Duck in Residence

Posted on May 23, 2016 by admin

Last week I noticed a duck nesting in our back yard, near the wall of the garage in a thicket of tall grass that doesn’t seem to be coming back as robustly this year as usual. I was moving a plastic sandbox toward the garage door, with a mind toward taking it out and leaving it for the garbage collector, or someone like the fellow who recently took our plastic kid pool before the garbageman could get to it. I looked down and there was the duck, fairly well camouflaged.

A few weeks ago, a duck and a drake spent time in the back yard sometimes, especially when the heavy rains left large puddles. Could be this is the same duck.

I left the frog-shaped sandbox near the nest — the green curve in the picture, though it looks closer to the nest than it actually is — and then put a couple of other sizable objects nearby to make a perimeter around the nest. My thinking was to discourage the dog from approaching the mother duck or her eggs.

That might not have been necessary, though. I’ve been watching the dog as she’s been in the vicinity of the duck, and she seems leery, very unlike her reaction to, say, a squirrel or a mouse. Maybe, in whatever way they have, snarling dog and hissing duck have reached a truce. That would be good. I figure an enraged duck, who can carry out air strikes and other attacks, might be able to do the dog some harm.

Occasionally during the warm afternoons, the duck isn’t on the nest, and I see she’s warming several eggs. I’m not sure why, but it’s been a good year for fecund birds in my back yard.

Hatchlings on the Hoop

Posted on May 16, 2016 by admin

Warm and cold weekends have been alternating, and this weekend was one of the cold ones. A radio report I heard on Friday spoke of frost coming to places like the Dakotas, an unusual May event even for those chilly climes. No frost here but it was still unpleasant much of the time, though by today I could sit on my deck for lunch in temps just high enough to be pleasant.

The nearby hatchings were having lunch, too. This year a pair of robins has taken up bird-making duty in a nest they built on top of the basketball hoop hanging from our garage. It’s an old and weatherbeaten basketball hoop, unused for a few years now. No bird has ever ventured to build a nest there before that I know of.

I noticed the nest a few weeks ago, but today I noticed the baby birds. From my vantage on the deck, I could see the hatchlings pop their heads up as the adult bird approached, worm in beak — it looked exactly like it does in photos and illustrations, with the outline of the tiny beaks visible, pointing upward to get their meal, and the adult bird lowering the worm toward them. With all the rain we’ve gotten lately, there must be good worm hunting nearby.

Funny that Audubon came up yesterday, even indirectly. I’m no Audubon, but I don’t mind watching birds now and then, as long as I don’t have to go out of my way to do so.

When It’s Springtime Around the 42th Parallel

Posted on April 14, 2016 by admin

So many signs of spring. So many, in fact, that they aren’t signs any more. They’re simply things that happen in early spring.

It’s warm enough to eat lunch on my deck, for instance. Which I did today for the first time since some day in the fall when I sat there and wondered when the next time would be — not till April, I probably thought. (Not counting a couple of al fresco meals in Austin last month.)

The birds are noisy and the robins in particular are doing their bob-bob-bobing, as famed in song. I spotted a large rabbit near the house this afternoon. Pregnant, probably; breeding like, well, a rabbit. The grass is green and post-crocus flowers are emerging, including dandelions. A few men on the block can’t wait to mow the still-short grass, and I’ve heard them mowing it. I can wait. Today kids were playing baseball in the park behind my house.

Then there’s the cherry-picker on my street.

A crew contracted by the village came by recently to trim the trees along the street. A new thing. Unless I’ve happened to miss them every spring for more than a decade, which is unlikely, considering my self-employment, which started 11 years ago today. Blimey.

South Texas Flora, Early March

Posted on March 14, 2016 by admin

While walking along in Fredricksburg, Texas, on March 4, 2016, I noticed bluebonnets beginning to bloom. Not a sweeping field of bluebonnets, as you see in Hill Country paintings, or occasionally in person, but those emerging from a small green patch ‘tween concrete and asphalt. It was a pleasure to see them all the same.

Up in Illinois, I did see a handful of croci beginning to push out of the earth before I left. But nothing like the early spring flowers of Texas. Such as those emerging from rocky ground.

Or on bushes.

And trees.

Plus the glories of irises, always a favorite, wherever they grow.

What’s the matter,
That this distemper’d messenger of wet,
The many-colour’d Iris, rounds thine eye?

The Mallard Lake Trail, Near the West Branch of the Du Page River

Posted on February 28, 2016 by admin

I noticed a sign today at Mallard Lake Forest Preserve, which we haven’t visited in nearly a year.

