Nature Symbol

Spring is here. Here is spring.

2010-03-03T04:53:00.000-08:00

Two goldfinches sat quietly as I passed under their perch in a bare tree above the northernmost path at Dick Young Forest Preserve. The birds' plumage was the color of early March; seemingly flattened ochre, pale grey and a hint of white. These colors will soon enough rub away leaving the lemon yellow plumage of late spring and summer. The goldfinches will dally about playfully eating insects and seeds until August, when they'll gather thistle down and fine grasses, make nests and crank out one more round of goldfinch buddies for another year.

I am content with a photo of a goldfinch on a cold spring morning. The camera is so cold to hold in my bare hands that every photo comes with a cost of pain. Using a camera with a scope to shoot photos is an unwieldy business. Even my best results are not on par with true photographers. But the effort is often informative and fun. Coming home with a digital card full of nature images is like Christmas any time of the year.

There is also a documentary aspect to the process. In the program iPhoto, pictures are racked up in rows that when scrolled through result in a stop action movie recording the seasons. My photo collection moves through snow, sleet, rain and heat. It moves through winter ducks, spring cranes, summer sparrows and autumn blackbirds. Again, none of my pictures is magazine quality. But I use them to make paintings and share them with friends. And to learn more about birds, animals, insects and more.

My favorite "almost great" photo shows a red-eyed vireo clutching a large katydid under the shadow of a giant hickory leaf. The insect is half the size of the bird, and my series of photos shows the bird whacking the insect on a limb to soften it up before chomping the thing to pieces for a hearty meal. I wish I'd captured a similar scene years ago when a greater yellowlegs downed a fat leach. It bit the length of the slimy leach like corn on the cob and then gulped down the sloppy, dead meal.

Recently I've been thinking about moments like this more, and my humble photographic records of animal life. I blogged this Nelson Lake Year for my own purposes, not expecting many people to pick up on reading my musings so much as it was a discipline to get out more often to avoid the deadly void that forgetting to visit nature creates in my head.

That is why I avoided going to see the movie Avatar. I much prefer my humble reality and what I can capture in the real world to the supposedly amazing "virtual" natural world created for Avatar. Technically, it is a great achievement to invent a natural world from nothing. But what's the real message behind the movie. As I understand it, the plot is the same as the cartoon movie "Ferngully" or "Dances With Wolves." We're messing up our planet with we mess with people who are not all about extraction.

So I'd rather humbly extract my observations from the natural world than invest in an overblown commentary on man's inhumanity to man, and other creatures. We should all be more vested in such processes.

Sometimes...

2010-02-14T18:38:00.000-08:00

You set out to get a nature photo and actually have a degree of success. The photo in the header taken at Dick Young Forest Preserve was not a setup. But close to it.

Two weeks ago I noted that a great horned owl moved out of the woods at twilight to perch on a bent over tree. That night I had no c

amera. But I vowed to come back when the weather and light was good to take a photo.

Parking my car at the "old" lot entrance, I traipsed out the trail ignoring the swamp and tree sparrows beckoning my attention with scope and camera. "Sorry," I muttered. "Gotta get my owl."

Arriving at the woods I hooted but heard nothing in reply. Moving cautiously up the woodland trail with eyes raised, I finally spotted the owl. Who proceeded to drop from his perch and fly toward the marsh.

But then he/she landed. And sat contentedly eyeing the marsh and fields. So I set

up carefully, trying to find a place where twigs and foreground material would not interfere with the shot. My Nikon 4300 is so old and beat up it is hard to use the viewfinder, which is only an inch wide to begin with.

So I've learned to eliminate all possible nearby twigs as I frame the shot. More than once I've gotten home to find really clear pictures of some benign twig and a fuzzy bird in the background.

But this time I could see the bird clearly and snapped away. It stayed for several minutes and I was confident I had some sunlight shots, so I moved a few feet over. Just then the sun went behind the cloud and the whole frame darkened. The bird now looked blue, not ochre as it did in the sunlight. But I took more photos. Then the owl jumped into flight and headed for the woods.

I'd gotten my prize. However humble my photographic skills may be, it is fun to capture an image of an owl or other interesting bird. I'm truly a hobbyist. But it sure is absorbing.

And I got home in time for supper. As promised.

Natural Patterns of Behavior

2009-12-07T18:06:00.000-08:00

It's always interesting to start and end the day at the marsh. Usually I'm alone in the morning. Just me and the binoculars and scope and whatever birds or animals are to be found.

