Agility and Irony

Wednesday was warm for January 9th:  45± degrees F. 



East Pond and Bridge

So I set off for a walk in the North Park Village Nature Preserve, camera in hand.  It was 3:00pm and they lock the gates at 4:00pm, so I hurried.


West Pond: Frozen Over. 

The ponds were still frozen, so there weren't any water birds.
There were no deer to be seen.  Just the day before I had seen more than a dozen in the park. 

So I walked the long path around the inside of the park, stopping and shooting from time to time, just to capture the feel of the park on a quiet, relatively warm winter's day.

 The west end of the park is as empty as the east end.  One can hear airplanes overhead and cars and trucks on the surrounding city streets, but there are no sounds and no signs of larger animal life inside the park.  Just the day earlier, there had been more than a dozen grazing deer in this area.

 

  



 

The bees are tucked inside their hives.  They are active inside. It's just the girls now.  The drones have been driven out.
They will need to go out for sanitary purposes, and they will get days warm enough for this, even in winter. 

Not yesterday.

Maybe today.



Over by the Nature Center, the squirrels seemed active, more active than previous days.  Then it dawned on me that the staff had refilled the bird-feeders and the squirrels were having what amounts to a feeding frenzy.

These squirrels are well-fed. First there was that great crop of acorns and now there is plentiful birdseed to keep them plump and, presumably, happy.

There has been no sign of hawks for over a week. For plump squirrels, this is a good thing.  Now, it is the squirrels who are helping one another to feast on the birdseed that the staff has loaded into the bird-feeders around the Nature Center.

Here is the guy who was knocking the birdseed out of the feeder for the squirrels on the ground. You can see the string that holds the feeder on the right.

  

 



 












Two days ago when I walked by, there was no sign of squirrels.  Then I noticed that there was no birdseed in the bird-feeders.  Today is different and the squirrels are taking advantage of their sudden wealth.




Squirrels are amazingly agile.  They will somehow leap from one pencil-thin branch to another pencil-thin branch in clear violation of the laws of physics, in order to get at a single acorn. 
So, we should not be surprised at the way they get at the bird-feeders.  They hang on with their hind claws and reach....out across space to bring in their own harvest.

What surprises me is the way they seem to cooperate.  Take another look at the first photos of the squirrels in this blog.  They are eating birdseed on the ground that another squirrel has knocked out of a bird-feeder.  Is this a conscious effort or, perhaps, an unintended consequence of satisfying their own needs? 

Finally, on a note of irony, take a look at this last photo:

Why is this plastic bag so happy?

Autumn Vision

When my late father was little boy, maybe three years old, he learned about the succession of day and night, and he learned about the difference between Sun and Moon.  He was a bright little kid and curious and very active.  His grown, and nearly grown brothers and sisters were crazy about this late arrival in their Mother's life, but there was a problem. 

Their father had died in the Spanish Flu epidemic six weeks before Dad was born, and their mother was devastated. 

Dad's sister Frieda, was one of Dad's main babysitters, even when she was married and pregnant with her first child.  She told the family the story of the clear morning she was walking with Dad when he noticed, for the first time, that the Sun was up in the East and the Moon was still visible in the West. 

Frieda said that Dad laughed out loud when he recognized that Sun and Moon were both visible.  She asked Dad why he was laughing.  Dad exclaimed "God is playing a joke on us!  He put the Moon where we can see it and the Sun is still up."

Autumn Moon amidst the trees.

Dad had this sense of wonder all his life.  It was one of his most endearing qualities. 

And now that Autumn is well and truly here, we have all seen wondrous changes in color and motion.  The trees and many of the field plants have gone from green to gold and red and orange.  Migratory birds and insects have left for warmer climates. 

Thirty-five years ago, I was living with my family on North Washtenaw Avenue in Chicago.  We noticed one year a long procession of Monarch butterflies going down our street, just over the sidewalk.  It was only the next year, when we saw them going the opposite direction that it dawned on us that they migrating.   We know a lot more about Monarchs now, that they spend their winters in Mexico or New Mexico, that the generation that begins the migration is not the same one that arrives, and more.

North Park Village Nature Center Monarch, 2012

I do not have a photo of the butterfly migration, but I thought of the Monarch butterflies the September day that I found myself in the middle of a fast moving flock of dragonflies, heading south.  As it happened, I was walking along the East Berm in the North Park Village Nature Center with a camera in my hand when this happened.  It felt like Peter Pan with at least a dozen Tinker-Belles.