Uh-oh. I don’t think that sign was there last year. But now there’s evidence that the dread zebra mussel has invaded these waters, as it’s hopscotched across the lakes of the world. Wiki tells me that the mussel has come from its native lakes of southern Russia to be a pest in North America, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, Spain and Sweden.

It’s no trifling matter. The Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries tells us that, “Many water treatment and power facilities must now treat their systems to keep them free of zebra mussels, beaches must be periodically cleaned of decaying masses of dead zebra mussels, and bottom-dwelling organisms and fisheries have been negatively impacted. In the United States, Congressional researchers estimated that zebra mussels cost the power industry alone $3.1 billion in the 1993-1999 period, with their impact on industries, businesses, and communities over $5 billion.”

Fortunately, zebra mussels don’t invade the land to attack casual walkers on forest preserve paths. That’s all we wanted to do today, because once again the weekend was unusually warm for February, nearly 60 degrees F.

Instead of simply circumambulating Mallard Lake, we also walked along a spur called the Mallard Lake Trail, which leads to a municipal park called Heritage Park, which is part of subdivision I know nothing about. For a quarter of a mile or so, Mallard Lake Trail seemed remote, though it was an illusion, helped by the day’s strong winds, which muffled the sound of traffic off in the distance.
Within view of part of the trail is the West Branch of the Du Page River.
It might have been a natural-flowing stream at one time, but it has the look of a man-made channelization at this point. By the time we got here, the middle-of-the-woods illusion was punctured by houses in the background, and a school off in the other direction.
The West Branch of the Du Page River flows quite a ways south — including through downtown Naperville — to meet the Du Page River in Bollingbrook, Ill. The Du Page joins the Des Plaines at a place called Moose Island in Channahon, Ill., but very near there the Kankakee River joins the Des Plaines and they all form the mighty Illinois River, a direct tributary of the Mississippi just north of St. Louis.

So you might say we took a stroll in a very small part of the Illinois River watershed, which includes all of the little cricks and rivulets around here.

“Awaking Muse”

Posted on February 23, 2016 by admin

Rumor has it that the ground will be covered with snow again tomorrow — which will devolve into slush a few days after that — so I spent a few minutes today out on the brown ground near the Prairie Center for the Arts and the Village of Schaumburg municipal center. The grounds are sizable, and include a large pond that’s usually home to a pair of swans.

“The village purchased Louis and Serena, called Mated Mute Swans, in 1994 in response to the growing Canada Goose population on the municipal center pond and grounds,” the Village of Schaumburg web site says. “Breeding age pairs of Mute Swan will not tolerate Canada Geese in their breeding (nesting) area, which can cover several acres of water.”

Not sure whether they migrate, but in any case, the swans weren’t around today. A sign near the pond warns would-be fishermen away when the swans are in residence. The other is probably the only public sign I’ve seen that uses the word cygnet.
Near the pond is a sculpture — a set of sculptures arrayed together — called “Awaking Muse,” by Don Lawler and Meg White.A nearby sign tells us that “this sculpture depicts a female figure stirring from her slumber beneath the earth. Carved from Indiana limestone, the sculpture excites imagination and brings inspiration to its viewers. The ‘Awaking Muse’ references the muses of Greek mythology. The Greek muses were goddess sisters who inspired mortals with great thoughts in the arts and sciences.”
I don’t know that it excites my imagination, but I like it. It’s been there since 2006. Some years ago, we attended a few summertime outdoor concerts on the grounds near “Awaking Muse,” and the sculpture was alive with children playing on it. Including ours.

The only thing missing? A nearby Indiana limestone alarm clock. Even muses have a hard time waking up sometimes.

The Birds

Posted on February 22, 2016 by admin

Saturday was as un-February-like as a day can be without actually being springlike. Temps were up and the high winds that blew through the area the day before had calmed down. The last vestiges of snow had disappeared from the ground, though a few patches of dirty ice endured here and there, but none on sidewalks.

Walking the dog was a pleasure again that day, except when she spotted a lone squirrel off in someone’s yard. Fortunately, I’m usually able to spot squirrels before she does, using that keen eyesight that seems to be a primate’s only sensory advantage over a canine. So I can anticipate the sudden pull when she does see the squirrel or the rabbit or the other dog.

I even heard a woodpecker as I walked along. An early, early sign of spring. But it isn’t springtime. Cold February was back on Sunday and today, and probably for the rest of the calendar month.

This afternoon a swarm of birds were feasting on something in my front yard. What, I’m not sure. It’s a little early for visible insects. Grubs, maybe.

I’m not even sure what kind of birds these are. Natural history isn’t a forte of mine. They aren’t robins. Or cardinals. Or dodos. All birds I’d recognize. Or even crows, who don’t seem any more popular now than ever, despite the We Want to Be Your Only Bird™ campaign that started in the early 2000s.

