Magic** Hedge, Post 2/2 - April 6, 2012

This is the last set of shot from my inaugural walk through the Hedge this spring.

Honeysuckle (2012 - 021)

 So it actually occurred to me to shoot the Honeysuckle Hedge that was the origin of The Magic Hedge Name.

I'm also just now noticing, I never explained the Magic Hedge.  (Or if I did, I did a horrible job labeling the post.)

 So Honeysuckle is an invasive species in Illinois.  I spent several hours on a work detail last year hacking a bunch of it out of a forest preserve.

It's in the Montrose Point Bird and Butterfly Sanctuary as a leftover from the days when Montrose Point housed an army base.  There were barracks where the actual hedge is now.  And to keep some measure of privacy for those who lived on the first floor, they planted the honeysuckle bushes.  When the army pulled out, they leveled the buildings, but left the honeysuckle.  Pretty soon, people started noticing that a lot of migratory birds were hanging out in this old, abandoned army location and it was reconditioned as a nature preserve.  So the actual hedge is still there, but it's the only real remainder of the old missile launching site.  So even though the honeysuckle really doesn't *belong* there, I suspect no one will pull it out due to it's connection with the site's history.

Common Blue Violet (2012 - 022)

So this is newly-blogged flower.  The Common Blue Violet.  It just so happens to be our Illinois State Flower.  So it's probably about time I got around to shooting it. :)

Cabbage White Butterfly (2012 - 023)

And my first butterfly of the season.  A little Cabbage White on a Dandilion.

This is the kind of shot that reminds me why it's worth it to drag my tripod through the woods when it's at all feasible.

These appear to be Ranunculus bulbosus or St. Anthony's Turnip or bulbous buttercup.  Normally they bloom from April until June, which means that being out and this large on April 6th is odd, but given a March that had temperatures frequently in the 80's we're finding that most of nature is about 3 to 5 weeks ahead of schedule.  These are an introduced species, but they seem to be doing quite well here in Chicago, hanging out with the other invasive from this post - the honeysuckle.  (Now all I need is a European Starling with them and I'd have an invasive species hat trick!)

Up next, a new locale and a truly ridiculous number of butterflies!


Total Identified Species Sited for the Year: 24
Total Unidentified Species Sited for the Year: 1
Total New Species: 11

Honeysuckle*
Common Blue Violet*
Cabbage White Butterfly
St. Anthony's Turnip (Buttercup)*

* - New Species
** If you notice every once in a while I typo and type "Magick Hedge" with a k.  It's not that I don't know how to spell the word, it's that I had a ferret who was Magick-with-a-k for years and I wrote about her way more than I ever did prestidigitation, so my fingers got in the habit of adding the K.  Sorry for the ones I don't catch. :)

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. ;)

What a Tangled Web We Weave...

So I missed posting yesterday.  I forgot to toss pictures onto my laptop so I could work on them when I got a chance.  Technically I forgot again today, but I found a folder of pictures I meant to post a long time ago, so I'll post three of those. :)

These are all pictures of spiderwebs from that Sunrise Beach Trip I took last summer.  Once the sun had come up and that particular part of the shoot was over, I walked through the Magic Hedge.  Now it was about 7:00, maybe even 6:30, and there was no one else out there.  The sun had just come up so the place had just opened for the day and it was gorgeous.  The entire park was covered in spiderwebs.  It looked like there was a mist over the grasses and plants, but when you got closer to just about anything, you discovered that, in fact, it was just a crisscrossing of spiderwebs of various kinds.  Funnel webs, fabric-looking webs and good old-fashioned concentric circle webs.  Most of the hosts were no where to be found, but the dew on the strands made them all lovely and interesting.

Waterproof Woven Web

 This was what I meant by fabric-looking webs.  I'm sure it has a different name in the scientific community, but to me it looks like gauze or some kind of chiffon.  I love that it's strong enough to hold up large drops of water without tearing or even sagging.

