Wild places seem abstract, almost idealized. Likewise, winter is traditionally a time when people pause and reflect about things. There might be a danger in looking out at that winter landscape, idealizing it or thinking it is simpler than it really is. I am thinking of examples I have observed in the past:

* Advocates of “letting nature take its course” who oppose wildlands restoration.
* Birders, accustomed to finding particular species in particular places, are disappointed when restoration processes or processes of ecological change result in changes to bird life.
* On the other side, a restoration worker eliminated a population of a plant growing on a hilltop because he had learned to associate it only with low, wet places. That thriving population didn’t fit his idea of that plant.
* Some restoration workers are anxious to see all signs of past human activity removed from their sites.

These instances have in common an idealization of Nature, conceptually separating the places and processes of the wild from those of people. There is the implicit assumption that human influences inevitably are corrupting. Furthermore, the view is static, containing the idea that once a wild place is established or restored, it will stay as it is, and any spontaneous changes that might occur are a perversion and should be corrected.

A review of our area’s history is in order. The last time our landscape had no people in it was when it was covered by a sterile glacier. By the time the glacier melted away and the first colonizing vegetation and animal life had become established 14,000 years ago, people were here. A butchering site of that age recently discovered in the southeast corner of Wisconsin and scattered flint spear points all around our area testify that those people were thoroughly interacting with the animals and plants and were directly dependent upon them for survival. The emerging scientific consensus is that those early hunters were largely responsible for the extinction of the megafauna, large animals from mastodons to horses to giant sloths, that once filled North America. The early hunters didn’t have to wipe them all out, just kill them faster than they could reproduce themselves (large animals typically breed slowly.)

Ours is a flexible species and in the wake of the megafaunal extinctions, North American culture shifted to a hunting-gathering lifestyle that was more or less stable for thousands of years. It was only within the past 1,000 to 2,000 years that spear throwers gave way to bows and arrows, and agriculture spread out of Mexico into our part of the world. Within a few hundred years, this new agriculture supported a vast civilization centered in downstate Cahokia. If the Cahokians believed they had become independent of Nature, they were mistaken. Drought may have been the key to their culture’s collapse and, like the extinction of the megafauna, this would have been an unpleasant awakening.

The oxygen we breathe is produced mainly by wild plants. The water we drink comes from lakes or rivers or underground aquifers. Our shelters are built of wood, stone (including extracted metals), and derivatives of fossil plants (plastics). Our foods are either wild animals or plants, or varieties domesticated from them in the not so distant past. It is an illusion to think we are separate from Nature. For the most part, ideals of wilderness free of human influence are illusions, certainly in northeast Illinois.

You no doubt realize that this is an opinion piece. So, what am I advocating?

* First, let’s appreciate that the land as we experience it has a history of both human and non-human influences. The combination needs to be understood if the landscape is to be known.
* Second, the important work of restoration needs to be based on clearly stated goals rather than abstract ideals. An example here would be maximizing biodiversity. Another would be creating a habitat mosaic. These can and should be informed by all the historical information we can assemble, for instance restoring prairies and woodlands where those communities were growing before large scale agriculture and urbanization came along.
* A third point of emphasis is the recognition that nature is not static but dynamic. A bird such as the yellow-breasted chat prefers ephemeral breeding grounds that are transitioning from herbaceous plants to scattered shrublands. As the shrubs fill in and trees emerge, chats lose interest and move elsewhere. Management plans that include a mix of successional stages will keep chats in the landscape, but they will be hopping from place to place.
* And finally, let’s accept that restoration itself is a process that wasn’t invented in the past hundred years. People were deliberately setting fires for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years, shaping the land that the original survey teams described in the 19th Century. People are part of nature, and their management actions are fully a part of nature taking its course.

Beauty is, as the saying goes, in the eye of the beholder. A comprehensive understanding of the land and all its historical influences can broaden the beauty we find in it.

By Carl Strang, who has been an interpretive naturalist for the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County for more than 28 years. He holds a Ph.D. in wildlife ecology from Purdue University. Carl has won awards from the Illinois Wildlife Federation and from the National Association for Interpretation. He is the author of the book, Interpretive Undercurrents, on the art of natural history interpretation. His weekly radio spot, "Wild Things," is broadcast from the College of DuPage radio station (WDCB, 90.9FM) on Monday evenings between 6:00 and 6:30. Current research interests include distribution and ecology of singing insects, and winter movement patterns and social structure of Canada geese.

Grundy County offers money for slain coyotes

2011-01-13T17:24:00.000-08:00

(POSTED: 1/14/11) Need an extra 15 bucks? Go shoot down a coyote in Grundy County.

Located near the outskirts of Joliet, Grundy County is now offering a $15 bounty for every coyote that is killed within county lines. Just turn in the animal’s ears to
Grundy County Animal Control to reap the reward.

The county board passed an ordinance for the incentive program earlier this week in an attempt to control the predator’s population, which has grown “substantially” over the last few years. Residents have complained about small pets gone missing, and pheasants have been reportedly wiped from the landscape. Ron Severson, board president, said that a pack of coyotes even killed one of the cows on his farm.

“It’s become a real problem,” he said. “It’s getting out of control.”

Don Franzen, chairman of the Grundy County chapter of Ducks Unlimited, a nonprofit dedicated to re-establishing wetlands and wildlife in the area, estimated that there are hundreds of coyotes prowling throughout the county.

“They are everywhere,” he said. “Nobody is helping to control the population. And then they need something to eat, so here’s Fluffy out in the backyard for them. The final straw was that cattle ranchers out here are actually losing calves.”

The coyote harvesting law, therefore, is “a good start,” he said.

Since it began Wednesday, three sets of coyote ears have already been dropped off, according to June Krull, director of Grundy County Animal Control. She said the agency has been fielding numerous calls from people interested in getting more information.

There was one dissenting voice, though, when the 18-member board voted on the matter.

Jeremy Ly, a county board member from Minooka, thought the decision was based too heavily on anecdotal evidence rather than data and coyote population surveys.

“As you mess with the environment, and you take a predator out the environment, you end up messing with the whole ecosystem,” he said.

By Katie Drews, for ChicagoWildlifeNews.com
Contact: [email protected]

Wildlife advocates fear Southeast Side shooting range will disrupt habitats

2010-11-28T09:39:00.000-08:00

(POSTED: 11/29/10) A number of environmental groups are calling for a thorough wildlife study of the marshy land that has been slotted for construction of a police firing range on Chicago's Southeast Side.

The proposed 33-acre site, located on top of eight feet of landfill at 2025 E. 134th St., is just west of the Calumet River and near "extensive" wetlands that are home to an abundance of wildlife, including blue herons and egrets. Many environmentalists are concerned that the $2.5 million, 40-person shooting range will disrupt the natural habitat.

"There is real nature there and real nesting birds that are absolutely wonderful, and it's because of the neglect and isolation that we have," said Carolyn Marsh, Chicago Audubon Society board member. "It's not just a question of the firing range; they are going to have storage and trailers and cars and traffic -- a lot of activity. It's going to ruin the whole area."

Despite the opposition, the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, which owns the property, recently voted to lease the space to the Chicago Police Department. The police, though, have said that the training center does not have to come at the cost of the environment.

"It has been our position from the beginning in querying about this project that we will act as stewards of the environment," said Lt. Raymond Hamilton, project manager for the training center. "We said that and we mean it."

Hamilton said they have been working closely with the Chicago Department of Environment to create a "green" design that is "open and inviting to the community."

But what's been done so far is not good enough, according to groups such as the Southeast Environmental Task Force and the Calumet Ecological Park Association.

The wildlife study that has already been conducted "seems very superficial," added Eleanor Roemer, Friends of the Park public trust and policy director.

"We just want careful decisions that look at the possibility of adverse impact before the decision is made," she said. (Since the MWRD gave the OK, the next step for the Chicago Police Department is to negotiate a lease for the property.)

Some people have also raised questions about how the training facility will affect plans to build an elaborate nature center that was meant to go in the same area. The Ford Calumet Environmental Center, which has already won awards for its design, "will turn the Calumet area into a major showpiece" to which "visitors will come from all over the world," Mayor Daley said on the City of Chicago's website.

However, construction has yet to begin on this project, even though the city previously told the community that the center was going to be built 10 years ago, Marsh said.

"It hasn't been fulfilled as promised, and now they throw in a firing range," she said. "We have all brought up the Ford Center, and we get no reply. We're just looking for some answers."

The city's Department of Environment did not respond to phone calls or emails for this story.

By Katie Drews, for ChicagoWildlifeNews.com
Contact: [email protected]

Photo credit: White egret at pond near proposed shooting range. From Southeast Environmental Task Force blog.

