The Magic Hedge, Post 1/2 - April 6, 2012

So April 6th was my first trip to the Magic Hedge for the season.  Not a whole lot there yet, and nothing *terribly* exciting, but a few new things and some nice signs of spring.

There was one thing that has me wondering what the season will be like at the Hedge.  They did a massive slash and burn.  I *do* know that burns are part of keeping a wild habitat vibrant and sustainable.  But the vast majority of the area is prairie savannah and all of the tall grasses and flowers have been taken down.  All that's there now is about a month's growth of ground cover plants.  Which means there's no real good places to look for caterpillars or butterflies.  All the birds have taken to the very high trees.

Now, maybe it'll be better in a month or so when some of the prairie grasses have a chance to recover, but right now, there's a whole lot of nothing out there.  Well, not *nothing*... but not a whole lot yet, either.

This is a House Finch.  I'm not sure if I've not seen these before or if I was calling them female Northern Cardinals.  Either way, they're new!  Yay.

House Finch (2012 - 016)

Another House Finch.  Just a different view.  Hopefully the next time I see them, I'll get clearer shots, but these guys *are* skittish.

Brown Creeper (2012 - 017)

A creeper!  My first one for the season.  There will be another one in the North Pond shots that will go up next, but here was the first.

The finch and the creeper are both birds that migrate through Chicago, so it was good to see signs of the migration season starting.  It's a few weeks early, but with the very bizarre weather we had this winter and early spring, this is not surprising.  I just hope we don't get socked with a surprise really bad cold snap that would be very bad for warm-climate birds.

Yellow-Shafted Northern Flicker (2012 - 018)

The flickers have come back in.  This particular flicker is a male Yellow-Shafted Northern Flicker.  His most distinguishing feature (in terms of telling him apart from other forms of flickers) is the black patches on his cheeks.

Now, I know I saw a small flock of them on the ground at Lincoln Park last year, but apparently they never made it to the blog.  I got some great shots of what looked like courting behaviors, but now when I go to look for them, I don't see them here, so I guess I never posted them.  So the good news is, it counts as a newly-blogged species. :)

It was a bit gray and cloudy when I was shooting, so my camera was jumping up to 800 ISO when on automatic settings.  Which is too bad, because this would have been a pretty good shot if it were less grainy.

Northern Cardinal.  They stay all year, and they're fairly common, but I still love seeing them.

Song Sparrow (2012 - 019)

This guy is a Song Sparrow.  Less common than the House Sparrows that we get by the millions (or so it seems).  It was awfully nice of him to turn and look at me while I was shooting him. :)

Eastern Cottontail Rabbit (2012 - 020)

One of the effects of the burn is that the bunnies have all relocated.  They used to hang out in the grasses, but now they're chased into the more forest-y areas.  It makes them a bit harder to see, because at least when they were living in the grasses, they'd come out onto the paths to run and play with each other.





Just one more post for this shoot. Like I said, it was pretty slow and the savannah was gone.  So I'll keep going back to see how the habitat responds, but it could be a slow year at the Hedge. ;)

New Location - the Bill Jarvis Migratory Bird Sanctuary - 5.22.11

So I was walking through the Hedge last week when I saw this sign:

Now, I know the Lily Pool well.  I was just complaining about having hiked over there from the South Pond last week only to find that it still isn't open.  :(  But I hadn't heard of this Bill Jarvis place.  I think the sign must be new, because I'm pretty sure I would have seen it before, I'm only at the Hedge about once a week.  And I'm at the North Pond almost as often.

Anyway, I came home and Googled this place.  It's near the golf course on the east side of Lake Shore Drive on the North Side.  Or, as the directions I got said, "East of Lake Shore Drive, at the end of Addison Ave. (3400 N.)

Well, I was going to be in that general vicinity yesterday morning so I took all my photography gear with me and planned to stop on my way back.  According to Google Maps, I needed to take the 36 bus back down Broadway and then walk the few blocks east to Lake Shore Drive and then cross it, and basically I'd be there.

