The Acorn Thieves and the Song of Trees

 

Magnolia Warbler Feigning Injury, 9/23/12

Two weeks ago, I was walking through the Nature Preserve, lost in thought when I noticed something moving on the path in front of me a couple feet.  Then it stopped and basically posed.  When I moved closer. it somehow managed to fly away.  Cute.

 

It reminded me to keep looking around.  And, I suppose, the bird reminded me to keep listening too.  There was a noise behind me on the path.  I was startled when I turn around because there was nothing there.  Then I heard other the noise again, but this time on the ground off the path.  Nothing there.

 

Acorns!

Great White Oak





So, that explained the little thumping noises I had been so nervous about.  The oaks were sharing their bumper crop of acorns with anyone who cared to pick them up.

And who better to pick them but squirrels!

The oaks know this.  They count on the squirrels to eat a lot of acorns, but also to bury a lot of them in the ground.  And eventually, to find most of the season's acorns, but also to forget where some few of them were hidden. 

Acorn Thief at Work

She likes her Work.

 

And this is why the oaks celebrate at the end of the summer.  They have prepared the way for a new generation of oaks and by this, they have played out the one part of their destiny that they can understand. 

One can hear them singing in the wind. 

The younger trees sway to the music of the wind in a dance of youth.  

The older trees watch approvingly.

The red-tailed hawk teaches a lesson in serendipity.

It was a nice morning.  The air was still cool under the trees just east of the Nature Center at the North Park Village Nature Center.  Daytime temperature were running into the mid-90s, but here it was still the cool of the day.

I headed out eastward on the main loop, camera ready.  I learned the hard way to be ready.  The Vegetable Kingdom generally acts but slowly in our terms.  The Animal Kingdom, has, shall we say, a mind of its own. 

My late father used to say that we do not learn so much from our good experiences as from our bad experiences. 

One day last March I decided not to bother taking my camera out of its bag, but rather, to just walk and take it all in.  This resolve lasted until I got to the man made hill, the east berm, at the east end of the east pond.  The berm is maybe 15 feet high at the north end where I was walking.  The day was overcast, but not cold for early spring.

There was a big bird!  From the north, about level with my feet, came a red-tailed hawk, just kind of gliding past.  I fumbled madly with the camera bag, then with the camera, then lens-cap, the strap, the switch...and it was all over.  My camera was ready and the hawk was disappearing into the stand of trees south of the berm.

So I keep my camera ready.

The morning of April 12th, 2012 was cool and brilliant.  Walking in the nature preserve was refreshing, full of the rebirth of life and hope for the new year of growth.  There were buds on the trees and green shoots coming up from the rich, Midwestern soil which I dutifully recorded.  Out of the corner of my eye, my brain registered something to my right, moving upward and quickly.  There was no time to aim so I just pointed the camera and kept shooting. 

It was a pair of red-tailed hawks.  My presence had disturbed them in a patch of prairie.  They had been rising from the ground when I first saw them, so I would guess I had disturbed their breakfast, or, more likely, that they were sizing one another up as possible mates.



Red-tailed hawks in flight: April 12th, 2012

And history sometimes repeats.   Perhaps a better way to put this is that fortune favors the prepared.  On August 23rd, I was walking north on the east berm in nearly the same place where I had seen the red-tailed hawk in March, but this time with camera in my hand and ready.  Something told me that I was moving too fast, so I stopped and scanned the trees behind me and...


there was a red-tailed hawk, sitting on a tree branch near the south end of the east berm.  Fortunately, I was able enlarge this image to get a better look




Red-tailed hawk on a branch:  August 23rd, 2012

A moment later, the hawk flew off the branch and disappeared into a stand of trees to the right.

Now for a strange denouement.  I posted the above story this morning at 9:41 AM.
By 3:00 PM this afternoon, the red-tailed hawks over in the Nature Center Park had gotten the word that I had posted their pictures on my blog.  They decided that they liked the publicity and sent one of their younger representatives over to tell me.

The following photos were taken in front of my house at 4:02 PM today. 

 

 I was sitting in my living room, about half a mile (one kilometer) from the east berm where the red-tailed hawk let me take his picture in August.  I was reading.  I noticed that a car had stopped in front of my house, and he was just sitting there.  So I looked up.  The driver was looking intently at something.  What?  I went to the window.  In the time it takes you to read this sentence, I was out in front of my house with my camera ready to shoot.