The Nature of DuPage: Bringing barn owls back to the Chicago region

2010-11-01T04:58:00.000-07:00

(POSTED: 11/1/10) With distinctive monkey faces and soft, cream-colored plumage, barn owls stick in the memories of those who have seen them. In recent decades, such a sighting in northeast Illinois has meant a trip to a zoo or wildlife display. Barn owls have become locally extinct as a breeding species. The Forest Preserve District of DuPage County, in partnership with other local agencies, is attempting to bring them back. When the owls' savanna habitat was altered by large scale agriculture and, later, urbanization, barn owls showed some flexibility as they nested in barns and other human structures instead of tree cavities. They could not keep pace with changes in farm practices that removed rodent-rich grasslands while replacing wooden barns and open silos with tighter, owl-proof structures. Barn owls faded away. What gives forest preserve ecologists hope that a comeback is possible? Project leader Dan Thompson writes, "The combination of open space protection and active management to improve ecosystem quality that characterizes much of northeastern Illinois today may present suitable opportunities to support a breeding population of barn owls."

The project began in 2004 and 2005 with the release of the first owls in DuPage. The birds are raised by their parents, captive breeding pairs in various facilities including the Forest Preserve District's Willowbrook Wildlife Center. They get flight experience and learn to hunt live mice in large enclosures before they are moved to release locations. At the release site the fledglings are kept in suitable barn shelters several days to become attached to the site, and then their peephole door (previously blocked by hardware cloth) is opened. The birds have the option of staying or moving on. In 2006, McHenry County Conservation District joined the program by releasing four owls. More recently, barn owls have gone to Fermilab and Will County as well. In the early years the birds were fitted with radio transmitters. This technology permitted them to be tracked as long as they didn't move far, but its range was limited. Over the past three years, new transmitters that permit tracking by satellite have expanded the range over which the birds can be followed, and the results have been startling. Three of last year's owls were tracked to New Jersey, Tennessee and southern Illinois. A fourth bird flew to South Dakota, then to Iowa where she died after breaking a leg. A fifth apparently was killed by a great horned owl. Some previous years' owls have made it to Louisiana and the Carolinas. The wanderers are not yet regarded as lost to the program, as they may return to their natal country as they prepare to breed. Also, variations in release protocols are being considered that might better guarantee release site fidelity.

So far, most of the six barn owls released this year have moved short distances from their release sites. One in Will County made its way to the Midewin National Grassland, a positive development as suitable habitat there is extensive. Updates on the birds' locations are provided through the district's website at http://www.dupageforest.com/Conservation/NaturalResources/Birds.html

Collaborators in this project include: Forest Preserve District of DuPage County, Willowbrook Wildlife Center, Cosley Zoo, McHenry County Conservation District, Illinois Department of Natural Resources, Fermilab National Accelerator and Max McGraw Wildlife Foundation.

By Carl Strang, who has been an interpretive naturalist for the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County for more than 28 years. He holds a Ph.D. in wildlife ecology from Purdue University. Carl has won awards from the Illinois Wildlife Federation and from the National Association for Interpretation. He is the author of the book, Interpretive Undercurrents, on the art of natural history interpretation. His weekly radio spot, "Wild Things," is broadcast from the College of DuPage radio station (WDCB, 90.9FM) on Monday evenings between 6:00 and 6:30. Current research interests include distribution and ecology of singing insects, and winter movement patterns and social structure of Canada geese.

Photo by Dan Thompson

Birding groups float idea of red-headed woodpecker replacing cardinal as state bird

2010-10-17T13:11:00.001-07:00

(POSTED: 10/18/10) No offense, cardinal, but Illinois may want a new state bird.

Some Chicago-area birders have expressed interest in making the red-headed woodpecker the new symbol for Illinois. No woodpecker fans have organized to spearhead the change, but Chicago Wilderness and the Audubon Chicago Region raised the question in a recent newsletter to see if anybody would like to “join in this perhaps quixotic quest.”

People in the birding community around Chicago seemed delighted by the idea. The red-headed woodpecker -- a rather noisy bird with a brilliant red head on top a black and white body -- has been steadily declining over the years because of habitat loss. But historically, the bird was common throughout Illinois. That’s why some say the woodpecker is a better fit for our state than the cardinal.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if the state bird was simply more representative of what the state was like when it was founded?” said Bob Fisher, president of the Illinois Ornithological Society. “When Illinois was being settled, you could spot the red-headed woodpecker along the creeks and rivers, whereas you would have been hard pressed to find a cardinal.”

Fisher said nominating the woodpecker “wouldn’t be a hard sell” to members of his organization. However, Tom Clay, executive director of the Illinois Audubon Society, which features the northern cardinal as its symbol, was not so sure.

The woodpecker is “an important bird, and we love them,” Clay said. “We definitely want to raise the elevation and awareness of the species.”

But, he added, “We would be happy for the cardinal to remain the state symbol.”

The northern cardinal was originally selected as the state bird by Illinois school children in 1928. The General Assembly made it official the following year.

“At that time it was important to them and we should honor what they wanted to do,” Clay said.

To make a change in the state bird, Illinois legislators would have to get involved, but it apparently has not gotten that far as of yet.

Six other states also have chosen the cardinal as their top bird, including Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio.

By Katie Drews, for ChicagoWildlifeNews.com
Contact: [email protected]

Photo credit: A red-headed woodpecker in DuPage County, apparently hiding from a hawk. Courtesy of Jean Spitzer.

Des Plaines River Journal: The pleasure of walking

2010-10-03T22:26:00.000-07:00

(POSTED: 10/4/10) In these balmy late-summer, early-autumn days it is a pleasure to strike out into the Dam Number Four Woods, and lope along a wooded path. Fall colors have dented a few of the trees. Fallen leaves do not yet grace the footpaths, but plenty of acorns do. I read in the paper a few days ago that naturalists from the Morton Arboretum have pronounced this fall season to be "nuttier" than usual, meaning that these days more acorns than usual fall from our oak trees. Years ago we boys would, like budding baseball pitchers, interrupt our walks by picking up the larger acorns, and then flinging them against the trees of our neighborhood. I do not know, though wonder sometimes, if any of those fast-ball and curve-ball acorns dug in and sprouted a tree those many years ago. I hope so, and I still like to pick up an acorn or two, take aim at a tree, imagine that I am facing Mantle or Maris, and give it my best shot.

The usual forms of exercise out here, however, do not include baseball but rather activities of the more aerobic sort, especially in this cooler, dryer weather, perfect for jogging and bicycling. I do both, though prefer a long walk at a good clip. The local high school (Maine South) cross-country teams are out here logging miles, and numerous other folks are also fast-walking, jogging and bicycling resolutely. We are all, I suppose, trying to burn calories (3,500 per pound!) and get in step with our health-conscious, though overweight, age. And, I imagine, to our credit, that many a pound has indeed been lost out here. A good many dogs, it would seem, have also romped around here and kept themselves trim. I often see them romping out here, tugging, when leashed (as they should be), at their owners.

Certainly we were built to walk, and to walk long distances. Our forebearers surely did. For that reason, I think -- without knowing the science around it -- that walking, especially of the "low impact" sort, must be one of the best, most natural forms of human exercise. Intuitively I trust walking, and not the contraptions at health clubs that sometimes look to me like dentist chairs or medieval torture devices. A trainer at my company's health club ("fitness center") pointed me towards web sites that enable one to quickly calculate number of calories burned by walking, given your body weight, pace (speed) and time. I learned that I'd burn about 300 calories, more or less, by an hour of brisk walking, a bit discouraging given the 3,500 calories/pound target value. Readers can learn more about the fine art of walking at www.walking.about.com.

Yet the benefits of walking are clearly more than aerobic. I believe that hiking nurtures not only physical health. A good walk is one of the best ways I know of to steady the nerves, clear the mind and sometimes even to solve a problem or two. I recall participating years ago in a lengthy, marathon hike through North Kettle Moraine State Forest with the Sierra Club. A sturdy woman walking alongside me for a time pronounced that hike to be a "three-problem walk." "On a hike of this length," she explained, "I can work out no less than three problems in my head!" I think I knew what she meant as I've often "thought through" something bothering me while hiking, or at least put a problem into a right, better perspective. This only confirms my sense that humans were meant to walk. It is certainly pleasurable to get out and hike, and may also be essential to our well-being both physically and spiritually.

