Sure Signs of Spring

Posted on May 14, 2018 by admin

Not long ago, a colorful lawn care truck showed up on my street.

The driver had work to do that didn’t involve my lawn, which in this image is my own modest field of cloth of gold. Imagine if no one poisoned their dandelions: the suburban lawns would burst out glorious gold and then white for a couple of weeks in the spring.

Also in our front yard, perched atop a nest built on one of our exterior lights: a robin.
These cool days lately she’s been sitting on her eggs constantly. I assume there are eggs there. I won’t disturb the nest to find out.

The duck that nested two years ago in the back yard never has returned. The robin nesting on the basketball hoop that year might be the same one in a new location, though who’s to know? I’m glad to see the robin this year anyway.

Recommendation Thursday

Posted on March 15, 2018 by admin

Recommended: Terro Liquid Ant Baits. About two weeks ago, itty-bitty black ants started appearing around the kitchen sink. Maybe that’s a sign of spring.

At first, just a few. But as these things always go, a few more and a few more. Pretty soon anything left unwashed in the sink, or any stray bit of food, especially something sweet, would draw a crowd of the little bastards, eager to serve their queen and do their bit for world domination.

I bought some Raid Max Double Control Ant Baits. Double Control. How could you go wrong with a name like that? I set the traps — that is, I took them out of the package and set them on the counter, near the sink — and waited for them to do their extermination work.

The first time I encountered ant bait was in the early days of my time in Japan. One day, large black ants showed up and wanted to share my apartment with me. Larger than the more recent infestation, anyway. So I learned the Japanese for “kill ants” and visited a couple of retailers who might be able to help me.

If I’d been of a more poetic bent, I might have learned “the invader ants must die!” but in any case no language skills were necessary, since the box had a cartoon illustration of what it promised to do. I wish I’d kept it, since it was a gem of commercial manga. Ants see bait. Ants enter bait. Ants find poisoned goodies in bait. Ants take goodies back to nest. Ants feast on goodies. Ants die. Including the queen.

Sure enough, that’s what happened. The day after I put the bait down, I was surprised to see lines of ants entering and leaving the bait, which was a green bit of rectangular plastic with small holes on the side, carrying brown particles away with them. The next day, no ants were to be seen. Over the coming weeks, I’d see a straggler ant or two. Maybe they’d been out on long-range recon and returned only to find a dead colony. Soon even they were gone, and no ants infested my apartment again during the four years I was there.

With that happy experience in mind, I waited for Double Control to do its job. And waited. And waited. But the sink-ants didn’t seem interested. They were probably taunting me and farting in my general direction, inaudibly.

So I looked around for alternatives and found Terro Liquid Ant Baits, also easily available at your neighborhood hardware store. A product of Senoret Chemical Co. of Lititz, Pa., who seem to specialize in pest control.

I put a few baits down, next to the useless Double Control units, and the very next day, the little ants were inside the Terro baits. The Terro baits have a clear top, so you can see it working. This was on Sunday. On Monday, no ants were to be seen around the sink. I’ve seen one or two in the days since; must be that ants are keen on long-range recon.

It’s safe to assume that Terro worked while Double Control did not. What’s up with that, SC Johnson? You used to be so good at killing cartoon insects. Raid kills bugs dead. Not this time.

Birds Above, Mud Below

Posted on April 5, 2017 by admin

More rain, more mud. Such is early April this year. At least the grass is green, even where it’s underwater.

The season also means active birds. At about 2 this afternoon, I was out on my deck — but not for a leisurely sit-down, which was pleasantly doable on Saturday — and noticed a lot of birds in the tree overhead. Who sounded like this.

At moments like that, you feel like you’ve stepped into The Birds.

I saw The Birds on television when I was very young, sometime in the late ’60s. I didn’t see it again for about 25 years, though in the interim I managed to see The 39 Steps, Lifeboat, Notorious, Rope, Strangers on a Train, Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, The Trouble With Harry, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, Marnie, and even Topaz (Hitchcock’s Henry VIII; can’t really recommend it). But I never got around to seeing The Birds as an adult until the early ’90s.