Come evening it's usually my wife and our dog, Chuck, whose business it is to smell absolutely everything in the entire universe. Other dog poop. Rabbit trails. Who knows what else? For the first time the other day he literally threw himself into the prairie thinking he heard something worth chasing. It was nothing but a bunch of tree sparrows. As he climbed back out he looked quite satisfied at having investigated on thoroughly doggy terms. I could learn a lot from Chuck.

Have you ever stopped to think that a park is a different place when you're alone than when you're in the company of someone else?

I don't prefer one over the other. But when you're alone you should always prefer to be alone. And when you're with someone you should try to share your attention. It does no good to pine for company when there is none. And it does no good to wish you were alone when someone you love is with you.

Yet I think many of us find ourselves with twisted impulses when we go out in the field. It's sort of like we aren't happy unless we're longing for something else. Maybe it makes us feel more important than we are.

I'm always grateful when I go to the woods alone and there's actually something good to see. But it doesn't always happen. Sometimes you're alone and the woods and prairies seem to have nothing to give. Or a frozen over lake make you feel frozen over yourself.

That's when I resort to looking at the patterns of nature for company and solace. Because patterns can always be found. And when I pay attention to those things I am always (and forever) rewarded. Consider the photo at the top of this blog. I love the many processes that went into turning those grasses into a piled up world unto themselves. Wind. Rain. Sun. Soil. Perhaps an animal or two. I was following a deer trail when I discovered this pattern in the weeds, out in the middle of Nelson Lake Marsh.

When you are in the company of others the process of seeing things takes the form of shared observations. My wife is not that into birds, but will stop to enjoy something novel if I point it out. Yet she often sees more than I do when we do get out. Things I've missed, including birds.

And that is why you have to enjoy the company of others even if you're a loner by nature. Because you can't possibly see everything on your own. Or enjoy it fully.

Far and Near

2009-11-09T06:17:00.000-08:00

Despite the gorgeous weekend weather, I felt too sick and lazy to see what waterfowl were arriving. But Monday stayed warm and the new rules for opening the gates at dawn are conducive to birders seeking glimpses of ducks and geese before they vacate the lake soon after dawn.

It was not disappointing. The main lake held Ring-necked duck, Gadwall, Shoveler, Green-winged teal, Mallard (by the hundreds) Ruddy duck, Wood duck, Canvasback, Pintail and a scaup or five through in for good measure. Coot were everywhere, of course. And geese. There were lines of cackling geese swimming with the mallards. Cackling geese and ducks are similar in size.

The weather predictions show 50s and 60s all week. That won't drive any ducks south, most likely. But neither will it drive them away. There have been years when sub-zero cold struck the first week of November and froze the lake over. Then the ducks don't stop at all. It's depressing to miss the migration altogether. By contrast one year the lake stayed open through December 5 when temperatures hit 70 degrees. I crept out to a dense point of reeds and sat listening to the murmuring voices of hundreds of ducks swimming on peacefully calm waters. There were peeps and quacks, whistles and grunts. Who knew waterfowl had such voices! On that day there were 18 species swimming around Nelson Lake. Then a cold front passed through. The lake froze over and the next visit proved silent and cold. Just in time for the Christmas Bird Count.

This has been a ritual for me for more than 30 years, catching up with fall waterfowl on this patch of raggedy-edged water outside Batavia, Illinois. For many years the autumn days were shared with hunters, whose blinds clogged the south shore. Before the marsh became a nature preserve, it was a sporting reserve. Hunters used skiffs lined with cattails to float near water's edge and jump shoot ducks near their decoys. A tiny hunting shack once stood below the point where the west side observatory stand now perches on the hillside. One fall the hunters nailed the heads of each species of waterfowl to the wall to chronicle their success. My brother and I studied the colorful faces of wood duck, canvasback, redhead and other species. Then we hurried out of there before we got caught, because we were trespassing on what was then private property.

It would be another 15 years before hunting was completely banned around the lake. I've never been anti-hunter but did have a few interesting encounters with gunners at Nelson Lake. Even after the county purchased property in a perimeter around the water, hunters still set up in adjacent fields. Once in a while I'd be walking the foot trails and come face to painted face with a pod of goose or duck hunters. A few of them cursed me. More than one pointed a gun in my direction as a vague threat. The tenant farmer who managed the east side property literally threatened my life, brandishing his gun and screaming that I did not belong on his property. Actually I was walking a line marked by Illinois Nature preserve signs and the old fence row where the lake margin used to be. But I understood and respected his position, in a way. It's hard to watch something you love being taken away. For whatever reason. Years later that same tenant farmer would sit parked in his old station wagon in the parking lot on the east side where his home once stood. I can related. My father's family farm in upstate New York was leveled by the power company that for decades had tried to purchase the property. They finally won. Eminent domain often comes with a profound edit feature.