Colin Fletcher, a well-known hiker and author of books and articles about hiking (notably "The Man Who Walked Through Time"), has had similar thoughts while hiking. In his book, "The Complete Walker," he writes eloquently, "I often walked . . . in order to think uncluttered thoughts or to feel with accuracy or to sweat away a hangover or to achieve some other worthy end, recognized or submerged. And I usually succeeded –- especially with the thinking. . . . I nearly always found after a while that I was beginning to think more clearly. Yet 'think' doesn't seem to be quite the right word. Sometimes, when it was a matter of making a choice, I don't believe I decided what to do so much as discovered what I had decided. It was as if my mind, set free by space and solitude and oiled by the body's easy rhythm, swung open and released thoughts it had already formulated."

Fletcher is certainly right in that walking keeps us fit . . . and also may keep us inspired. Many creative artists thrive on ambulation. I am a musician, and have often read that the composer, Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), was one of the great walking artists. In his youth he often clambered about the hills of his native Rhineland, and after moving to Austria, the woodsy areas around Vienna. Today the Beethovenweg marks many of the paths, lanes and trails he trod. Beethoven, who suffered increasingly from deafness in his adult years, found not only solace in nature, but inspiration. The eccentric and deaf composer was often seen striding along, singing loudly and hoarsely, gesticulating wildly with his arms, and stamping his feet. Understandably, onlookers sometimes made fun of him. Yet his glorious Pastorale symphony resonates with the sounds of storms, bird-calls, peasant tunes and dances, and the wild rhythms of nature. After a long walk outside of Vienna, a friend and pupil of his described how Beethoven rushed to his piano, and feverishly wrote out musical thoughts that had just come to him on his walk through the woods in bad weather. These stormy themes soon matured into his immortal Appassionata sonata, one of the most popular works in the modern pianist's repertory. The testimony of Beethoven's friends and contemporaries strongly suggest that he had to get moving physically for his creative ideas to flow fully. (Similarly the Russian composer, Sergei Rachmaninoff, who was also one of the supreme piano virtuosos of all time, said, "If I don't walk . . . my fingers won't run!")

I scanned several pages of quotes about walking that Colin Fletcher collected, and one in particular, by the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, struck me: "Never did I think so much, exist so vividly, and experience so much, never have I been so much myself -- if I may use that expression -- as in the journeys I have taken alone and on foot." I'm not a philosopher, though I suppose I think philosophical thoughts out here. Nor am I a composer, though I often sing Beethoven's music to myself while hiking, but I can in one personal way advance my argument about the inspirational value of walking: I got the idea for this article during a pleasant ramble in these woods last weekend.

By Jeff Wagner, for ChicagoWildlifeNews.com

Jeffrey Wagner, a graduate of Northwestern University and Indiana University, is a Chicago-area musician and writer who has published numerous articles in Clavier Magazine, and other journals. Since boyhood, he has loved the outdoors, and has hiked, camped and back-packed all over the United States.

Contact: [email protected] or [email protected]

Wild Musings: Our wildlife heritage is real and . . . ready for help

2010-09-26T20:47:00.000-07:00

(POSTED: 9/29/10) Turning off Chicago Avenue into the woods along the Des Plaines River is like leaving this planet for another one. Where there were cars honking, buses belching smoke and the pressure from commuters trying to get home, instead it's peace and quiet complete with a doe and her fawn sauntering through the duff.

The woods along the Des Plaines River along River Road are an amazing place to visit if you wish to see deer year round, woodpeckers including downy, hairy and flickers on a regular basis, and proof there are beavers in the river. They are a good place to get a sense of our wild heritage, and green and blue connections.

With fall approaching, the wildlife along the rivers -- at least bird-wise -- becomes more pronounced. On the Chicago River, newly fledged great blue herons seem to line the banks like the Queen's Guard at Buckingham Palace. The herons can be widespread along the river because there are fish everywhere. New populations surged after the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District finished great portions of the Tunnel and Reservoir tunnels and ceased chlorinating sewage effluent (which is a whole other story) in the mid 1980s.

Interestingly, the recent devastation caused by rotenone use on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal (CSSC) and Calumet River revealed there is a greater abundance of fish than previously thought in the Chicago River system and those fish are healthy and spawning throughout the section impacted.

These observations were made by IDNR scientists and others during monitoring and control measures associated with Asian carp in early December 2009 which allowed detailed observation of the resident fish, generally not possible by conventional collection. The observations were considered quite surprising given the historical information and apparent degraded conditions (e.g., lack of obvious habitat and the volume of wastewater and stormwater which depress dissolved oxygen.)

"Of particular interest was the presence of several sport species," said one fishery biologist, "including smallmouth bass, which is considered an intolerant species. Also adult channel catfish and sauger were unexpectedly abundant. Other species included walleye, northern pike and smallmouth buffalo."

In addition, they observed excellent body condition for most individuals. This is unusual because it is common in areas with poor water quality to see a high percentage of fish with external anomalies such as sores, eroded fins, eroded barbells and even tumors. The segment of the waterway downstream to the I-55 bridge historically had a high occurrence. Now, most fish observed in the rotenone-treated section of the CSSC were robust and showed no signs of disease or malnutrition.

Finally, one of the most significant observations from the CSSC event was the very high abundance of young-of-the-year channel catfish. This suggests that water quality is sufficient to support even larval stages of this species, and that spawning habitat is present; perhaps even common. The young from other species including emerald shiner, bluegill, largemouth bass suggests successful reproduction from these species as well.

These observations made by scientists are an exciting statement about what we have and what we might find if we are looking. And last week they were reinforced when I spoke to several of the fishermen who echoed IDNR observations and caught fish right before our eyes -- a channel catfish at the mouth of Bubbly Creek and a little bluegill at River Park.

Our wildlife heritage is real and is wonderful and is ready for help. If we all work together, our planets can be the same one.

Margaret Frisbie is the executive director of Friends of the Chicago River, a nonprofit organization that works to improve and protect the Chicago River for the people, plants and animals who share our watershed. A lifelong wildlife enthusiast who grew up hiking our forest preserves and canoeing our streams, Frisbie lives on Chicago's Northwest Side where, despite its urban environment, wildlife is never too far from her door.

Des Plaines River Journal: Our cherished public places

2010-08-22T14:08:00.000-07:00

(POSTED: 8/23/10) I confess to having been put off a bit from hot temperatures and aggressive swarms of mosquitoes this summer. Weather conditions for walking in the woods near the Des Plaines River, especially down in the flood plain areas, have often been less than ideal. However, cooler temperatures this week in mid-August have returned to the area, and I'm more often to the woods.

Recently I paused to watch a soccer game in an open field just across the street and west of Maine South High School. I've seen soccer played frequently here in the evenings of the past few years. Players have food and refreshment ready, usually on tailgates, and music blaring from radios to accompany their game. The players here are usually Spanish-speaking, and I've seen a Polish-speaking team play in the fields just south of the Kennedy Expressway.

As a spectator, I've sometimes been invited to have a swig of Gatorade with the players. They are ebullient and, I suppose, are releasing pent-up work-week energy. I don't watch sports much on television, and find soccer especially monotonous there, but up close and live, these games are interesting to see, even exciting at moments. For one, perhaps obvious, thing, these guys are here for the pure fun of it. They are not competing for paychecks. From the "sideline" I can easily sense their enthusiasm, and feel the pleasurable gritty physical strain they undergo in seeking goals. So much effort . . . for so little scoring! Well, that's soccer.

I've also watched bits of many a softball game over the years, and -- a clear harbinger of globalization -- recently saw a game of cricket being played. These games and the many picnic gatherings of family and friends, remind us of the importance of public place in contemporary life, especially during the warmer seasons. The forest preserve, let us remember, is a place you can return to over the years, if you wish: for games, for walks, for social gatherings, for family reunions(matching T-shirts are sometimes indicators of these), for volunteer group cleanup efforts, and no doubt for many other good purposes. Few of us Americans can go into the house we were born in, if it even exists, but we can return over and over to public places we've previously visited, such as these lovely forest preserves.

In Ken Burns' documentary, The National Parks, recently shown on public television, many people recount, with emotion, memories of happy, meaningful family experiences in the parks. One married couple visited all of the parks, and chronicled their visits. It was truly a life project for them as a couple. Another man, originally from Viet Nam, has visited and made artistic photographs in each 60-some parks. Burns' fine documentary reminds us that public parks, including forest preserves, are, by definition, places where all may come, where management of the land is overseen by our governments of the people. I felt more strongly than ever, as I watched The National Parks, that these public preserves are indeed communities made up of us folks who visit, and of those plants, animals, rocks, lakes and rivers that live there.