From the first time I remembered the birds pecking a woman to death, and a guy lighting a cigarette and blowing himself up at a gas station, as an indirect victim of the birds. I didn’t remember that Suzanne Pleshette played the pecked woman. Hey! That’s Emily Hartley being offed by birds!

Also, somehow I had it in mind that the movie depicted a worldwide attack by birds. So I was a little surprised to learn upon second viewing that the movie was about a local incident. In the hands of a lesser director — let’s say much lesser, like M. Night Shyamalan — the attack would have indeed been worldwide, and CGI birds would have destroyed the Statue of Liberty, Big Ben and the Eiffel Tower, just for the birdy thrill of it all. Hitch would have had none of that.

The Illinois Heritage Grove

Posted on November 16, 2016 by admin

At Spring Valley Nature Sanctuary is the Illinois Heritage Grove. A sign there says that the grove “represents a sampling of native Illinois trees and shrubs specifically adapted to our climate and soils.” It’s a modest enclosure, with an oval footpath making its way around the grove.
Spring or summer might have been the time to take pictures at the Illinois Heritage Grove, but there’s also something intriguing about bare trees. This is a cockspur hawthorn, Crataegus crusgalli.
A surviving American elm tree, Ulmus americana.
The USDA explained that “shipments of elm tree logs from France to Cleveland, Ohio, accidentally introduced the fungus into the United States in 1931. Within 4 to 5 years, scientists could trace the logs’ trip inland by looking at elm trees along the railroad route. The death trail ran all the way to furniture manufacturers in Cleveland and Columbus, where the imported elms were used for making veneer.

“By 1980, Ophiostoma ulmi — the fungus that causes Dutch elm disease — had virtually wiped out 77 million American elms. The loss of those prized shade trees denuded hundreds of tree-lined streets in towns and cities across the country.”

White ash, Fraxinus americana.
The species in North America is under siege by the dread emerald ash borer. We’ve had personal experience with the loss of ash trees, ones we used to see every day near our front yard.

A black maple, Acer nigrum.
Note the brass plaque hanging from the tree. It says:

IN LOVING MEMORY
CHRISTOPHER M. STANCZAK
6/6/76 5/19/95

I don’t know why his family, or friends, decided to memorialize him that way, but there it is. A modest search reveals that Christopher died in a car accident in Oklahoma, and is buried at Saint Michael The Archangel Catholic Cemetery in Palatine, across the road from the smaller St. John UCC Cemetery.

That’s entirely too melancholy a note on which to end. Here’s a little whimsy, then. I’d never heard of Bird & McDonald until today, but that’s what YouTube is for. Not sure when the clip was made, but with Redd Foxx in it, and from the looks of things, ca. 1980.

Spring Valley Fall

Posted on November 15, 2016 by admin

I find myself at the Spring Valley Nature Sanctuary in Schaumburg fairly often, because it’s close by and pleasant. I’ve heard a bird soap opera there, seen statues draped in winter clothes, and noted the aftermath of a controlled burn. I saw a frog looking like a bit of driftwood and encountered the glorious peonies during the warmer months, but also experienced the place in the bleak mid-winter.

Sunday was clear and not exactly warm, but it wasn’t cold either, so we thought Spring Valley would be just the place. Fall is well advanced, even though it hasn’t been so cold this month, not even quite freezing.

But not quite all the leaves have taken leave.
At the Volkening Heritage Farm, which is part of the preserve, the animals were enjoying the mild day.
The pigs might not have been so placid if they’d realized that next weekend is the “From Hog House to Smokehouse” event at the farm. According to the Schuamburg Park District, “Visit the Heritage Farm to find out where bacon comes from and help preserve food and meat for winter as they did in the 1880s. Visitors will make sausage, smoke hams and learn other pork-related activities.”