But all those memories stem from the 1980s. It's 2009 now. Dick Young Forest Preserve has replaced the Nelson Lake Marsh sporting club. It's a new land ethic come to fruition. Yet somehow I value the memories of the "early days" and the edgy feeling you got from trespassing to see birds. Maybe I miss that youthful drive that would make us get up early and take risks to find something worth seeing. I'm working to get some of that drive back.

Back at the car I was loading my scope when a movement near the parking lot caught my eye. It was a meadow vole running tight circles on the limestone path. I pulled out my camera and snapped photos of this little mouselike creature as it worked its way through the grass and nearly ran over my shoe. Surely some kestrel or other hawk would have loved to find this creature out in the open. But this Monday morning it was only me. And I bore the crazed critter no malice. He was trespassing on the tamed surface of human construction, out of his element, naturally. I guess I could identify with his lot in some way.

A long way home

2009-10-19T03:38:00.000-07:00

Finally an afternoon with clear October light. The prairie at Dick Young Forest Preserve was washed clean, it seemed, by two solid weeks of rainy, overcast weather. At long last the sky blew clear and a steady southern breeze moderated what had been raw, unforgiving weather.

A harrier tippled over the prairie on its way to nowhere. Though it could be a migrant, we find that species hunting the preserve all winter. There were red tails circling the giant cottonwoods where the "run" empties the lake to the southwest. Those too should be expected all year round.

Mid October is the ultimate transition period, a tipping point between fall and winter species. The whole preserve feels like a train station with birds coming and going. Some sit in the trees impatiently, like they're going to catch the 5:15 to Missouri or some point beyond. Riding on the City of New Orleans. Or Galveston. Corpus Christi. Yucatan. Ecuador. Argentina. The bird train travels on.

A flock of rusty blackbirds laces into a stand of oaks. You hear their voices first. They look like musical notes among the branches. Fall is not complete for me if there is not at least one flock of rusty blackbirds seen. Last spring I chanced upon a flock of 250. Their collective voice was a chorus, a welcome sound in a cold season. It's been cold all year it seems.

We walk our dog down to the Audubon bridge and turn around. On the way back I noticed something black and shiny in the grass along the path. A spotted salamander. It is a fairly small specimen, perhaps 3.5' t0 4" at most. Its skin is shiny and wet. Our dog sniffs and wants to paw at the strange creature, but I protect it, marveling that an amphibian can be found out in the middle of a restored prairie. It can only be imagined what it is doing there, what it is doing at all. Did it spend the summer in the swale wetland 400 yards to the north? That is the only water other than the marsh 400 yards to the south. Or are dewy mornings enough for this species to survive. Has it been banqueting on the ready supply of crickets in late summer and is now returning to sleep in the mud for the cold winter? I think back to the salamander I kept for two months back in the late 1980s. It made burrows in the aquarium filled with dirt and ate store-bought crickets, seizing them with a quick snap of the neck. It was a predator for sure.

This small salamander showed the same instincts, swinging its head sideways in defense when I picked it up. But I did not want to disturb its skin too much or cause it stress. So it went back in the grass where we found it, convincing the dog again to leave it alone. He barked.

Life is full of long journeys. Life is a long journey. But when you get where you are going and look back, it sometimes seems like a moment just passed. Does a salamander dipping its toes back in the water in late October think at all about the miles it covered on the way? Probably not. But I do. Probably too much. It's enough to trust that you can get there, and not overanalyze the journey. One toed step in front of the other.

Out of a fog

2009-09-26T14:52:00.000-07:00

Having been disappointed lately in the quality of my bird hikes at Nelson Lake and everywhere else, I determined to pay greater attention to detail on the morning of September 26, 2009. I've begun to realize it is not the fault of nature that I am not seeing much in the field, but my own. Of course there are quiet mornings without many birds. But even on busy bird days the feeling I've gotten from "getting out" has not been satisfaction. Something else completely, in fact. And that is no one's fault but my own.

As if to compliment my determined focus on the near and present, the preserve was shrouded in fog when I arrived. Now you might think that would be bad news for someone interested in detail. But in this case you would be wrong. Fog closes things down a bit, but the near details are available if you dial in and study.