The national parks were an American idea, an idea from the home of democracy, and of a society that aspires to egalitarianism. Burns' historical narrative reveals bitter fights between competing interests for natural land. At crucial moments, determined men and women stepped forward to raise the money or influence legislators to make land public, and to maintain it in its natural state. John Muir, from nearby Wisconsin, was one of them. In other crucial moments, interests in the private sector won out. Such conflicts remain to this day. For example, I recall from the early 1990s the confrontations between commercial developers and environmental groups over how land just northeast of here was to be used. The de-commissioned military bases of Fort Sheridan and Glenview Naval Air Station were particularly the focus of attention and sometimes bitter debate. Various compromises between developers (the "privates") and environmental groups (the "publics") were reached.

I imagine this sort of debate and disagreement over the use of land will frequently rage in a democratic society. In old Europe, from where many of our ancestors came, land was controlled autocratically by Church and nobility; no public discussion necessary. Here, land came to be controlled by officials elected by popular vote; public discussion is legally allowed, and obligatory. Fortunately the park idea spread back to Europe, which is now dotted with numerous publicly administered parks. Certainly this idea is one of our better American exports.

Whatever debates were waged relating to the establishment of the Forest Preserve District of Cook County, I am of course glad for those results which gave us the local forest preserves. The Des Plaines River forest preserve system is not a national park, but it is governed on much the same principles by local (county) governments. There is a Cook County Forest Preserve District that runs Dam Number Four Woods where I often walk. The Chicago Park District, a precursor to the county-level organization, was first envisioned by Dr. John H. Rauch, a physician, in 1869. He wrote at that time, ". . . we want [the city] to be not alone a place for business, but also one in which we can live." When, as a result, Garfield, Humboldt, Douglas, Jackson and Washington parks were formed, Chicago became second only to Boston in park land development. Later, in 1914, Cook County residents voted to establish the Cook County Forest Preserve District which today manages the 67,000 acres of these preserves. A fine moment in our local history!

By Jeff Wagner, for ChicagoWildlifeNews.com

Jeffrey Wagner, a graduate of Northwestern University and Indiana University, is a Chicago-area musician and writer who has published numerous articles in Clavier Magazine, and other journals. Since boyhood, he has loved the outdoors, and has hiked, camped and back-packed all over the United States.

Contact: [email protected] or [email protected]

The Nature of DuPage: Neighborhood singing insects

2010-08-15T20:09:00.000-07:00

(POSTED: 8/16/10) We have reached the time of year when the birds have gone largely quiet, and the dominant wildlife sounds are produced by insects. In a typical residential neighborhood you can expect to hear around 15 species of crickets, katydids and cicadas in late summer to early autumn.

Loudest are the cicadas, which sing from morning to late dusk. Four species are common in the Chicago area. They look much alike, but have distinct songs. The dog day cicada produces a siren-like clear, high-pitched tone. A fast-pulsing, buzz-saw-like song characterizes the lyric cicada, which can produce very loud morning choruses along the Des Plaines River but occurs in smaller numbers even in neighborhoods remote from water. Linne's cicada has a slower pulsed song, its vibrato commonly at around 4-6 pulses per second. Still slower is the scissor grinder, whose "ee-oowee-oowee" song often dominates the insect song chorus at dusk. Representatives of all four of these cicada species emerge each year, though the nymphs require several years of underground root sap feeding to mature.

As the light fades, cicadas give way to katydids and crickets. Over the years the sound I have been asked to identify most often is the common true katydid's loud "eh-eh!" The song's rasping notes most commonly are grouped in twos, though I have heard threes and even four-syllable songs in different DuPage County populations. Songs are separated by about a second in warm weather. These flightless insects are a good two inches long and generally stay well up in trees. Like most other katydids they are green and resemble leaves with legs.

Another familiar nighttime sound in our area is the rapid, stopwatch-like ticking of the greater angle-winged katydid. Later in the season these tree dwellers occasionally sing in the daytime.

The remaining singing insects common to residential neighborhoods in our area all are crickets. Some are distinctive, like the friendly chirping of the fall field cricket, with its black, inch-long body and ground-dwelling habit. The snowy tree cricket produces evenly spaced clear tones that vary with temperature, speeding up when it's warm and slowing as the temperature drops. The snowy's song is the one you most often hear in the mood-setting ambient background soundtracks of nighttime scenes in movies.

The remaining cricket songs seem to blend together to form an undifferentiated background wall of sound. With study and practice you may learn to distinguish the trills and chirps of three kinds of ground crickets, a bush cricket, a trig and three additional tree crickets that frequent our neighborhoods. The resource I recommend for those who wish to explore this topic further is The Songs of Insects by Elliot and Hershberger. The book includes beautiful photos of all the species I have mentioned as well as a CD with recordings of their songs.

By Carl Strang, who has been an interpretive naturalist for the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County for more than 28 years. He holds a Ph.D. in wildlife ecology from Purdue University. Carl has won awards from the Illinois Wildlife Federation and from the National Association for Interpretation. He is the author of the book, Interpretive Undercurrents, on the art of natural history interpretation. His weekly radio spot, "Wild Things," is broadcast from the College of DuPage radio station (WDCB, 90.9FM) on Monday evenings between 6:00 and 6:30. Current research interests include distribution and ecology of singing insects, and winter movement patterns and social structure of Canada geese.

Lincoln Park Zoo's wolves add to flavor of neighborhood

2010-08-02T04:58:00.000-07:00

(POSTED: 8/2/10) Lincoln Park long has been a neighborhood of noises: cabs honking, sirens wailing, tavern patrons emptying onto the streets at closing time.

But in the past few years a new sound has become part of the fabric of the area: howling.

Since red wolves arrived at Lincoln Park Zoo, their howls have added to the tenor, echoing well beyond the animals' enclosure on the zoo's west side.

For some locals, it's endearing, if at times a little spooky.

"For a moment I thought my night was going to turn into something out of a Harry Potter or Twilight novel," said 23-year-old Ellen Romer, recalling the first time she heard the wolves, at night after she got off a CTA bus and started walking to her apartment.

"It was a bit frightening, but after you realize what is going on -- I didn't find it a nuisance. It was just a very grounding experience to remember that other creatures share this big city with us, too."

Joe Mayer, 66, had a similar take, saying: "I sit in the park and read whenever the weather allows it, and I hear them all the time. . . . They are harmless creatures just doing what they naturally are inclined to do. People enjoy them, and I think that is most important."

But one local -- 27-year-old William Hayes -- found the howling a bit old.

"I literally hear them all the time," Hayes said. "I walk home from work and I hear them. I rollerblade down the street and I hear them. Anytime a siren goes by, they go crazy. It can be really annoying since it happens so frequently."

Zoo spokeswoman Sharon Dewar said she's "never received any complaints about the howling in years. On the contrary, if the wolves start to howl, people will scamper to the fenceline because they think it's cool."

Red wolves are considered "critically endangered," according to the zoo, which is participating in a program to reintroduce some back into the wild.

The first red wolf arrived at the zoo about five years ago, and now there are eight there, Dewar said.

By Maddie Asebrook, for ChicagoWildlifeNews.com
Contact: [email protected]

Endangered herons find shelter at Park Ridge prairie

2010-07-02T15:42:00.000-07:00

(POSTED: 7/6/10) Not far from the bustle of the Tri-State Tollway and O'Hare Airport, a pair of black-crowned night-herons have found sanctuary.

The birds -- relatively common in some parts of the country, but endangered in Illinois -- reside among the trees and other wildlife at Wildwood Nature Center's prairie in Park Ridge, a northwest suburb.

This type of heron has been visiting the prairie since at least 1996, said Wildwood supervisor Jenny Clauson.

"They arrive in early to middle May and nest for a couple of months until it's time to leave again," Clauson said.

The herons aren't usually seen together, she added. While one is protecting a nest, the other is away gathering food.

With a blackish back and a pale or gray underside, the herons are usually seen hunched over and relatively inactive.

"Sometimes when one sits high in the trees, it looks like a penguin," Clauson said.

Mature black-crowned night-herons look much different from younger ones, who have a brown and yellowish color, made to blend in with their scenery to protect themselves from predators.

Wildwood is proud the herons have chosen the prairie as their home.

Hillary Wells-Pranga, a naturalist at Wildwood, said the center is a good fit for the birds.

"Herons are always found around bodies of water, where they can find fish and frogs to eat," she said. "They like smaller lakes and bodies of water. The prairie has great water sources and food for them."

James Mountjoy, a biology professor at Knox College in Galesburg, described the herons as an uncommon summer resident.

"Most of the black-crowns in Illinois nest either in the Chicago region or in St. Clair County," Mountjoy said. The species used to be more common in Illinois, but with the decline in wetlands, the number has likewise slipped, he said.

Because of this, Mountjoy said, the birds are officially listed as an endangered breeding species in Illinois.