Pennant

The construction on this one breaks my brain.  I suspect there has to be a third anchor point off to the right, but I didn't catch it in the shot.  All you see is this amazing web, with strands so close together, yet not touching or tangling, hanging from a stick.

How Dew You Like Me Now?

It looks like this web was made from something about as thick as cotton yarn.  Of course it wasn't, but the dew drops combined with the light shining directly on it to give it so much more dimension. Spiderwebs have kind of been a 'bucketlist' shot for me, because the webs are both amazing and stupidly difficult to shoot well because they're so diaphanous.  Having so much light at such an angle, and hitting the dew collected along the strands made it so much easier, and still just as awesome. 

I'll probably post a few more webs tomorrow before I start on the things I keep meaning to transfer off the hard drive and onto my laptop.  :)

The Magic Hedge - 5.20.11 - post 2

So there have been tons and tons of nests visible through the branches this spring, because it's been so cold for so long.  Apparently the birds can read a calendar and set up housekeeping because it's May and they should.  Trees on the other hand say, "It's freaking cold.  My leaves are doing just find inside, thanks."

The leaves are starting to come out now, but still a lot of the nests are pretty easily seen.  Unlike last year when the mother robin built her nest about three feet off the ground (and consequently lost it and her four eggs) most of them are like fifteen to twenty feet up.  Not something I can go investigating.  But a few are in the eight to ten feet up range.  Now, I'm not even five feet tall, but I have a tripod.

I've been putting on the kit lens, pulling the focus back as far as I can, setting the camera on auto and then putting it on the tripod.  I set the timer for ten seconds, the continuous shooting mode for 5 (one shot every second for five seconds), collapse the tripod legs together and hold it up over my head like a boom mic and *hope*.  A lot.

This shot was a little easier than most to get.  I stood back from the tree and didn't have to worry about angling down.  I wanted the mother crow in the nest.

I waited her out and she finally left (okay, a few loud people behind me scared her off, I think - I watched her for like half an hour and she didn't mind, but then these teenage girls came through...)  Anyway, I did the camera-on-a-stick thing and got this.

Not wonderfully in focus and I wish those leaves in the bottom left corner weren't there, but you can see that mama is waiting for something to happen. :)

I found this nest a little bit later.  This was as good a shot as I could manage, but I haven't seen a bird in or very near it in the past two weeks I've been watching it.  It may be abandoned, or maybe I just have lousy timing for catching something in it.  I *think* it's a robin's nest. (If someone else out there knows better, please let me know!)  The mud around it makes me think of this shot...

Another camera-on-a-stick moment.  I never saw the mother in the nest, but there are roughly a billion robins in the Hedge, so I'm pretty sure she's around somewhere.  I'll be keeping an eye on this nest. :)





So about half-way across the park, a really heavy fog started rolling in off the lake.

Now, when you're actively trying to shoot things far away from you, it's not fun when the fog makes everything, well, foggy.  But if you switch your focus to getting mood shots, some fun stuff can happen.

 This looks better bigger.  In the midground there's a flock of seagulls.  This is the volleyball court on Montrose Beach, which is just behind the Hedge.  You can't even see the lake.

It looks like I took this shot in October.  Like I was saying, the leaves aren't making much of an appearance yet.  For that matter the wildflowers aren't making an appearance at all.








 

Okay, up next, a new bird-watching spot in Chicago.  It's half-way between the Magic Hedge and the North Pond.  If I ever got seriously energized, I could start at the South Pond, hit the Lily Pond, go up to the North Pond, hit this new spot and then go up to the Hedge.  And freakishly, each of those spots has at least one bird I haven't seen at any other place.  And we're talking about a roughly four-mile stretch of the lake front.  Geographically speaking, that's not a huge area to cover!

More new species - North Pond and Magic Hedge - May 1 and May 7, 2011

Okay, so I'm on my way to my 50 new species for the year.  Here's a few more I caught this week.  This is the rest of the batch from the last post at the North Pond and a few I've spent a few hours researching that I've found at the Magic Hedge.