There were waves of warblers moving through the grasses as I pulled up to the east side parking lot. Palm warblers mostly. Dull shapes in the fog, but yellow and brown with tiny flecks of white on the tail if you looked closely with binoculars. Then a Lincoln's sparrow popped up along the trail. A sedge wren too. A whole flock of swamp sparrows closer to the lake. Song sparrows. A bright, clean, fall plumage yellowthroat. This was a birdy morning.

On the eastern slope the oaks were brimming with warblers. I took my time and identified each at the pace it allowed viewing. There were redstarts, magnolia warblers, Cape May, yellow rumped and chestnut sided.

Other songbirds filled the woods with snippets of spring calls and songs. A rufous-sided towhee kept its vigil: "srrreeee?" it kept asking. There were catbirds, cardinals, blue jays and flickers. Cedar waxwings, robins, grackles and an immature yellow-bellied sapsucker. Now this was fall migration in full force.

A flight of wood ducks ripped through the fog. On the lake there were blue-winged teal, visible in shape and form next to a pile of dabbling mallards. My senses were dialed in now. Another sedge wren called from a pile of prairie scrub next to the trail. It was no more than four feet from me, twitching through the tall bluestem and goldenrod plants.

Something else caught my eye while looking for the wren. An argiope spider clinging to its dewy web next to a prairie dock plant. These spiders grow huge before the frost nips them. This spider was covered in droplets. It would wait for its

web to dry, then eat its fill, I'm sure.

It was quiet along the trail. Very few grasshoppers this year. Some seasons they are thick and annoying, bashing off your pantlegs as you walk along. Twitching about the bushes. This year, none? Where are all the grasshoppers?

The crickets weren't singing, either. That left plenty of space to listen to the chips and pips of warblers fussing each other in the trees.

Then I heard a rumbling noise and a human voice. A black dog came tearing around a swerve in the path, then saw me and tried quickly to stop. Its paws tore into the turf and it slid sideways, surprised to find someone blocking its way. "C'mere, Dixie," the owner called. He had a slow basset in tow as well. I've seen them many times together. They look like a family. Nature evolving one form to match another. Dog and owner. Owner and dog. They moved off through the fog, into some other reality.

I went back to looking at everything I could find up close. Tuning out the world. Birding is good for that. Later that morning I would ride my bike in a race, an entirely inorganic experience. It occurs to me with increasing frequency that one matters more than the other. The birds. The morning. The wet grass. The living in the moment.

Fall humming along

2009-09-06T08:43:00.000-07:00

On the return trip from Sauer Family Kame I stopped at Dick Young Forest Preserve with the intent of finding fall warblers in the east side woods. There were only yellowthroats and the requisite cedar waxwings flitting around the elderberry bushes. A least flycatcher and some flickers held their summer places as well.

But then, some real action. Four ruby-throated hummingbirds fighting over blossoms! All were females and immature birds. This is their couple weeks to move, I know. As I walked along the east side woods there were hummers scattered throughout the under story and way up high as well. Most were feeding, often on the tiniest blossoms imaginable. Hummingbird bills are always much longer than I recall when I set out to draw them. Their tails are much wider and pronounced as well. When you are drawing nature it never pays to average out the dimensions to be on the safe side. Real creatures have odd dimensions, sometimes, seemingly awkward and useless. But the opposite is true.

Watch a hummingbird closely and you'll see them twist their bodies in flight quite pronouncedly. Their tails flare and flash, green, black and white. If you listen closely, the small pips and squeaks they make. They are both exaggerated and understated in all the right ways.

One wonders how many hummers in how many woods across the Midwest there are right now. At Nelson Lake and forest preserves throughout Chicago, they are taking advantage of the bounty of fall flowers. Backyards, too. It's worth keeping your eyes open and your movement to a minimum to let them come near. Nature evolved them perfectly for their niche, and watching a hummingbird is to bear witness to the inventiveness of the evolutionary process. These birds have the ability to zip fast in direct flight yet stop almost instantly. They can move up, down, sideways, and through tight spaces if need be. The only thing they cannot do is fly upside down for any significant period.

They dart and float and buzz their way toward the Gulf Coast over the next month or so, then make the giant leap across the ocean to Central and South America. Just a couple ounces of nature's boundless energy and imagination. Every step of their trip and every turn of their body is part of a giant evolutionary process that takes place over inches and miles, over seconds and years. Make the effort to study a hummingbird. You'll know a little bit more about where you came from as well; the complexity, the dexterity and yes, even the intelligence behind the bird whose wings seem to murmur of natures greatest inventions.

The Prairie in Full Swing

2009-08-02T06:43:00.001-07:00

Another fresh morning. August starts out cool just like July went out. But the heat is coming. Which is why it was important to get out to the prairie side of Dick Young Forest Preserve before the real heat kicks in.