 

This bird seems to be young,  he forgot to tuck in one of his breast feathers before he left his house today and he does seem to be a bit confused.  How do I know it's a guy?  Don't ask...

Red-tailed hawk:  September 16th, 2012, across the street from my house.

 
I suspect that you are a bit confused about the geography of the park where most of this blog has taken place.  I'll try to clarify the layout and the language I use to describe it.  Here a map of the North Park Village Nature Center , reprinted by permission.


You may also want to check out www.maps.google.com.
 
Search for North Park Village Nature Center in Chicago, Illinois. 

If you have trouble narrowing your choices, use the address:  5801 North Pulaski Road.

You will see that NPVNC is entirely within the boundaries of the city of Chicago in a relatively low density urban environment.  There is a small industrial park to the west. Beyond the northern fence, across Peterson Avenue there are a high school and a convent.   The eastern side is defined by a public park with soccer fields, baseball diamonds, etc., and then houses. To the south, a cemetery and an urban university campus. 

The Nature Center staff also maintains a pretty little waterfall pond, and there is also an annex in the southeastern corner of the area.  Each of these two additional areas has a character of its own and path on which to explore it.






 

Chicago River Report

The North Branch of the Chicago River flows through my neighborhood, and I am happy to tell you that there are no signs of Asian Carp...yet.

But there are signs of life.

Ten years ago, I was out for a bicycle ride with my youngest sons, twins who were then 11 years old.
I stopped the parade to take a closer look at the river as we crossed the Peterson Avenue bridge.  There had been press reports that fishermen had been catching large carp in the Chicago River.  This amazed me.

I had lived in Chicago for most of the preceeding fifty years, and, for most of that time, the river had mostly been devoid of living creatures as large as the reported carp.
We looked over the railing and we were amazed.  There were fish below us in the river, about twenty of them.  Not only that, but they were big and about half of them were golden-hued. 

Fast forward to last year: October 24, 2011.  I had not seen the carp again, but water fowl were in the water.  I was walking over the North Branch on the Lincoln Avenue bridge with camera in hand.  This bridge is only a block north of the Peterson Avenue bridge.

I looked over the railing and saw a blue heron standing at the water's edge.  Blue heron's are not inclined by evolution to pose for amateur photographers, but they will watch patiently when they think that their next meal might come along soon

I watched for a while.  He watched the river.  I watched the heron.
He was still there when I left.  My inference was that there were fish in the river that I could not see, but that the heron could. 

Yesterday, I decided to walk up to the Lincoln Avenue bridge to see what might be in the river. 

It's a mixed situation.

In the first place, the river looks good.  If you look upstream, you will not see the foamy, soapy glop that used to be discharged into the river from sewage filtration plant at  the river's edge at either Devon. Avenue.  The next bridge is Devon Avenue.


This is good news.



There are still ducks in the river.  I was going to make a snarky  remark about the way the ducks are staying out of the water.  Truth to tell, they need to perch on something because the river is flowing steadily to the right.  I guess they cannot get any rest unless they get out of the water.

And then, there are these tadpoles.  I was twenty feet away from this trio when I shot this photo.  Tadpoles in the river are good news because it means that adult amphibians are reproducing here.

They're hard to spot.  Look over near the left edge of the photo.  The ducks have been molting, which probably explains the feather.  And there are always idiots among us, which probably explains the can.





Which brings me to the young herring gull in the final photo.  The bird is pecking away at the dead fish as the river carries them downstream. 

What killed the fish? 

Serendipity in the Park.

Two weeks ago, I was leaving the Nature Center after a pleasant walk.  The prairie plants in front of the nature center were already cloaked in shadow from the trees.


Fast-moving butterfly

Something was flitting among the plants, a fast and erratically moving butterfly.  I had to choose between trying to get a good look at the butterfly or taking its picture.  My camera was set at a fairly high shutter speed and a decent aperture, so I opted to shoot and decide from the image what it was I had been looking at later. 
Yes, I know this detracts from the immediacy of the experience, but it works for me because it gives me a record of what I have seen and a better handle on what it was I was looking at when I try to figure that out later.

I do not know much about butterflies, or nature for that matter.  I use photography as a learning tool.

