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The Nature of DuPage: Neighborhood singing insects
(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.
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Lincoln Park Zoo's wolves add to flavor of neighborhood
(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]
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Endangered herons find shelter at Park Ridge prairie
(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]
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Oil spill in Gulf raising concerns about Illinois' migratory birds
(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
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Des Plaines River Journal: My very own back fence
(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]
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Billboard worker needs stitches after slashed by dive-bombing hawk
(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]
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AMA chief's passion for health care extends to birds
(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.
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With bee populations on the decline, the U of I embarks on a census of sorts
(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.
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The Nature of DuPage: Did Chicago's wildlife once include dinosaurs?
(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.
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Red wolf pups born at Lincoln Park Zoo headed to wild
(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]
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College boasts a different kind of wildlife -- including coyotes, deer and hawks
(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]
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Des Plaines River Journal: A walk with the wildflowers
(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]
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