I don’t think they’ll baconize all of the pigs. Just a number of them, as farmers would have in the 1880s. No preternaturally intelligent spider is going to come along to save any of them, either.

The Shedd Aquarium

Posted on August 16, 2016 by admin

The Shedd Aquarium, I’ve read, houses 32,000 animals — 1500 species including fish, marine mammals, birds, snakes, amphibians, and insects — and contains 5 million gallons of water. A “water zoo,” as Ann put it as we waited to get in last Friday. A lot of people were waiting to get in. A lot of people were already in.
That made the exhibits a little difficult to see sometimes. On the other hand, sometimes spectators added charm to the scene.
If you were patient enough, you could eventually see the tanks and tanks full of fish and other sea- and riverlife, small —
— and larger —
And some colorful static sealife scenes.
On the whole, the glass tanks and lighting and crowds made it hard to take pictures, but that’s just as well. The first thing to do somewhere interesting is to see it with your own eyes.

Saw lots of interesting creatures. That accounts for the Shedd’s popularity. It’s a water zoo of strange and sometimes bizarre things, even in our jaded age.

Sometimes the creatures were easy to identify, such as the octopi and the piranhas and the blue lobster — intense Prussian blue, as the Shedd notes. “The brilliant blue color is the result of a genetic mutation that causes the lobster to produce an overabundance of a large, complex protein called crustacyanin (‘cyan’ derives from the Greek word for dark blue) that binds the protein for the normal brownish coloration, canceling it out. Even the lobster’s antennae are blue.”

Another star attraction is Granddad, an Australian lungfish that’s been living at the Shedd since 1933. “Weighing in at 20 pounds and measuring four feet long, Granddad is believed to be the oldest fish in captivity at any public aquarium or zoo in the world,” asserts Chicago Tonight. He’s not much to look at, though (and I think his previous name, Methuselah, was better).

Speaking of the piranhas, we got a good look at them. According to a sign next to their tank, “their teeth are razor-sharp. Even so, piranhas usually just nip the tail and scales of other fishes to fill up on protein. Piranhas don’t hunt for people, cattle or other mammals. Many don’t even eat whole fish.”

What? I refuse to believe it. I saw the Saturday afternoon movies. I know that when luckless explorers in the Amazon basin put as much as a toe in the water, piranhas attack instantly and en masse.

Sometimes the creatures weren’t so easy to identify. The Shedd helpfully includes a digital kiosk next to most of the tanks, and you can scroll through pictures with common and scientific names to ID them. Trouble was, I’d look at some odd thing in the tank, and then scroll through looking for some picture like it, and find nothing. That happened more than once. Ah, well.

The crowds were a little tiring, but we enjoyed the place enough to stay most of the afternoon, to near closing. Part of the time we were in the Shedd’s new — new to us, since we hadn’t seen it, but it was completed in 1991 — Oceanarium. More about which tomorrow.

Summertime Hiatus

Posted on June 22, 2016 by admin

Time for a summer hiatus. Time to celebrate what ought to be a string of less-than-working days from Juneteenth to the Solstice to Canada Day to July Fourth to Nunavut Day (July 9), just to make it inclusive for all North Americans. Back to posting around Sunday, July 10.

Yesterday I learned more sad news, that my old friend Ed Henderson has died. I’ve mentioned him periodically in BTST over the years, and I believe he was one of a handful of people who read it regularly. Last year I visited him at his home near Bellingham, Wash., and we had a fine time — as fine a time as his precarious health allowed. I’m very glad I went. Sometime in the not too distance future, I will write more about him.

On the Solstice, I took a look at the full moon. First one on the Solstice since 1948, they say. Looked like all the other ones I’ve seen, but it was pleasant enough.

Closer to home, as in our back yard, the clover is lush.

Who considers clover a weed? Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, who never to himself hath said, this is my own, my native clover? Pleasing to gaze at, pleasing to lie on.
The dog knows that, too.