So, I had the blurred photo of a butterfly in my computer and way in the back of my mind when I went for my morning walk three days ago. My camera was ready when I got to the NPVNC entrance.
There were the familiar enclosures in front of the Nature Center, which, by the way, includes not only offices, meeting rooms and rest rooms, but also an excellent small museum. 


Entrance to NPVNC

Welcome



Inside the mesh fence around the flowers was that black butterfly.  It took me maybe ten shots and a lot of contortions and adjustments before I could catch it between the wires.

You can see the details in the enlargement.


Eastern Black Swallowtail

 So, mystery solved.  Except for the gender.  Maybe next time.  Maybe someone will explain to me how to tell.

The excitement of a surprise discovery was not quite over.  I glanced over to my right as I walked towards the Nature Center.  Yes, I did a double-take:

Nature Center Entrance

Nature Center visitor.

This is not the first time I've seen this guy hanging out around the front of the Nature Center, just lounging in the garden waiting for rutting season to start.  Sometimes he hangs out on one of the grassy islands in the parking lot.

There are several stags hanging out around or inside the park, and a few does as well.  The does mostly still have fawns in tow. 

There are not as many fawns as there once were.  Sometimes I forget that this is an actual nature park.  Then something reminds me that nature includes predators.  On this same walk, I spotted a trail of footprints on the path near the bridge that divides the two ponds.  There had been a heavy rain the previous night, after a long dry-spell, so these were current footprints.  They were just under three inches long and they belong to a coyote.



Coyote footprint:  September, 2012

 



January, 2012 Coyote and ???

I spotted one coyote last January from a distance of 25 yards or so.  He ducked and disappeared.  I followed and found a trail footprints. 

There may be as many as three coyotes in the park.  Given the cleverness of coyotes, this number must be elastic.

The coyotes also play a role in the unhappy story of the geese inside the fence of NPVNC.  This is a story for another day.


Back to my September 4th walk in the park.

When I got west side of the park , I happened to glance up towards a bat "house".  There was a Cooper's hawk on top!  Of course he saw me.  I managed to take three quick shots before the bird flew off.

Cooper's Hawk on Bat House



Oops.

In future postings, I plan to show more of the fauna and flora of the North Park Village Nature Center.  There are interesting stories.

The best story of all in about the Staff that runs North Park Village Nature Center.  The staff and volunteers here does a remarkable job of making nature accessible to city folks.  It is hard work to keep nature looking natural. 
















Adventures at the North Park Village Nature Center

Introduction

 

I did not start out to be an urban naturalist.  As a naturalist, I have a great deal to learn.  On the plus side, I am a good observer and a halfway decent photographer with a very deep-running curiosity.

Several years ago I had a series of serious surgeries, lower back repair, hip replacement and knee replacement.  I managed to go back to work pretty quickly but the pain and the loss to mobility were, in a word, depressing.  Encouraged by my wife, I began to walk around our neighborhood on the North Side of Chicago.  Eventually I found my way into the North Park Village Nature Center. 

At first, I was mostly concerned with being able to walk without falling down.  Over time, I became stronger and my walks became longer.  I slowed down and spent more time looking, listening and photographing. Before long it dawned on me what an amazing window into nature this nature center is, how very amazing it is to find a place like this within the city limits. 

More recently, it dawned on just how much work goes into keeping the place looking natural.  The staff and the many volunteers work hard to give the rest of us a taste of something that transcends urban life, something that connects very deeply to what we understand about nature. 

And I do not exclude us from nature.  I believe that we are a part of the whole.  I believe that human nature is located within the continuum of evolution.  We are part of the fabric of life on this planet.

Here is the young goose who inspired this blog.  She was about six weeks old when I captured this image on June 11, 2012. 

What's in the picture?  I had just fed my breakfast to her, her three siblings and their parents --six geese in all.  As a rule I do not "feed the animals", but they were such persuasive beggars that I broke my own rule and gave them the two slices of whole-wheat toast I had carried with me for an out-of-doors breakfast. 

I took this photo just after I had passed out the last of my toast.

She walked up to me, cocked her head and seemed to be looking at me quizzically.  Was she wondering why more food was not forthcoming?  Was she wondering, as I was, what kind of intelligence was standing there in front of us?