Author Archives: Jerry Sullivan

Our globally warmed climate seems to be giving us winter in short bursts. Between the blizzards we have the sort of weather usually associated with late fall or early spring. This alteration of the seasons seems to be changing some well-established ecological patterns. Reports come in of short-eared owls apparently still flying south in January. […]

Winter is a good time for me to start studying butterflies. In summer I get distracted and confused when the objects of my study flutter on before I am ready to identify them. If that little creature dancing on the breeze in June could wait just one more week, I would be ready to declare […]

This past summer Daniel John Sobieski wrote a letter about one of my columns. I felt honored. For those of us who regularly read the letters to the editor in Chicago newspapers, Sobieski is a household name. If memory serves, he has been a regular contributor for at least 30 years. His name is distinguished. […]

November storms bring birds, and as a rule of thumb, the bigger the storm the better the birds. This year we marked the anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald with a storm as violent as the one that sent that ship to the bottom of Lake Superior. The storm reached its peak on […]

Next year will mark the 100th anniversary of the publication of a series of scientific papers under the general title “The Ecological Relations of the Vegetation on the Sand Dunes of Lake Michigan.” Written by Dr. Henry Chandler Cowles of the University of Chicago, the papers were a major contribution to the young science of […]

Our mythology claims that we are a nation carved from the wilderness. The pioneers pushed through trackless forests to “people” a continent, facing bears, wolves, mountain lions, and Indians along the way. If you raise any objections to the preceding list of menaces, you will be accused of political correctness and other sins against true […]

September is the kindest month. A month when electric bills are going down and gas bills have not yet begun to go up. A month when mosquitoes are dying off but butterflies are still with us. A time when migrant songbirds enliven every backyard and parkway and the last flowers of summer are in full […]

I used to have a problem staying interested in plants. My first interest in the natural world was birds. Birds are not only beautiful but endlessly active. They soar so high you can barely see them. They make short, quick flights from perches on tree limbs to capture flying insects. They run after retreating waves […]

Confirmed sightings of bobcats have come from 90 of the 102 counties of Illinois in recent years. Double-crested cormorants were rare migrants through this region just a few years ago. Now they are regular nesters with growing breeding colonies. As a result, the Illinois Endangered Species Protection Board is proposing to remove both of these […]

A few months ago it seemed that gypsy moths were going to be the big bug story of this summer. This long-established pest of eastern forests is moving into northeastern Illinois in significant numbers. Traps baited with gypsy moth pheromones and placed all over Cook and Lake counties are attracting large numbers of interested males. […]

This is a great year for raspberries. The little patch in our backyard is producing a dessert every night, and out in the woods the canes in the bramble thickets are heavy with fruit. I make plans for our backyard berries, plans for raspberry tarts and for berries dressed with sweetened yogurt drained of its […]

These are the longest days of the year, and it seems like we need every minute of them to squeeze in all the stuff that is happening. During the past two weeks I have watched a pair of blue-gray gnatcatchers building a lovely nest of lichens bound together with spider’s silk. I have watched Baltimore […]

When I started birding along the Chicago lakefront in the early 70s sightings of other birders were a lot rarer than sightings of birds. Of course the parks were generally less heavily used in those days. I once narrowly escaped a mugging near North Pond, between Fullerton and Diversey, on a perfectly pleasant spring afternoon. […]

Garlic mustard is nearing the end of its flowering time around Chicago. Always an early bloomer, it came even earlier this El Ni–o year. There may not be a flower left by May 15. The leaves will soon die, but the dead stems topped with slender seedpods will remain through the summer. Each of those […]