Return to Humboldt Park

Posted on November 18, 2015 by admin

Another place we went on Saturday — which I suspect will be the last warm Saturday of the year — was Humboldt Park, one of Chicago’s major parks. The last time I was there, summer was ending, but it was still summer. In mid-November, the park’s a different place, one of autumnal gray and brown and smidgens of green.

There are still a lot of birds around. Ducks and geese mostly, still foraging in the unfrozen waters.

Near the park’s Boat House is a dead tree refashioned into artwork: “Burst” by Mia Capodilupo (2014). A ex-locust tree plus hose, rope, extension cord, and fabric.

According to WTTW, it’s one of a number of such transformations citywide: “The Chicago Park District has teamed with a local sculptor’s group to turn trees that were condemned into public art. The stay of execution for the mighty elms, ash and locust trees is also an opportunity for artists to make a very public impression.”

Not far from “Burst” is a more traditional kind of park art, a statue of explorer Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt. I saw it last year but couldn’t make an image.

Note the globe behind him. There’s an iguana back there, too. WBEZ reports: “[Humboldt Park] was laid out in 1869. The statue arrived in 1892, the work of Felix Görling. It was paid for by German-born brewer Francis Dewes, who was also responsible for a flamboyant mansion on Wrightwood Avenue.

“When the statue was erected, the neighborhood around it was heavily German. The Poles later settled in, and for many years Humboldt Park was the site of the Polish Constitution Day Parade. Then the Poles moved on and were succeeded by the Puerto Ricans… One of the park’s roadways is now named for Luis Munoz Marin — the first elected governor of Puerto Rico.”

Waco Mammoth National Monument

Posted on November 2, 2015 by admin

In July, using his authority under the Antiquities Act of 1906, President Obama created three new national monuments on the same day, including ones in California and Nevada, but also Texas. In a place I pass through sometimes: Waco. The new Texas monument is the five-acre Waco Mammoth National Monument, though it’s been open to visitors since 2009.

The Washington Post notes that the “Waco Mammoth in Texas ranks as a major paleontological site, featuring well-preserved remains of 24 Columbian Mammoths. The mammoths date back more than 65,000 years, and the site includes the nation’s first and only recorded discovery of a nursery herd of mammoths.

“Rep. Bill Flores (R-Tex.) has sought to make the area a national monument through legislation, and the site has been developed and protected by the National Park Service, the City of Waco, Baylor University, and the Waco Mammoth Foundation.”

Jay and I arrived on the afternoon of the October 22, just in time to catch up with a tour of site — which is the only way to get into the locked building built over the diggings. The structure protects the fragile relics from the elements and wankers who would steal them.
Inside the building is a wide walkway overlooking the diggings, with a few paintings to illustrate Columbian mammoths, who were not the better known cold-habitat woolly mammoths. Columbians were better suited to warmer weather, and Texas had a warmer climate even then.
Our guide, an affable young woman, told us about the diggings and the bones, using a laser pointer. The archaeological consensus is that floods trapped and drowned the luckless beasts. On view in situ are whole or nearly whole skeletons, including skulls, tusks, teeth, vertebrae, ribs, femurs and more.
In our time, the first of the bones were only discovered in 1978, having been in the ground for between 65,000 and 72,000 years. A lot of the bones are now stored at the Mayborn Museum Complex in Waco, which is part of Baylor University. Other animals uncovered in the area included a Western camel (Camelops hesternus), dwarf antelope, American alligator, giant tortoise, and the tooth of a juvenile saber-toothed cat.

Dust, Quicksand, & Late-Season Dragonflies

Posted on October 12, 2015 by admin

We enjoyed a warm weekend, following cooler days and almost cold nights. But no hard freeze just yet.

Today was windy, and it’s been dry a while, so dust kicked up from the baseball diamond was visible from my back yard.
By contrast, when it’s been raining a lot, patches of quicksand form, trapping unwary little leaguers. Well, maybe not. Apparently grade-schoolers aren’t even afraid of quicksand anymore, which means that people aren’t watching enough Tarzan movies.

Saturday we took walk at the Crabtree Preserve, which is a 1,000-acre unit of the Forest Preserves of Cook County that we’d somehow overlooked before, even though it’s only about 15 minutes away. It’s a pleasant place to walk on a warm October day, with trails that wind through woodland and restored, or mostly restored, prairie, and a small nature center with some exhibits.

I read that it’s been a boom year for dragonflies, but haven’t seen so many myself. Maybe that’s because I don’t live that close to lake-sized bodies of water. But as we followed the trail around Bulrush Pond and Bulrush Marsh, we spotted a few clouds — swarms — squadrons of dragonflies, especially ones with long red abdomens.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Wildlife