Dragonfly heading south

They glittered in the midday sunlight, and zipped left and right as they passed around me.  I had been shooting flowers with a macro lens and this was the best I could come up with.

This was also the season of frogs.  The ponds at NPVNC were home to perhaps thousands of tadpoles a couple months ago.  In September and October, the mature frogs showed up on the lily pads in the ponds, sometimes one could see a dozen or more frogs.  Strangely, they would just sit there.  They may have had a high-pitched, quiet kind of call.  I'm not sure.

Frogs in the West Pond
 

 They reminded me of the frogs we saw in Monet's pond at Giverny last May, but our frogs were mostly quiet while the French frogs were really quite loud.

There was loads of ducks in the ponds.  The Mallards seem to be there all year 'round,
but the ponds are also hosts to travellers in Fall and Spring. 


Flock of Wood Ducks in West Pond



Wood Ducks Close-up

Geese landing on Wood Ducks



Warbler by the water

There are also land birds and wading birds. I caught this shot of a warbler about to take wing by the West Pond.


Among the most fascinating creatures we see in NPVNC are the deer.  There has been a population of females in the park, and somehow, despite the fences and the gates, there were also a few males.  The males browse and graze and wait for the Autumnal Rutting Season. 


Stag waiting for rut
 

Mother and son show affection, July 2012

Mother and daughter: October 2012

 

The deer can be "sexed".... by looking at their heads. 

What did you think I was going to say?  Huh?  Young male deer have visible bumps on their heads where their antlers will come in later. 

The Mother and son above were outside the gates of the park, and he was happy.  I do not know how else to describe his cavorting about.  And the two of them were licking one another's faces and necks.  He was doing a little dance. Perhaps I go to far by ascribing feelings to actions.  They mostly ignored the dozen camera toting biped in various sizes who craned their necks to watch.

The Mother and daughter are regulars in the park now.  The younger has lost her spots and she is obviously weaned.  A couple weeks ago, she was just as obviously not weaned, and her mother was obviously growing tired of the whole business.

Daughter deer negotiates fence

I have seen these two deer together, and apart.  It is harder to be sure who they are when they are not together, but their bond is unmistakeable when they are together.
BTW, the photo of the two of them together was taken early in the morning of October 11th.  They were lying down in the foliage just fifty yards northeast of the Nature Center and I was shooting foliage when I rudely woke them.

A grown deer does not deign to crawl under a fence like this one.  They gracefully leap over the top.  This is obviously a lesson for later.

And finally, here is another example of Autumnal color in the park.

The Hawk's Tale

Red Tailed Hawks

Last April, I was walking along the path south of the West Pond, snapping photos of the new foliage and enjoying the Chicago Spring. I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye and realized, almost simultaneously, that the movement was upwards.  Trusting the auto-focus of my camera, I swung around, pointed and began to shoot without aiming at first.

 

 



 

There were two hawks that I had disturbed as I walked nonchalantly down the path!  With a little work, I was able to bring out the red tail on one of them.  You can see the residual motion. 

My guess is that they were a mating pair like the pair of Cooper's hawks I had photographed a week earlier, or the Canada geese I had photographed a few weeks earlier. 

Red Tailed Hawks are the most variegated of hawks.  They are light colored underneath, but their back and flight feathers are wonderfully variable. 

Light color underneath

Try as I might, it was a couple months until I got another close look at a Red-Tail.

 

Early Red-Tail Hawk Sightings

 

This time, it was a mature hawk near the East Berm. Again I was nonchalantly strolling north on the path atop the berm when something told me to turn around and "Look!"  I looked and spotted a hawk in a tree.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The hawk flew off before I could get any closer.  You can see the coloration of its feathers.   It is quite strange that these hawks do not all dress alike.  The red tail is a constant, and the color of the under feathers is pretty uniform, but their flight feathers and top feathers vary all over the map.  Now keep in mind how broad this hawk is across the shoulders, and compare with the hawk I photographed standing on my neighbor's car.

 

 

 





 



 

 

 

 

For the record, there are a lot of squirrels in the trees around my house, and my house is just a couple blocks from the entrance to the Nature Preserve.  Was this guy hunting?  I don't know, but it could be.

 



 

 



 



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?