Category: Field & Street

Last Saturday about 175 people gathered at Oakton Community College to learn about nature in the Chicago area. All of us who were there are part of the Volunteer Stewardship Network, a group started a little more than a decade ago by the Illinois Chapter of the Nature Conservancy. The network now operates all over […]

A flock of evening grosbeaks has been seen at a feeder in Highland Park. The first snow buntings have arrived from the tundra, juncos have joined the house sparrows feeding in our backyard, and the leaves on the huge old cottonwood across the alley are turning from green to gold. You don’t need to be […]

The last of the late-season wildflowers are fading. The petals have already dropped from the sunflowers. Only a few of the goldenrods retain the bright yellow of September. Even the asters, always the latest of our fall flowers, are past their prime. If you want to see the last of summer you had better get […]

The eyed brown may have been a little sleepy. When John Wagner picked it up the insect didn’t offer much of a struggle. Wagner pointed out that this was probably a newly emerged adult, an interpretation based on the flawless condition of the animal’s wings. A butterfly that had been around for a while would […]

Biological invasions are slow-motion disasters. They start small: a few insects hitchhiking on some imported nursery stock, a few seeds escaping from somebody’s backyard and taking root in a ditch, a field, or a woodlot. The spread is slow at first. Small populations, even if they are very fecund, can produce only small numbers of […]

It was as close as I have ever been to a red-tailed hawk. The bird flew off the vast slope of the CID landfill and came to rest on top of a light pole. I was standing in the parking lot of the O’Brien Lock and Dam at 134th Street and the Calumet River, and […]

Several times each summer Doug Taron walks a precisely plotted route through Bluff Springs Fen and counts butterflies. He notes his starting and finishing time and records each sighting along the way. His tally sheet is divided into five columns so he can separate the insects seen under the shade of the old burr oaks […]

The source of Tyler Creek is in farmland in Rutland Township in Kane County. It flows east and south through new suburban developments and golf courses, an Elgin city park, a Kane County forest preserve, and the grounds of Judson College before joining the Fox River. Tyler Creek has managed to retain a quality not […]

We have picked three pies worth of cherries from our two backyard trees, and more are ripening every day. The birds and the squirrels are taking their share, but so far their depredations are nowhere near as bad as I had expected them to be. I had fantasies of sitting on the back porch with […]

I have decided that this should be the year of the sedge. I have been bluffing my way through this family of plants for decades, nodding sagely when people told me that Carex jamesii or Carex laxiculmis was growing at this or that place, trying to cover the fact that I wouldn’t know either one […]

We parked our car in a lot at the eastern end of the Waterfall Glen Forest Preserve and started walking west through a stand of red pines. The Chicago area is not famous for red pines, and these, all the same age and size, planted in neat rows, strongly suggested the involvement of the Civilian […]

One of the best things about moving into a new house is that you get to build a new backyard bird list. Some birders are obsessive listers whose interest in birds seems to begin and end with check marks. My own lists are more whimsical than obsessive. I have an interstate list, for example. The […]

Living on the edge is stylish among some privileged groups of humans. It is reality for the rest of creation. The hepaticas and bloodroots whose blossoms are opening now may be frozen by a spring snowstorm. But if they don’t flower until May they will have too many competitors, and the trees that surround them […]

It may have escaped your notice, but spring has begun. Skunk cabbages officially kicked off the vernal season two or three weeks ago. Spring is also under way for the 70 sandhill cranes that passed through Calumet Park a week ago. And it is under way for killdeer, redwings, and grackles. The juncos that spent […]

Problem wildlife” has become one of the defining difficulties of suburban life, like crabgrass and boredom. Stories of raccoons in the attic, deer in the garden, and geese on the soccer field regularly appear in the media, and every suburbanite I meet can enrich the growing stock of anecdotes with stories of his own. The […]