By Kayla Harris, for ChicagoWildlifeNews.com
Contact: [email protected]

Oil spill in Gulf raising concerns about Illinois' migratory birds

2010-06-23T21:33:00.001-07:00

(POSTED: 6/28/10) The BP oil spill is threatening wildlife well beyond the Gulf region -- with Illinois' migratory birds among those facing an uncertain future.

By some estimates, 60 species of birds travel from Illinois to or through the Gulf of Mexico when colder weather arrives.

If the oil isn't substantially gone from the water -- or from coastal marshes where some of those birds feed -- they could be in trouble, experts said.

The birds risk getting slicked by oil -- or finding their food supplies tainted, or diminished.

"If birds eat small fish or they eat small invertebrates, and if the oil affects the productivity of the populations of their food base, then that would be an indirect effect," said Jeffrey Brawn, department head of natural resources and environmental sciences at the University of Illinois.

Migratory bird biologist Randy Wilson from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service said, "Each of the birds uses this part of the country slightly differently."

Some winter in the Gulf, but others stop to rest and eat before making the journey to Central or South America.

"The question is: is it going to be oil in local areas, or is it basically going to be all of the Gulf Coast covered with oil from the panhandle of Florida to Louisiana?" said Chicago Field Museum senior conservation ecologist Doug Stotz.

Stotz is waiting to see if the oil remains off much of the coast. The marshes, he said, are a vital area.

While shorebirds are at risk, so are waterfowl, with experts mentioning the red-breasted Merganser and Scaup ducks as birds that migrate through Illinois along the Mississippi Flyway to the Gulf.

"Illinois is actually a mid-migration state," said John Buhnerkempe, division chief of wildlife resources at the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. "We don't raise a lot of ducks here. We watch the birds come in from the northern United States and Canada, and they fly through Illinois."

Experts seem to agree that it will be some time before we know the Gulf oil spill's affect on Illinois' migratory birds -- especially long-term.

"Birds are able to rebound from population crashes," said Michael Ward, an avian ecologist at the Illinois Natural History Survey and a visiting assistant professor at the U of I. "They are pretty amazing in that ability."

"It's the long-term -- five, 10 years of constantly being beaten down. That's when you get really grave conservation complications."

Here is a list of bird species that migrate from Illinois to or through the Gulf that some experts have shown concern about:

Grebes
Least terns
Piping plover
Red-breasted Merganser
Sanderling
Scaup ducks
Spotted sandpiper
Virginia rails
Yellow rails
Yellow-crowned night-heron

By Mari Grigaliunas, for ChicagoWildlifeNews.com
Contact: [email protected]

Photographs:

Top picture, red-breasted Merganser -- Waterfowl from Illinois that could be affected by oil spill when it migrates south in the fall. Credit: Dave Menke/U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

Middle picture, spotted sandpiper -- Shorebird from Illinois that could be affected by oil spill when it migrates south in the fall. Credit: Dave Menke/U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

Bottom picture, piping plover -- Shorebird from Illinois that could be affected by oil spill when it migrates south in the fall. Piping plover is also on the Illinois Endangered and Threatened Animals and Plants checklist. Credit: Gene Nieminen/U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

Des Plaines River Journal: My very own back fence

2010-06-03T07:54:00.000-07:00

(POSTED: 6/8/10) The naturalist, John Muir, when in the mood for a walk, felt the need to do nothing more than "throw some tea and bread into an old sack and jump over the back fence." Warm summery temperatures in the area now stir in me the same feelings as I vault over the fence bordering the forest preserve near me. In the Dam Number Four Woods of the Cook County Forest Preserve District, the delicate, pastel greens of spring have matured with the lengthening days into the strong green of summer. The steady Des Plaines River, having reached spring fullness a few weeks ago, has settled to a lower level and on a slower speed.

I walk the trails in these woods throughout the year, and always encounter people, no matter the season. Summer brings of course more visitors: cyclists, joggers, soccer players, walkers, picnickers and inevitably a sub-type of us ordinary hikers -- the dog-walkers. Today I met, leashed to friendly owners, a Brittany spaniel, an Italian greyhound and a Sakhalin Islands husky. In an open field, I see several sunbathers in lawn chairs, and on a neighboring trail young parents gently push their baby in a stroller. Joggers, with admirable determination, and the runner's inward focus, rush by. A forest preserve community of folks assembles for the day.

On an afternoon in this early summer, there is a special pleasure in the feeling of foot upon a path of soft dirt, newly soaked by spring rains. There is a happy rhythm to walking on such a path at a comfortable pace. Indeed, there is an art to walking well, and these woods, in full summer bloom, make that art easy to practice.

I head towards Higgins Road where I am rewarded with a lovely copse of purple and white wild phlox. Their delicate scent lightly infuses the air. Spring wildflowers appear to be mostly gone, but these remain behind, gracing the trail just north of Higgins Road. Will they last through the summer? I will watch to see; they are worth future viewings.

My walks meander, usually without fixed goals. After leaping over that back fence, I never know exactly what awaits me. What leads me? Do unseen attractions beckon? In his essay, "Walking," Thoreau wrote, "I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright. It is not indifferent to us which way we walk. There is a right way; but we are very liable from heedlessness and stupidity to take the wrong one." I don't know if there are any wrong turns in these tame woods that I know well. Yet, encountering these graceful phlox, or a group of quietly grazing deer, or a trotting smiling coyote who pauses long enough to give me a look at it, makes me feel that I've made a right turn. Thoreau may well be right.

I feel fortunate that I do not have to go far to find natural beauty such as this. A fine poet and writer I know, Tom Montag, of Fairwater, Wisconsin, has written of his deep appreciation of the local, of those places that are near to us, and that we may sometimes dismissively overlook. He writes in his book, The Idea of the Local, "To know the world, some people need to travel the globe; others simply examine their own piece of ground entirely. This place will be revealed to us if we let the ghosts speak, if we listen to what tree and stone and hillock want to tell us."

Is it my aging that cultivates a greater appreciation of what I find nearby? Or a kind of practical laziness? I have, to be sure, walked the great Rockies in Colorado, New England's White Mountains, the aged and unusual Black Hills, California's "Range of Light," the Sierra Nevadas, and remember them all happily. What drama I, a Midwesterner, found in these glorious places! At times, flat Illinois and environs have seemed less interesting. Yet now, on these quiet, now flowering woodland paths, I think that the meaning and depth of Montag's "local" outweighs the drama and romanticism of great panoramas far from me. I mean to take nothing from -- and of course could not -- the magnificent Yosemite Valley. For Californians, that valley is local, but not for me.

Perhaps it was when I saw that a wild trillium in a glen near Camp Fort Dearborn was no less beautiful than one I saw on the slopes of New Hampshire's mighty Mount Washington. I love the memory of both three-petaled gems. And fortunately one of them -- the one just south of Devon Avenue -- is for a time each year quite near to my very own back fence.

By Jeff Wagner, for ChicagoWildlifeNews.com

Jeffrey Wagner, a graduate of Northwestern University and Indiana University, is a Chicago-area musician and writer who has published numerous articles in Clavier Magazine, and other journals. Since boyhood, he has loved the outdoors, and has hiked, camped and back-packed all over the United States.

Contact: [email protected] or [email protected]

Billboard worker needs stitches after slashed by dive-bombing hawk

2010-05-22T19:41:00.001-07:00

(POSTED: 5/24/10) Working on a billboard 60 feet in the air can be a hairy job -- especially when a hawk dive bombs into your head.

Craig Busse, a 49-year-old Bartlett resident, would know.

Earlier this month, Busse was up on a catwalk preparing to change an advertisement on a billboard at Interstate 55 and Weber Road in Bolingbrook when he noticed a nest holding two baby hawks, as well as dead mice and rabbits that were missing heads.

Busse moved to the other side of the board -– away from the nest -– and told his co-workers: "Keep your eye out for the bird and move fast."

Within minutes, a red-tailed hawk -- apparently the mom -- swooped down and flew full speed into Busse's head as he knelt on the catwalk. The raptor's talons sliced open the back of his head and left scratches around his ear.

"I felt like somebody punched me in the head," said Busse, who went to the hospital for four stitches, a tetanus shot and antibiotics to clean the wound.

"You don't realize how fast these birds are," he added. "It shocks you. You're 100 feet in the air and then next thing you know, you fall forward a little bit, and you're like, what the hell?"

Luckily he was attached to a safety harness.

Told of the incident, Jacques Nuzzo, program director for the Illinois Raptor Center, said: "If he's off guard, precariously balanced on something, [hawks] know these situations and they can figure these things out."

This type of attack is not rare behavior for red-tailed hawks, which are very territorial and protective of their nests, according to John Parks, director of the Cornell Raptor Program at Cornell University.