Things change quickly in August on the prairie. Purple coneflowers that hung on through July get blasted by

hot sun and thick wind. Then their petals drop and you see the first hints of fall in their dark, sullen heads. Yellow coneflowers of a wide variety start shedding their petals and new ones bloom. By end of month goldenrod will be announcing its presence. Right now the purple bergamot, Queen Anne's lace and other mid-summer flowers dance innocently in the morning breeze. But I saw the weather forecast calls for 90s next week. At last.

There are families of sparrows and other species wrapping up their summer nesting duties. Haggard yellowthroats are still gathering bits of food for perhaps the summer's second brood? There were Henslow's sparrows singing low in the scrub, and grasshopper sparrows too. A clan of Savannah sparrows mov

ed around the hill as the sun rose.

Joggers and a cyclist moved past as I set up to photograph the birds. My pants and shoes were soaked. Shirt untucked. Hat probably askew. We birders must make a sight sometimes.

But I enjoy these contrasts. Just yesterday I was all suited up for a bicycle race in Elk Grove, and bike racing is an entirely inorganic experience. Four dozen cyclists on $3000 machines whirring around a tarmac surface on rubber tires. But the colorful outfits and spandex have their organic roots. Like preening, colorful birds on parade. And normally I ride 30-50 miles on a Sunday morning. But today I was content to trod around the crushed limestone path in my soggy Merrells. Looking for an oddity, I guess. Maybe it was me.

At any rate, the prairie is a sea of space ready for exploration. If you were to "dial in" you could probably spend a lifetime studying just 20 square feet of this habitat. Go ahead; pick out a patch and begin cataloguing the insects alone that pass through or use the prairie.

They add up quickly. And the ground below. That would be another entire study. I take photographs and find things that the eye does not instantly notice. The curl of a sparrow's claws. Spider webs linking the ivory heads of Queen Anne's lace. The multifaceted seeds of a coneflower head. It goes on and on, into infinity, the things you can discover.

As it was, the breeze kept things hopping. Birds perched on tall flowers swayed and re-clutched their perches to stay level. It was great sport trying to get good shots. The Savannah sparrow at the top of this blog turned out to be my favorite photo this morning. Just look at those claws. If that bird weren't so small, you might think them dangerous. But they do hint at dinosaur descendancy, do they not?

Go early, when the dew still lights the edges of the bluestem and coneflowers. When the sun angles through the grasses. When the birds are calling and when swallows peel and turn over the wetlands. That is where you need to be in August.

Good timing

2009-07-15T14:29:00.000-07:00

I can't get over the amount of open space on the west side of Dick Young Forest Preserve these days. Just so grateful that the referendum in Kane County passed in time for the forest preserve district to buy up all those acres extending west to Bliss Road. I'll say it loud: It would have been horrid to have 1000 houses built on that land. Now it's open space for a straight mile west. Awesome at twilight with hundreds of flowers backlit by the sun.

There aren't any mowed trails out there (which is fine) that I have found as yet even though they show up on the preserve maps. No matter. Some day the county will figure out what it wants to do with that property. But in the mean time, there are awesome walking and running trails circling and bisecting the preserve.

I decided to conduct a little test by inviting my wife to walk straight from the north parking lot through the prairie to meet me at the walking bridge. I planned to run around the loop past the east entrance. Figured it would take about the same time for me to run those miles as it would for her to walk the distance she would cover.

We met exactly where I predicted. "You're a freak," she laughed. "How did you know that would happen."

30 years' experience with running, I told her. Some strange algorithm in my head figured it out. I hadn't analyzed. It was strange to have it work that well.

The breeze was blowing fresh and clean as we walked the westernmost gravel trail back to the parking lot together. "This is wonderful," she told me.

All along the trail the voices of grassland birds could be heard. My wife noted the call of a pair of sandhill cranes in the distance as well. We passed meadowlarks (and those little meadowlarks, she told me, what are those called? "Dickcissels," I smiled) and sedge wrens, yellowthroats and savannah sparrows. No bobolinks this year? The grass might have grown too high too quickly. Now the county is whaling around with its mowers, clearing out sections of grassland for some purpose or another.