We'll start with Warblers Are Us!

 Okay, this took way more research than you would think.  But our first warbler making his way through Chicago during the migration season is a Yellow-Rumped Warbler.  Funny, I don't see yellow on his rump, just on his wings... but I'm pretty sure this is right.

I need to go back and really work to get a good shot of one of these; they really are pretty.  Yellow Warbler (kind of obvious, that one, yeah?)

From the warbler family, an Ovenbird.  I have absolutely no idea how it got that name.

 A better look at the bright spot on his head.  He was actually a very cooperative little guy, hopping around on the floor of the forest, but out in the open so I could see him for quite a while.

 From pretty decent shots, to absolutely awful shots, this is an American Redstart.  It's also part of the warbler family.  I'm not even sure I'd be able to identify this guy from this shot, but there was a bird-watcher out there who identified him for me.

This was the best view he'd give me for more than half-a-second.  The good news is, when I was researching them, they mentioned how the Redstarts like to show off their tail feathers quite a bit, so it helped me to know that, yes, this was what I was dealing with.

And just for comparison sake, a bird I actually counted as new in the last post. This is a female Eastern Towhee. Noticeably browner than the...

... male Eastern Towhee.  Sexual dimorphism, they have it. :)










So, that's 4 new species, to go along with the 10 from the last post.  14 new species for 2011 so far!

The Magic Hedge - 1.11.11, Post 2

So like I said at the end of the last post, there were a lot of animals out and about for this kind of weather.  Of course, it's easier to see them when there's no brush or leaves in the way.

Bunny Bundles Up

 The first critter I saw was a bunny.  So was the second and third.  It was Bunny, ten steps, Bunny, ten steps, Bunny for a while.  All of them hidden in this thicket of the remains of the tall grasses and flowers of the spring and summer.

Literal Crow's Feet

 I know crows freak a lot of people out, but I find them kind of cool.  I love the texture of the feathers at his shoulder.  Also there's something inherently interesting to me about a completely monochromatic animal, down to his eyes and feet.

 And then he decided to head for the next tree and I got this cool shot of his wing.  I also used this shot to be sure it was an American Crow and not a Raven - a Crow's tail is that seashell/scallop shape and a Raven's tail is triangular. 

I Seed What You Did There

There were some seriously pudgy squirrels out there today. A woman I was talking to said she was the one putting out the seeds.  She wants to try to attract cardinals.  Now, to be fair, I spent an hour and a half today hoping to get that iconic picture of a male cardinal in a snowy evergreen, but I'm not sure it's a good idea to start tossing down seed in a wild sanctuary.  You could easily end up introducing a plant that doesn't go there when you do that.  Not to mention you influence the way the wild animals behave and then what will they do when you don't come back with more?

M-Y Geese

 Then there were the geese.  Again, there was a big crowd of them because there was someone out feeding them bread.  But when the bread-man left there was just this big flock of geese on the lawn.  There had to have been 75 - 100 of them easily.  And at some point they all decided to leave.  But not at once, like something scared them.  About fifteen of them lined up, facing the lake then all at once they took off.  Then fifteen or twenty more spread out in a line like the first set had and after a minute that group took off.  They kept going in batches like that.  Which, as a photographer was great.  I was able to start predicting their behavior and I knew where to aim the camera. :)

The Second Heat Takes Off

 So here was the second set.  I love that my camera caught them all with virtually no blur on any of them.  It does, however, make it look like a slightly weird photoshop job where the birds were just pasted in haphazardly.

The 3rd Heat

The shapes of the wings in this one are so very cool.  There's the "M" guy in the extreme foreground, the "V" guy above him.  There's the "U" guy on the left and the "Y" on the right.  Too bad they couldn't spell anything. :)

Last Group Gets Off the Ground

 The guy in the middle of this shot looks like someone just lobbed a bird into my picture.  Don't you wonder how anything that big, with that much mass gets off the ground without jet engines?  I love the white "V"s on their tails and that you can see the "V" on all 5 geese in the shot.