"This is the time of year when that sort of instinct peaks," he said.

As for Busse -- who's had several previous encounters with hawks while on the job -- he is still waiting to change that billboard ad.

"There's no way this bird is going to let me work on this sign," he said. "Now we have to wait for the birds to fly away. . . . The hawk won."

By Katie Drews, for ChicagoWildlifeNews.com
Contact: [email protected]

AMA chief's passion for health care extends to birds

2010-05-11T11:12:00.000-07:00

(POSTED: 5/17/10) Dr. J. James Rohack is president of the Chicago-based American Medical Association, and was deeply involved in health care reform.

But his passion for medicine extends beyond people -- to raptors.

When he's not on the job, he's home on his Bryan, Texas, ranch helping his wife, Charli, run a rehabilitation center for injured and sick birds of prey, from hawks and eagles to owls.

"When we look at, you know, the wildlife, it's different than a domesticated pet where you have an owner that is responsible for them," Rohack (pictured below) told ChicagoWildlifeNews.com in a recent interview about his animal patients. "The question is, who's responsible for the wildlife? And in some respects, all of us are."

What follows is an edited transcript of the interview:

Q: How did this wildlife rehabilitation center (called the Eyes of Texas) come into being?

A: In 1993, my wife and myself moved to a 23-acre ranch in Bryan, Texas, and that's
about a 10-minute drive from Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine.

My wife began raising exotic ducks and geese on our three-acre lake and as a result she would interact with the vets at A&M in zoological medicine. They had mentioned that they really needed to have a place to allow animals that were injured to be rehabilitated, because they didn't have the facilities. And so my wife, who is not a physician, went and got some educational training so that she could be a wildlife rehabilitator.

We have a very good partnership with the veterinary medical school. We have interns and residents that will come out along with students at A&M to do internships at our rehabilitation center.

In the beginning, a decade ago, she would do all of the wildlife, but over the last four years, she has specialized mainly in birds of prey. Those are the hawks, and the owls. The permits that she has are not only for the state of Texas, but also the U.S. Fish & Wildlife permits, too.

Q: Why did you decide to invest in this?

A: The reality is we're all on the planet and all animal species interact with each other, one way or another. When we look at, you know, the wildlife, it's different than a domesticated pet where you have an owner that is responsible for them. The question is, who's responsible for the wildlife? And in some respects, all of us are. As man encroaches upon the natural areas where the wildlife live, then they wind up not having a habitat and sometimes developing injuries with a direct relationship to humans. For example, with the hawks and the birds of prey, one of the major injuries is motor vehicle trauma.

Q: What are the most common injuries?

A: Where we live in central Texas is a large migratory bird place for birds coming from the North, migrating down into Mexico and Central America, so the injuries that we tend to see for the birds of prey are really two-fold. One are the adolescent birds that become tired and aren't eating well, and as a result of that become somewhat malnourished, and then the other one is cars. And the trauma is not only motor vehicle trauma, but it is also, regretfully, humans are shooting at these birds of prey.

The birds of prey are protected under federal law, the migratory bird pact, but it's tragic when one sees an injured hawk or an eagle that is brought in because somebody has taken a potshot at it, and isn't aware of the, or perhaps is aware, of the nature of the devastation that they are doing to the ecosystem when they take out the bird of prey.

Q: What animals do you rehabilitate most often?

A: Where we are, the types of birds we've had are the red-shouldered hawk, the red-tailed hawk, Mississippi kite, the Cooper's hawk. We've also had the owl species. The small screech owls, the great horned owls, and barn owls. We also get three different species of vultures. We have what's called the Mexican vulture. The turkey vulture, and then we also have had the Mexican caracara. The caracara is a raptor that is actually the national bird [of Mexico.] When you look at a flag of Mexico, it's the caracara. The blue heron and the great heron as well as -- I've mentioned we've had some eagles, usually two or three a year that are brought in because they've been shot or occasionally, it's because they've developed an infection.

Q: Tell me about the release process?

A: Usually, what happens is that we try to find where these birds have been picked up because if they are not a species that's traveling, for example a bird of prey that has a mate for life, then once we've rehabilitated, we want to release it back to that same area.

Owls, we tend to release at night, hawks you tend to release early in the morning . . . and of course, through the federal and the state requirements, my wife has to keep track of every animal that she's cared for. What happened to them, in other words, were they released back to the wild, are they not able to survive, or were they transferred to another rehabilitator?

There are some rehabilitators that specialize in particular birds. For example, there's a bird called the nighthawk. The nighthawk, as you'd expect by its name, hunts at night and usually eats insects. It eats when it's flying. So when you're feeding a bird like that and trying to train it to eat, you have to have a specialized way to allow them to eat, while flying.

Q: How is it run? Who runs the day-to-day operations?

A: The day-to-day running is my wife, as the director. This is all volunteer work. There are no grants, there is no money [from others.] . . . We went through a time when we could get volunteers to help, but . . . when you're talking about birds of prey, these are animals that could potentially harm you and so, you have to have people that are really dedicated and wanting to do that. And sometimes, especially when you talk about college students, they really can't be able to devote the time, or we get some very good volunteers, but they wind up graduating after a couple of years. That's just the way the things work.

My wife gets up at about 5:30 in the morning, goes over to the rehabilitation center, which is a double-wide mobile home -- we call it our nursery -- where she prepares food for the day.

Q: Do you find you medical skills come in handy when dealing with some of these birds?

A: Yeah, they do. There have been times where, when animals come in, they need to get injections or if they have particular wrappings of something that's broken. . . .

Obviously, this year as the president of the American Medical Association, I haven't been there to help her on a day-to-day basis because of my travels, but when I'm there, I do try and help as much as I can.

Q: Are you involved in any wildlife-related activities in Chicago?

A: Actually no, because my travels to Chicago tend to be very focused on meetings. . . . Probably the thing I enjoy about Chicago the most is the downtown area, you know, being right on the lakefront. You have the opportunity to walk along Grant Park, to walk along the Shedd Aquarium and the Planetarium. So, you're . . . next to the big skyscrapers, but you're still close to nature.

By Michaela Ehimika, for ChicagoWildlifeNews.com
Contact: [email protected]

Photos: Top picture shows a red-tailed hawk being released into the wild after being treated for a fractured wing. Bottom picture shows a great horned owl that was treated for a bacterial infection, and also was released. All photos courtesy of the Eyes of Texas.

With bee populations on the decline, the U of I embarks on a census of sorts

2010-05-07T19:49:00.000-07:00

(UPDATED: 5/11/10) What's the buzz?

The University of Illinois is trying to find out -- as part of a program called "BeeSpotter" that's getting a handle on the numbers and locations of bumble bees and honey bees across the state.

It's an important endeavor given the alarming -- and perplexing -- decline in recent years of both types of bees, which are great pollinators of crops and other plants.

While the U.S. Census Bureau is relying on questionnaires and door-knockers to count every man, woman and child, the U of I is enlisting "citizen scientists," as well as the Internet, to chart bees in Illinois.

Among the aims, "establish a much-needed baseline for monitoring population," and "enhance public appreciation of pollination as an ecosystem service," according to the BeeSpotter web site.

Here's how the program works:

Regular folks are encouraged to take photos of bees in their neck of the woods, and upload the pictures onto the BeeSpotter site.

Someone from BeeSpotter then notes the type of bee, as well as location and date.

The program, with 725 participants so far, already has provided intriguing information.

"Less than a year after our site went up, a beespotter near Peoria uploaded two absolutely unambiguous photos of a bee called the rusty-patched bumble bee, Bombus affinis, which was thought to be extinct in that part of state," said May Berenbaum (pictured right.) She's the U of I entomology professor who conceived the BeeSpotter program, launched in fall 2007 at the Urbana-Champaign campus.

Fellow professor Sydney Cameron added: "Up until 50 years ago, there were all sorts of species in the northern part of Illinois. But now, we see a reduction in the number of species."

The Chicago Honey Co-op, a bee farm on Chicago's West Side (shown below), lost about half of its hives last year, according to Michael S. Thompson, farm manager and one of the co-op's founders.

The farm sent dead bees for testing. However, what happened is "a complete mystery," Thompson said. "Honestly, we don't know. It could be location, it could be genetics, it could be something else completely different."

The die-off of honey bees across the country likewise is something of a mystery, but a combination of factors could be to blame.

A government report from earlier this year mentions pesticides, viruses, infections from mites, even contaminated water supplies as possible culprits.

Meanwhile, another hope of the BeeSpotter initiative is that the public image of bees is polished up a bit, so they're not simply seen as a nuisance with a stinger.