When we reach the rise in the gravel trail I look northwest and realize there is an even bigger hill blocking the setting sun. Behind that hill is a big gravel pit. You can see it on the Google map. If there was just a touch more gravel to be mined under this old farmland it probably would have succumbed to the shovels and trucks long ago. As it stands, the mini-sized prairie kame is still here for us to enjoy. It survived 100+ years of farming, but not all the soil around it fared so well. You can see from the rise of the old farm fenceline that the original soil was at least two feet deeper than it is today. Hard to calculate just how much dirt that really represents when you stop to think about 1000 acres of land. Or a million acres. Or 10 million. Because that's what has happened across the entire midwest. Huge amounts of dirt tilled for agriculture blew and washed away somewhere, probably into the Gulf of Mexico by way of the Fox River, the Illinois, the Mississippi. The evidence is clear in that rise of fenceline running like a spine below the gravel hill laid down by glaciers 10,000 years ago.

Now the prairie is growing back on the tired out soil. Grain by grain the organic material will come back to these fields and these hills. It's a matter of time and decay.

It all had to fit together for this to happen. The county getting funding at the right time. The old farm family passing away and selling the land. Fending off the builders. Letting the corn and beans fade away. Breaking the tiles and raising the water table. Planting prairie. We've come full circle. We're meeting up with the past almost as if we had it planned. We had the instinct and made it happen. When it comes to Dick Young Forest Preserve and Nelson Lake Marsh, that is some very good timing.

Running commentary

2009-06-28T06:42:00.000-07:00

"This is no social crisis...just another tricky day for you..." --The Who

Weekend mornings present a difficult choice sometimes. Those early hours of the day can seem so precious. What birds are could we find? Should we get out and cycle instead? Go for a walk with my wife? Sometimes I wake up early Sunday morning and don't know what to do. It's just another tricky day.

This morning I chose to go running at Dick Young/Nelson Lake Forest Preserve. But to assuage my guilt over using gas to go exercise, I measure the mileage from my house in Batavia to the parking lot at the preserve. 3.7 miles. Sure, I could ride my mountain bike out and save a tenth of a gallon of gas, but these morning hours are precious...so I'm glad I drove.

Understand: there was a time when I would have run those miles out to the preserve, run 6 miles while I was there and run home again with no problem. But time and years of running mileage require a certain penance, and I cannot run that far anymore. Adding up the miles I did in training over the years puts me somewhere between 40 and 50,000 miles of running. Several weeks in college I ran 100 miles in a single week. That's a lot of running, I can assure you. Now I'm glad for my 2 or 3 runs of 3 miles per week...

I've always used my runs in forest preserves as reconnaissance for bird trips. If you listen carefully while running through the woods you will hear the occasional warbler or other species chirp in alarm. And there are a number of birds that simply ignore you and keep singing their regular songs. Since you're covering a lot of ground in a relatively short amount of time, it's a good way to do a quick survey of what a bird hike might bring.

This morning brought weather. A strong northerly breeze had picked up by the time I started running at 7:30 a.m.. Birds in the woods were particularly hard to hear because the wind through the leaves was quite loud. But I was thankful for that breeze. There was a fresh and aggressive crop of deer flies in the woods. I wore no shirt and dared not stop even to adjust my shoelaces for fear that I would be attacked by a herd of deer flies. Deer flies are slow, stupid and easy to smack, but they also hang out behind your head and neck where it can be hard to reach them. Fortunately I'd worn a bandanna to keep bugs off my bald head, but my back was fair game. And of course you begin imagining there are more insects back there than there really are. It is a guessing game when to try to hit the real deer flies from the imagined ones. I've heard that people have been driven mad by insects in Alaska, and I can see why. When these flies smell blood they get a little frenetic, especially when they sense fresh, thin-skinned suburban blood like mine. I'm probably irresistible fodder. Every fly in the woods hears the battle cry, "Fresh meat! Fresh meat!"

Moving quickly to get out of Fly Purgatory, I pick up the pace along the prairie edge and feel fresh relief in a dose of that northern breeze. The air seems to be speaking its own language, whispering that the recent heat wave was a treat, a temporary state of summer doldrums we had better remember to enjoy. Summer language it still was, but with a Canadian accent.

The wind quieted the normal panoply of yellowthroats singing on the prairie. Either they gave up trying to be heard or their woodsy voices were simply blown south by the wind. I could still hear the chugging songs of marsh wrens at the north end of the slough, and goldfinches were twittering (yes, nature was the original source of twittering) as they dipped and bowed on their way between woods and prairie.

I take the cut-through path from woods to the marsh and encounter another runner coming my way. It is Tim Norris, owner of Spring Bluff Nurseries a couple miles west of Nelson Lake. Go there sometime. His nursery and garden business offer all kinds of prairie plants and annuals for the garden. You will not regret the trip to Bliss Road and Spring Bluff.