If you're from Chicago, you see the problem.  If you're not from Chicago, imagine crossing your area's busiest eight-lane expressway.  Not a highway with cross streets that will cause cars to occasionally come to a stop.  An expressway with on- and off-ramps so no one stops on this road ever. (Okay there's a light at Chicago Ave, but that was nowhere near me.)

There are a few underpasses.  The east side of the drive is a *highly* developed recreation area in a very upscale section of town.  Of course, I hopped off the bus where I had to hike up about a mile north to get to an underpass, cross under and then hike back about a quarter mile to get back to where I actually wanted to be.

Not helping things, I was in jeans and boots and a t-shirt and the temp had shot up from the mid sixties to the mid eighties between the time I left my house and the time I got to this sanctuary.

Now, me being uncomfortable isn't the end of the world.  I had water and snacks and I was in the shade a fair bit of the time.  Unfortunately I'd left the house without turning on the air conditioning for the ferrets.  I'm sure dog and cat people think that's kind of a ridiculous thing to get worried about, but ferrets don't handle heat well at all.  Logi (especially) is happy to snorkle and play in the snow all day long.  But ferrets tolerate temperatures above 80* F about as well as most people tolerate temps at about 100* F.  We CAN survive it, but it's going to be a miserable time. And then, only for short periods.  So I was feeling a little pressure to move through this place at a quicker pace than I might otherwise investigate a new shooting location.

That said, the set up for this place is... not great.  I didn't have a great desire to linger there.

Unlike the Magic Hedge or the Lily Pond, you can't actually walk through this sanctuary.  The entire thing is surrounded by a ten foot high chain-link fence.  There's a path around it, but you can't go in.  Part of me says, "Well that's great for the birds, really." The rest of me says, "If the point is to increase nature awareness in the city, you might want to let us get as close as we can in the other parks.  Because that fence is a huge turn off."  It might have been better if it was split rail or something a little less "institutionalized, prison-height" black chain-link.  For some reason that fence read much more as "Keep people OUT" rather than "keep nature safe."

There is a platform that lets you see over the fence at one end.  Sort of.  When I read on the website, I was thinking of the one like they have at Volo Bog.  At Volo the platform isn't ridiculously high off the ground from where it was - maybe 8 or 10 steps up.  But once you're up there, you can look over a huge lowered section of the bog.  You get a great view from that slightly increased height.  It's where I took this shot:

The platform at Bill Jarvis is only about four steps up.  And yes, it does help you see over the fence and it's a great spot to set up your tripod.  The downside is that the birds have completely figured out that they're exposed on that face of the sanctuary and they tend to not hop up to be visible while there are people on the platform.

As you go around, there are a few trees on the outside of the actual sanctuary and a few areas that I think will be wildflower and butterfly gardens in a month, but aren't much of anything right now.

It's a small area that has a parking lot on the north and an archery range (yes, really, Chicago has a public archery range.  And there were even people out there shooting arrows at targets when I was out there) on the northeast and a jogging path that butts *right* up against Lake Shore Drive all along the west side.  So it's not a phenomenal spot for getting in touch with nature.

These signs every twelve feet or so, certainly didn't help.

All that said, I did see a few species I haven't seen anywhere else in Chicago... or, you know, anywhere else at all.

 This is a hairy woodpecker.  I've seen the RedHeaded at the North Pond, and I've seen Red-Breasted and Flickers at the Hedge.  This guy took me a bit to identify because most woodpeckers in Northern Illinois are black and white with various checks and stripes on their wings.

 An Indigo Bunting!  A blue bird.  I love finding blue in nature.  He really didn't want to come out of the leaves.  He was singing his little heart out though, so he wasn't too completely dedicated to staying hidden.

And another warbler to add to the collection.  This one is called a Magnolia Warbler.  I really need to get a lens a little better than the telephoto I have now.  Warblers tend to stay *just* out of range of the lens I have now.  I ran into a guy out there who was looking for his 30th warbler species for the spring.  Last year he saw 32 distinct species.  I guess I still have a lot of birds to find.