Cindy Duda, environmental education specialist with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service office in Illinois, said: "The greater challenge is reaching homeowners who have been convinced that every insect is a bad insect and they must use pesticides to kill or control everything."

By Michaela Ehimika, for ChicagoWildlifeNews.com
Contact: [email protected]

Overview: There are more than 4,000 species of bees in the United States, with bumble bees and honey bees the most conspicuous kinds. They are different than wasps although can be similar in coloring and behavior. Hornets and yellow jackets are among the more noticeable wasps. Following are general characteristics.

BEES: Hairier and sometimes more rounded than wasps, subsisting off nectar and pollen. Bees are "premier pollinators."

+Honey bees: Not native to North America. Major pollinators of crops and other plants. Die off after stinging somebody. Produce honey. Often housed in man-made hives. In the wild, often found in tree holes. Smaller than bumble bees. Colonies generally survive the winter, and can include 30,000 to 40,000 "workers." (There's only one honey bee species in U.S.)

+Bumble bees: Larger than honey bees. Make honey, but so little it's not harvested by humans. Colony typically has 200 to 400 workers, who die off during winter. Often nest in ground, in old rodent burrows. They'll sting, but usually only near hive, or if feeling threatened. They're loud buzzers. (There are 50 or so species in the U.S., 11 of which are in Illinois.)

WASPS: Often appear to have narrow waste-lines, with smoother, shinier exteriors. Predatory, eating other insects, or scavenging. Sometimes aggressive picnic pests. Pollinating is less their thing. Can sting repeatedly without dying. Not honey makers. Colonies die over winter.

+Hornets: Usually responsible for those football-sized papery nests hanging from branches. Larger than yellow jackets.

+Yellow jackets: "Garbage hounds," often pests at picnics. Frequent stingers of people. Like to nest in ground.

Sources: University of Illinois, Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, other web research

Photos: Top photo shows rusty patched bumble bee, snapped by Downstate beespotter, courtesy of University of Illinois' BeeSpotter. Middle photo supplied by May Berenbaum. Photo of beehives courtesy of Chicago Honey Co-op.

The Nature of DuPage: Did Chicago's wildlife once include dinosaurs?

2010-05-02T21:12:00.000-07:00

(POSTED: 5/3/10) No dinosaur fossil has yet been found in Illinois. This should not be taken to mean that there were no dinosaurs here. Chicago was dry land throughout the 150 million or so years that dinosaurs existed, which prevented any local geological deposits from forming during that time. No deposits, no fossils. It seems likely, though, that Illinois was crawling with dinosaurs. Is there no hope of forming an image of Chicago's dinosaurs?

My approach is to look at reconstructions of geography and climate during the Mesozoic Era, and then see what fossils have been found reasonably close to our area. I conclude that it would be hard to argue effectively against a diverse Illinois dinosaur fauna.

The landscape was different then. There were no Great Lakes, yet. The nearest big water was due West, a mid-continental sea that connected the Gulf of Mexico with the Arctic Ocean. A trip to the beach would entail a journey to central Iowa in the latter Mesozoic. Sadly for our imagined dinosaur fauna, all T. rex fossils found to date have been on the other side of that sea.

The Mesozoic Era began without any dinosaurs, anywhere. Illinois was part of the united continental mass of Pangaea, and located close to the equator. The climate was warm and tropical in that opening Triassic period. Dinosaurs evolved from earlier predatory reptiles during the Triassic, and diversified during the subsequent Jurassic and Cretaceous periods as North America began to split away from other continents. By the late Cretaceous our area had experienced some northward continental drift, but the climate was subtropical and quite warm.

Under such habitat conditions, dinosaurs must have thrived here. So, let's go to the fossil record and see which ones are the best candidates. It happens that the closest dinosaur fossil to Illinois (to date) was found just across the Mississippi River, in Missouri. There is a small, loose deposit of Cretaceous material in Illinois near there, but so far it has not yielded any dinosaurs. That Missouri animal was a hadrosaur. There was not enough of it left to identify it more precisely. The hadrosaurs were a group of abundant, diverse plant-eating species in the latest part of the dinosaur times. They walked and stood on their hind legs. Some of them had expanded snouts that led to them being called the duck-billed dinosaurs.

Now that we have the closest known dinosaur to northeast Illinois, let's expand out to an 800-mile-radius circle and see what dinosaur fossils are known from that area. The circle reaches nearly to the Gulf Coast and to eastern parts of the states bordering the Atlantic Ocean. Keep in mind that the climatic differences we see over that region today were not so extreme in the Mesozoic. Environmental conditions probably were reasonably uniform. By the late Triassic, dinosaurs were widespread and diverse enough that within 800 miles there are fossils and/or preserved footprints of theropods, ornithiscians and a possible prosauropod. Theropods were the original dinosaur group, the predatory reptiles that much later would generate T. rex, Velociraptor and the first birds. Ornithiscians were an offshoot of generally herbivorous dinosaurs that eventually would evolve such familiar groups as the horned dinosaurs, stegosaurs and abovementioned hadrosaurs. Prosauropods were another offshoot whose descendents were the sauropods, such as Brachiosaurus, Apatosaurus ("brontosaurus") and similar, often enormous, four-legged, long-necked, long-tailed plant eaters.

Our circle includes some theropods and ornithiscians from the early Jurassic period, but few fossil deposits are known from that middle Mesozoic time. We next find fossil dinosaurs in the early Cretaceous period. This is the time when our 800-mile circle includes the greatest diversity of known dinosaurs. Theropods included allosauroids (relatives of the famous large, carnivorous Allosaurus), Deinonychus (similar to Velociraptor, but bigger), and the peculiar ornithomimosaurs. Those were theropods which evolved away from their bloodthirsty ancestors into ostrich-like bodies and an herbivorous or omnivorous diet. Though sauropods were on the decline from their peak diversity in the Jurassic, eastern North America still had species of the brachiosaur-like Pleurocoelus. The fauna also included an early member of the group that would become the horned dinosaurs, and a couple of the heavily armored ankylosaurs, including one called Priconodon. There also were a couple groups of relatively large, two-legged herbivores, iguanodons and precursors to the hadrosaurs.

In the late Cretaceous, when the dinosaurs were approaching their doom, a lively group of known species in eastern North America likely called Illinois home. Fossils from within 800 miles include later ornithomimosaurs and two tyrannosaur-group members: the 20-foot-long, 1.3-ton Appalachiosaurus (only a single fossil of an immature animal found so far), and the similar sized Dryptosaurus. There were hadrosaurs and their relatives, and an ankylosaur.

No doubt this list is only a partial sketch. Even animals as large as some of the dinosaurs seldom got preserved as fossils. Conditions were better for fossil preservation in parts of western North America then. The wonderful diverse variety of shapes, sizes and proportions known from the West almost certainly was paralleled here, but we'll never know, except in our imaginations.

By Carl Strang, who has been an interpretive naturalist for the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County for more than 28 years. He holds a Ph.D. in wildlife ecology from Purdue University. Carl has won awards from the Illinois Wildlife Federation and from the National Association for Interpretation. He is the author of the book, Interpretive Undercurrents, on the art of natural history interpretation. His weekly radio spot, "Wild Things," is broadcast from the College of DuPage radio station (WDCB, 90.9FM) on Monday evenings between 6:00 and 6:30. Current research interests include distribution and ecology of singing insects, and winter movement patterns and social structure of Canada geese.

Red wolf pups born at Lincoln Park Zoo headed to wild

2010-04-30T07:47:00.000-07:00

(POSTED: 4/30/10) An endangered type of wolf is getting a boost from Chicago.

Two red wolf pups born at Lincoln Park Zoo earlier this month are being released into the wild -- North Carolina to be exact. They will be put into the den of wild wolves, who hopefully will raise the pair as part of their litter.

"Wild mothers have readily accepted the pups when they are placed in the den when the pups are this young," one official from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service said in a press release.

A zoo spokeswoman told ChicagoWildlifeNews.com that the pups were flown out of Chicago Friday morning. "They got on a United flight with their keeper and a little carrier, . . . it goes right under the seat," she said. "They're very small, they're tiny babies, about two weeks old."

Click here for more information.

Read the press release below:

Rare Red Wolf Pups Depart Zoo for Life in the Wild
Recovery Effort Aims to Save Red Wolves – One of the World’s Most Endangered Canids

Chicago, IL (April 30, 2010) – Two of six endangered red wolf pups born at Lincoln Park Zoo on April 17 are on their way to North Carolina today where they will be released into the wild through the Red Wolf Recovery Program. The newborn pups will be placed inside the den of a pair of wild adult wolves that are currently nursing their own small litter of comparably aged pups. The wild wolves will become the zoo-born pups’ foster parents.