Tim and I go waaaay back. We were teammates on the 1971-72 Kaneland High School cross country team that won the school's first ever Little 7 conference title. Small achievements in a big world, but significant enough to draw a flood of friendly memories as we passed. He recognizes me instantly (you never forget a teammate's stride) waving "Hello, Chris" as we were pass in opposite directions.

The sky is so blue above us it is obvious the earth is tripping through eternity in fine fashion. We are barely significant sentient beings searching for a word from God on a Sunday morning. I've run enough miles in my lifetime to circle the earth twice, yet I've not been off the North American continent except for a weird little junket to Hawaii in 1981. So I'm just like one of those stupid deer flies in the woods, going round and round. Looking for fresh meat of one kind or another. We call that business.

Fortunately I'd left the deer flies behind and could concentrate on looking for birds. There were robins, catbirds, towhees, blue jays, red-wings, warbling vireo, red-eyed vireo and the distant gravelly mumblings of a sandhill crane. We take these local species of birds for granted sometimes, but nature does not. There is only so much June every year, and these birds are all busy feeding their young back in their nests. A barn swallow courses overhead and it makes me think it must be tougher to grab enough bug fodder in a high wind to feed their young back at the barn or house where they made their mud daub nest. I want to tell the swallow I know where there are some juicy deer flies to be eaten, but I do not know if even barn swallows can gulp down that much airborne stubbornness and stupidity.

On the trail I meet up with a fat green frog sunning itself on a patch of flat brown earthen trail. I reach down to touch the frog to see if it will jump out of the way, but it just sits there. Green frogs have beautiful yellow-green skin and a dark tympanum behind gold-flecked eyes. I turn off my running watch and rub the frog's back. He seems to like it. Perhaps he too had been bothered by deer flies and now needed a healthy scratch, but at any rate he sits there content to be rubbed by a giant stranger who normally would have presented a major threat. It is obvious that in cool morning air frogs do not always think straight, or perhaps he'd been up all night imbibing on fermented dragonflies. More likely this medium-sized fella was simply a little chilled and not thinking too clearly. The sun was warming up his blood enough that when I picked him up he gave a couple kicks to show he cared enough to stay alive. So I set him back down on his chosen spot and went moving about the universe myself. For the frog and me alike, it was just another tricky day. What is the plan? Sometimes it is enough to just sit in the sun and try to make sense of what's in front of you.

Round the bend toward the Audubon bridge, I encounter again my friend Tim Norris. He turns around to join me and we chat about how little we run compared to the old days. Then we come to a fork in the trail and Tim tells me he is turning around rather than continue back toward the woods. "I'm going back the way I came. There are too many flies over there." He wears no shirt either.

"Ha ha! I was going to say the same thing," I say. As we part I do some math and realize that Tim and I were teammates 38 years ago. We're both still running. That's what counts.

In the open country I catch up to a woman running climbing the slight rise to where I'd heard the Henslow's sparrows last week. This week I hear no Henslow's. Their songs are perhaps too thin and short to be heard in the northerly breeze. I exchange hellos with the woman, who is listening to some tune on her ear buds and isn't ready for much conversation. I always try to give women a warning clear of the throat or an advance hello when catching up with them on the trail. I think it a courtesy. But I also realize many of them don't hear me because they are listening to some inspirational tune. Such is life.

I don't often run carrying my iPod, but I will never forget on iPod moment. I'd been running along with my iPod when a recording of Dvorak's "Nimrod" came through the earphones. I'd forgotten that I'd copied it from my son's CD, and the effect of that particular recording was so clear and moving that it literally stopped me in my tracks and brought me to tears during a run at Leroy Oakes forest preserve some years ago. I fell to the trail on my knees and sobbed emotionally, releasing all sorts of tension related to the death of my mom, the failing health of my dad and some health challenges with my wife. That music seemed to send all those worries out of me into the void. They say music is the highest art. When I experience something like I find it hard to disagree.

As I approached my car at the end of my run I see a familiar form on the trail and realize it is Jon Duerr. He's got his Svarovski binoculars and is headed out for a bird walk. "I figured the deer flies would be bad in the woods," he tells me.

"You're right about that," I agree.

We chat about the great condition of the prairie at Dick Young Forest Preserve. Jon shares a little theory with me about habitat management, that we can't quite look at it like "This Old House." He observes there is something more, a flow to nature that is not mechanical, but organic. Who is to say precisely what plant belongs where? Instead there is so much we need to continue to learn, and keep our eyes out for opportunities to help restore what we can while not being emphatic judges of what comes along.