Spring Valley, June ’16

Posted on June 13, 2016 by admin

We went to Spring Valley on the afternoon of June 10 to look for the peonies, but we were a little late. Not sure why they’d bloom earlier this year than two years ago around June 10. This year’s been rainy too. Natural variation in timing, I guess. But some were still in flower.

Even so, Spring Valley’s usually a good walk, even in very warm temps. Just take some water and avail yourself of shade when you can.

There weren’t as many lily pads on the major pond as in previous years, either. Mostly pond scum. Which is probably an underappreciated and misunderstood part of the eco-system and health of the pond, etc, etc. But if you look closely at the surface of the water…
You’ll notice a frog, partly submerged, belly up.
Waiting for hapless insects to come to close, probably. Unfortunately, says Susan Paskewitz of the University of Wisconsin, “adult frogs eat a variety of things but there is no evidence that mosquitoes are an important part of the adult diet of any species.”

Also, according to Professor Paskewitz: bats are overrated as agents of mosquito control. Too bad.

Wednesday Leftovers

Posted on May 25, 2016 by admin

Fine warm day today, the latest in a string of them. Rain ahead. Back again on May 31, after Memorial Day and Decoration Day, one in the same this year. It’s possible I’ll see a few things between now and then.

Some evenings, lights illuminate the baseball field behind our back yard.

If the lights suddenly looked like that to our eyes, we’d be alarmed. One of these days, maybe I’ll read the instruction manual for the camera on the subject of nighttime picture-taking. Or maybe not.

This one-panel Bliss from May 2009 was hanging on my office wall until recently. Now it’s in a file. I’ve taken a few things down.

I like a comic that assumes you know “The Rime of Ancient Mariner.” Bliss is still in the Tribune, and still amusing. Not long ago a panel showed a woman opening up blinds to reveal the sun, while a tired-looking man in bed under a blanket says, “Must you press the issue?”

I’m reminded of “When Potato Salad Goes Bad.” Has it been over 20 years since Larson discontinued The Far Side? Apparently it has.

Speaking of a writer that assumes his readers have a certain amount of knowledge, what follows is a passage from Ninety-Two Days (1934) by Evelyn Waugh, which I recently finished. The book’s a highly readable account of his journey through the British Guianan bush and across the border into Brazil, where he comes to the town of Boa Vista.

“Already, in the few hours of my sojourn there, the Boa Vista of my imagination had come to grief. Gone; engulfed in an earthquake, uprooted by a tornado and tossed sky-high like chaff in the wind, scorched up with brimstone like Gomorrah, toppled over with trumpets like Jericho, ploughed like Carthage, brought, demolished and transported brick by brick to another continent as though it had taken the fancy of Mr. Hearst; tall Troy was down.”

Bird update: the young robins seem to have left the nest. That was fast. I’m pretty sure I saw one of them flapping its wings yesterday, getting ready to go. Haven’t seen it since.
Both the duck and the drake were on the garage roof yesterday afternoon, when it was quite warm — mid-80s, which must be warm enough for the duck to leave the eggs a while.

Lately Mars has been in the southern sky, and the nights have been warm enough to spend a few moments looking at the red-orange planet. A small delight. I take them where I can get them.

Lawn Biodiversity

Posted on May 24, 2016 by admin

Today’s l’esprit de l’escalier. A fellow from Real Green Green Lawns or True True Green Grass or whatever the franchised lawn-care service calls itself came by recently and I opened the door. I should know better than to answer the door. Could be a land shark for all I know.

Actually, the dog was making a fuss, so I didn’t really talk to him. I could hear him start his pitch, but I waved him off. No thanks, no thanks.

“But you have so many weeds!” he said. That I heard. Dandelions in particular had returned after the last mowing, though not quite as thickly as before: their season is just about over. One more no thanks and I closed the door.

Instantly I realized what I should have said: “I call it biodiversity, buster.”

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Wildlife