I Know I Buried Food Here Somewhere

There will be many, many squirrel pictures, later.  But for now, one guy who must be looking for *something* he buried.  He kept shoving his face in the snow and then coming up and looking... annoyed. :)











Okay, that's the first half of the shots I took today.  More later.

The Magic Hedge - 1.11.11, Post 1

Okay, I'll probably never put that many "1"s in a subject line again. Unless I post on the eleventh of November this year.

Anyway!  It's snowing here in Chicago.  Not 'it snowed'.  It is currently snowing.  It has been all day.  We've got about six inches and it's still coming down with serious intent.

So what do I do?  Stay home and bury myself in my blankets and play with the ferrets?  No.  I unbury the car and drive out the Magic Hedge to do some winter shooting.

You know what?  Shooting in the snow is *hard*.  Shooting the snow is *hard*.  You're talking blinding white snow on everything, which means it's really, really easy to get purple fringing in almost every shot.  But wow, it sure is pretty.

When I went out, I had this grand plan to make a weather-proofing for my camera.  I took a large freezer bag, put the camera in it, sealed the zipper thing around the lens and then put a rubber band around it to make sure it stayed secure to the lens.  I had to rip a small hole in the back so I could see through the viewfinder, since everything was fuzzy when I tried to look through the plastic.

This actually worked pretty well until I saw some squirrels playing in the snow and I decided that I wanted to be able to switch between auto-focus and manual and macro and er... not... faster than I could do through both my gloves and the bag.  So the bag lost.  By that point though the camera had been outside long enough that the housing was close to the air temperature and the snow wasn't melting on contact, it was more or less just falling off. 

The flip-side to that was that it is true that cold weather really does sap the life out of your battery pretty quick.

Anyway, it was gorgeous out there and I took a few hundred shots.

Winter Postcard

 Okay, so here's one of those quintessential winter shots.  Evergreens in the snow.

Winter's Top Coat

This shot is crazy busy, but I just love the play of white and dark with the snow on top of the dark branches.

Snowfall in Progress

This one is worth blowing up to full size.  (Unfortunately I can't upload the 4MB *full* size picture.)  I actually captured the falling snow.  It looks really, really cool.

Stripped in the Snow

 I'm not sure what's eating bark, but something had a serious go at these trees.  This is another one where you can see the falling snow when you blow it up to full size.

Who Was Out Here?

I only saw two other people in the hour and a half I was out there and neither of them were in this part of the sanctuary.  So the question is, who was there leaving a question mark of footprints before me?











There were critters afoot!  Many more than I expected to see on a 25 degree day in January, in Chicago, while it was snowing at roughly one inch an hour.  They'll be in the next post.  In the meantime, anyone have tips for camera-care or getting great shots in the cold and the snow?

The Magic Hedge - 7.20.10 (2/2)

Okay, here's the rest of the shots from my last walk in the Hedge...

I actually got in front a very large bee.  Check out the weird bee eyes!  I believe this is a Bull Thistle flower.

[Bee Eyes over Thistle]

Another chicory flower.  I love the way the tips of the stamens are such a bright white while the stalks are dark gray.

[Chicory Reaches Out]

A path near the hedge.

[Road Less Traveled]

A

A buckeye butterfly lands on some prairie grass.

[Buckeye Butterfly Takes a Breather]

This is a milkweed plant.

[Milkweed Stands Tall]

These are milkweed beetles.  Go figure.

[Milkweed Beetles on Namesake Flower]

A red admiral butterfly on a milkweed plant.

[Red Admiral on Milkweed]

I was worried about this bee for a while.  He was so still while I was shooting, I was afraid he was dead.  But not so much.  He crawled around after a few minutes, but his wings did seem pretty badly damaged.  I wonder if this is an 'old' bee?

[Old Bee on Anne's Lace]