The red wolf fostering strategy has been successfully performed with multiple litters over the past decade, including four pups from Lincoln Park Zoo last year. According to Arthur Beyer, red wolf field coordinator for the US Fish & Wildlife Service, “Wild mothers have readily accepted the pups when they are placed in the den when the pups are this young.”

The Red Wolf Recovery Program is a cooperative conservation effort between the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ Red Wolf Species Survival Plan and the United States Fish & Wildlife Service. This is the second litter of wolf pups born at Chicago’s zoo to be released into the wild.

“Red wolves are critically endangered, so it is very important to bolster their population, and the zoo is proud to contribute to their recovery in this important way,” said Diane Mulkerin, Lincoln Park Zoo curator.

“This is a great example of how red wolves in the Species Survival Plan continue to support recovery efforts in the field,” explained Will Waddell, Red Wolf Species Survival Plan coordinator. “This fostering strategy has demonstrated a very high success rate.”

Four red wolf pups remain at the zoo. They are not visible to the public yet, but are expected to emerge from their den and start exploring their habitat within the next few weeks.

The red wolf is one of the world’s most endangered wild canids. Once common throughout the southeastern United States, red wolf populations were decimated by the 1960s due to intensive predator control programs and loss of habitat. After being declared an endangered species in 1973, efforts were made to round up as many wild red wolves as possible. Of the 17 remaining wolves captured by biologists, 14 became the founders of a successful managed-breeding program. Consequently, the US Fish and Wildlife Service declared red wolves extinct in the wild in 1980.

By 1987, enough red wolves were bred in the Red Wolf Species Survival Plan to begin a restoration program on the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern North Carolina. Since then the experimental population area has expanded to include three national wildlife refuges, Department of Defense and state-owned lands and private property, totaling 1.7 million acres. The main threats to the wolf’s survival remain loss of habitat due to development and persecution by humans. ###

Photo credit: Picture above supplied by Lincoln Park Zoo.

By ChicagoWildlifeNews.com
Contact: [email protected]

College boasts a different kind of wildlife -- including coyotes, deer and hawks

2010-04-23T12:57:00.000-07:00

(POSTED: 4/26/10) At many colleges, "wildlife" means frat parties, JELL-O shots and beer pong.

But at Oakton Community College in Des Plaines, it also means coyotes, deer, hawks, geese, foxes and numerous other critters.

Although the 147-acre campus is teeming with students, it's surrounded on four sides by woods, and is near the Des Plaines River.

So by suburban standards, there's a good amount of nature around, and animal sightings by students and staff are fairly common.

Sophomore Samantha Chavez, who's part of the school's Ecology Club, said she saw a limping coyote a few months back, adding, "I think he was probably hit by a car or something."

She's also seen a skunk, and noted there are "wood ducks in the spring over in the back of Parking Lot C."

She's heard there's a kind of salamander around as well, although she's never seen one.

Joe Franco, another sophomore, recalls a deer halting traffic one night earlier this year on the main campus road.

"Some lady got out of her car and called Public Safety to get the deer off the road," said Franco. "We had to wait about 10 minutes for Public Safety to come. But by the time they came the deer started walking off into the woods."

Ken Schafer, head groundskeeper at Oakton and faculty adviser to the Ecology Club, knows all too well about the local deer population.

The animals munched on shrubs so much that he had to re-plant a different variety that deer didn't find as tasty.

In another instance, "a deer got stuck in a gangway in the courtyard so we had to coax him out," Schafer said. (The top photo shows deer near campus last month. The other photo is of the Des Plaines school.)

Aside from the routine opossums, raccoons and geese, he's seen a fox, and knows of a nesting pair of red-tailed hawks by a parking lot.

There also are chipmunks, and bass in a pond on the campus, according to interviews.

As Schafer said, "There's all kind of wildlife around here."

By Anthony Diggs, for ChicagoWildlifeNews.com
Contact: [email protected]

Des Plaines River Journal: A walk with the wildflowers

2010-04-11T21:45:00.000-07:00

(POSTED: 4/12/10) On a spring morning, with temperatures in the inviting 50s, I walk out into Dam Number Four Woods, completely snowless for the first time in months. Winter's white cover has given respite from the sight of rubbish, now exposed again in the forest, especially now, before summer's leafiness provides some cover again.

I do not much dwell on what I can't control, however, and my thoughts, stirred by a delicate, cool breeze, turn eventually to the many celebrations of the spring season in poetry. I think of Geoffrey Chaucer's opening lines, read many years ago in school, to The Tales of Canterbury:

When April with his showers sweet with fruit
The drought of March has pierced unto the root
And bathed each vein with liquor that has power
To generate therein and sire the flower

There have indeed been many recent showers that pierced March's gray drought in this area. They have, as Chaucer wrote in 14th-century England, bathed the earth sufficiently to bring forth gem-like wildflowers, a spring walker's rich reward. Chaucer's lines remind one of the special mystery of these harbingers of spring, at once delicate and hearty. It usually takes some work by the eye to find them. The first I see this spring, in a patch of sunny, leaf-covered forest floor near the old Camp Fort Dearborn, are lovely deep blue starflowers. Like scattered diamonds, they grace this small meadow, whose still leafless trees hover overhead, and whose fallen dead leaves carpet the ground. Out in the neighborhoods, I have seen some yellow daffodils sprouting valiantly, and sturdy, yellow, forsythia blooms asserting themselves, but there is special pleasure in finding nature's wilder blooms, the first of the season, out here in the woods.

I continue my walk, thinking in silent celebration of the starflowers. On the site of the old Boy Scout Camp just north of Higgins, Fort Dearborn, I meet two men with metal detecting equipment who seek another sort of forest gem: old coins. I have seen such seekers from time to time out here, and strike up a conversation with one. He shows me some "war nickels" he has just found. These nickels, made during World War II, were short on silver that had been diverted to war industry. He describes, with enthusiasm, other finds he has made here and elsewhere, especially "wheat pennies" (the ones that pre-date the Lincoln penny). "I used to love fishing," he explains, "and this hobby is in some ways similar . . . and very addicting." Pop-tops from cans, he explains with frustration, have nearly ruined this pastime. "Too many false alarms!" he explains. Out here on the former camp-site, nails from the old buildings are also a similar, time-consuming distraction for "metalers."

However, it is the spring wildflowers that attract me today, and the prospect of lugging metal-detecting equipment around seems burdensome. I seek wildflowers, and my efforts are rewarded with another patch of starflowers, and a few small, white ones whose name I do not know. (I am not good with botanical names.) I doubt that the remarkable trillium are out yet. In past years, I have seen them in batches, in shady spots. They seem to me to be the royalty of the wildflower world. From their quiet perches, often near large trees and streams, they present regal blooms for lucky subjects such as me to view.

As I walk on this promising spring morning, I think, too, of my mother, suffering from memory loss that has progressively advanced in her older years. In the hours I spend with her, I've often observed, as is typically the case with dementia, that her long-term memory is much better than recent memory. To her great credit, her long-term memory still retains a few poems. She likes to hear me read them, and sometimes recites along with me those lines that she remembers.

There are two poems in particular, by the English Jesuit poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, that never fail to sparkle her eye, and can sometimes calm the agitation brought on by dementia. In one of them, "Spring," Hopkins likens the beauty, promise and power of spring to the original creation:

What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning in Eden garden

Who will not agree with Hopkins that there is a seed of the sacred in spring's growth, beauty, movement, warmth and color?

In the other Hopkins poem, "God's Grandeur," the 19th-century poet writes of his concern over humankind's disturbing footprint on the created world. This resonates especially as I come across tin cans, and other sorts of waste, in my walk. Hopkins writes:

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

It was then, in the late 1800s, and is now, in the early 21st century, discouraging to consider human impact on nature. Have the products and byproducts of technical civilization been worth the tradeoffs, which we certainly do not completely understand, in any case? The price seems high, yet Hopkins offers encouraging lines that affirm nature's power to survive and thrive:

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things

As I consider the wildflowers, emerging as if by magic, from the seemingly dead and cold forest floor, I think Hopkins to be right. Nature's power everywhere -- including here in the Cook County Forest Preserve, Dam Number Four Woods -- is "deep down." It is eternal and reliable. Flowers similar to those that were "sired" in Chaucer's old England, are blooming as I walk through the forest preserve this day.

By Jeff Wagner, for ChicagoWildlifeNews.com

Jeffrey Wagner, a graduate of Northwestern University and Indiana University, is a Chicago-area musician and writer who has published numerous articles in Clavier Magazine, and other journals. Since boyhood, he has loved the outdoors, and has hiked, camped and back-packed all over the United States.

Contact: [email protected] or [email protected]