So, yeah, three new species, but I need to head back to this spot one more time without worrying about me being hot or the ferrets being hot (seriously, I was more worried about them) or being annoyed by the 'great new place' being badly set up before I form a more permanent opinion.

So, the final verdict?   33 of 50 new species, and a location that needs re-evaluation.

North Pond - 5.10.11 - New Speices, Post 1

Wow... yesterday the weather was just amazing so after I tracked down the falcon, I went to the North Pond.  I took my time and my tripod and got some really neat shots.  There are still a few species I need to research, but I found some really amazing stuff out there.

I also have a new obsession. ProjectNoah.org  It's a social wildlife site where you post what you've seen and where you've seen it.  If you don't know what it is, people can help you identify the animal or flower from the picture and the context you give.  And you get to earn little badges as you go.  If you've ever seen how I play Farmville, you know I love getting little electronic badges to signify accomplishments. :)  If you're on, or join, Project Noah, and want to follow me over there, I'm listed by my name (Kymberlee Ricke).

So anyway, it took me 5.5 hours to make the loop around the pond yesterday.  The wildlife was in full swing.  And so were the local birders and photographers.  At one point I stood around with two other people exchanging sightings and talking about the Kingbird that perched, basically, right above our heads and the warblers that are still in abundance.

So... new species from this particular adventure...

 So this particular duck is a bit of an odd case.  It's a Pekin or Domesticated duck.  Found in the wild... so... *shrug*  I suspect it was either put there by or escaped from the Lincoln Park Zoo, nearby.  There's exactly one pair on this pond.  So, yeah, wild, but not exactly.

From white ducks to American Black Duck.  Apparently these guys were in danger of being wiped out as a pure species.  See, there's other ducks that are happy to mate with them, thus diluting the American Black Duck gene pool.

 Which leads us to this guy.  At first glance, he seems to be a mallard with that bright green head, but that's only part of the truth.  He's a mallard mix.  Like dogs, ducks can apparently intermix when breeding and mallards are apparently all too glad to do so.  This particular mix seems to be the "labradoodle" of the duck world.  A 'mutt', but one that occurs enough to get its own name.  According to one website I found, the mallard head with a white neck/chest and brown body is called a Duclair Duck.  In general a mallard mix is referred to as a "manky duck".

Okay, this guy isn't new.  It's a correction.  I had originally listed him as a White-Fronted Goose.  And while that would be an appropriate description of this guy, it's not his species.  He's a Graylag.

 Did I mention that the pond is Warblers-Are-Us right now?  This is a Common Yellow-Throat Warbler.  Looks like more than just his throat is yellow to me!

 Here's the Eastern Kingbird I mentioned above.  Kingbirds are a type of flycatcher and apparently somewhat rare in the area.

 One of my favorite finds of the trip was this Rose-breasted Grosbeak.  So very nice of him to show off his distinguishing red breast for me.  Made it much easier to identify him. :)  He's a finch - related to cardinals.

 Now here's something you don't see every day.  Mostly because he never comes out of the grasses and reeds!  A Virginia Rail.  We don't get too many wading birds in Chicago, other than the herons, so this was a pretty cool find.

And the coolest find of the whole trip?  A Red-headed Woodpecker.  Yep, like Woody.  Someone had mentioned to me that they'd seen one around and I was pretty sure they were confusing red-headed with either Downy or Red-breasted because they both have red on at least parts of their head.  But no, sure enough, here's a bird that's listed as a threatened species, right here in the middle of Chicago.



So those were the major new finds.  Eight new species, for a total of 23 of my 50.  Almost half-way there.  I suspect it's going to start getting a little thin in the 'new species' area, at least until June and the influx of the warm-weather insects.  I saw a clouded sulphur butterfly when I was out getting the falcon yesterday, so we should start seeing more butterflies soon.  And the bees are starting to pop out.  So hopefully about the time the migrating birds move out, the insects will move in.