That philosophy goes a long way toward making me feel better about my "tricky day" and making the right decision to simply go for a run in a fresh northern breeze on a late day in June, 2009. Because one of the lyrics from that Who song I quote at the start of this article

goes like this;

"This is no social crisis, this is you having fun."

And there's nothing wrong with that.

"Tsi-lick"tive birding

2009-06-17T06:13:00.000-07:00

On my run this morning I heard the distinctive, humble sound of a Henslow's sparrow. Their song is not so melodic as a song sparrow nor so secretive as a grasshopper sparrow. Instead it comes off a bit clipped, like a sound bite that got digitally cut off.

But we are glad to hear it, the song of the Henslow's. These birds prefer low grasslands for breeding. That habitat had been an increasingly rare commodity due to changes in agricultural practices and of course, the general loss of prairie-based habitat. But thanks to broad scale preservation projects in key habitat areas like Dick Young Forest Preserve/Nelson Lake, the Henslow's sparrow is showing up with more frequency.

But for years the Henslow's sparrow hung on in the hinterlands of Illinois. I first saw them at Goose Lake Prairie back in the 1970s in the company of the late Bob Horlock, my high school biology teacher and birding pal who dragged his students with him all sorts of places to study unusual plants and birds. I'll never forget the moment he showed me a "sensitive plant" whose leaves curled up when I touched them. Something about that moment changed the way I looked at the whole plant world. That same day we found giant, tall lilies growing next to a railroad track in Elgin. Bob explained that it is serendipitous the plants grew there. The railroad's lack of aggressive maintenance along the tracks enabled prairie plants like that turk's cap lily to hang on. That changed the way I viewed the world as well. I'd always been a fan of walking railroad beds for a variety of other reasons having to do with mischief and curiosity. But knowing there were prairie plots along the railroad made it seem extra special.

So I think of Bob Horlock every time I hear the Henslow's sparrow. Of course I also think of Bob Horlock when I hear a dirty joke, because he loved a ribald laugh once in a while. When birding got slow he would tip back his hat and begin telling yarns. "Did you ever hear of the kee-kee bird?" he'd ask.

"No," I'd reply.

"He only sings when it's 20 below zero. His song goes "kee--kee--kee--keehrist it's cold out here."

Then he'd throw back his head and laugh.

Bob would have treasured the Henslow's sparrows at Dick Young Forest Preserve, I think. He and Dick Young were quite a pair to travel with in the field. Between them they knew every blasted plant and of course, every bird as well. When Bob and Dick would encounter some subtle plant denizen they would often come to a stop to discuss it, Latin phrases flying from their mouths in the botanist's version of "speaking in tongues" until at least one of them was satisfied they had solved the mystery of what we were looking at. If additional plant experts such as Gerould Wilhelm, Roger Hotham or Jon Duerr were present, the plant never had a chance of remaining anonymous. Our region owes much debt to folks such as these, who had the knowledge and the vision to "see ahead" by looking behind, preserving prairies and getting governmental bodies to appreciate something so subtle as a bottled gentian growing in a patch of marsh. A belated thank you to all of them.

I got to participate in my small way. Bob Horlock used his knowledge of prairie plants to start a restoration project at the Great Western Trailhead near Leroy Oakes Forest Preserve. I participated that first year digging up our little section of prairie plots. It helped my enthusiasm for the work that my prairie plot partner was a comely lass prone to wearing low-cut shirts.

We first planted seeds in sandy soil and froze them over the winter. Then we scraped the gray earth and stuck our seedlings into the ground; bluestem big and little, compass plant, prairie dock and wild indigo cream and blue. Those plants are still growing there 35 years later. A small stone marker bears Bob Horlock's name. I say "Hello, Bob" whenever I pass it during my runs and cycling trips.

Now the prairie at Dick Young/Nelson Lake Forest Preserve is also coming into bloom. There among the first blooms of purple coneflower sings the Henslow's sparrow. It's almost like Bob Horlock and Dick Young dragged that bird up from Goose Lake Prairie to breed west of Batavia. You can find the Henslow's by parking at the lot on Main Street one half mile west of Nelson Lake Road. Take the crushed limestone path to the right, go past the shelter and walk the 1/2 mile until you reach the top of a slight rise in topography. The Henslow's are singing on the back of that hill. I remember walking that property in the company of Jon Duerr, who was then executive director of Kane County Forest Preserves. Jon is another Kane County environmental steward, plant and bird expert and long time friend of both Dick Young and Bob Horlock, who passed away in 1993 while conducting a prairie burn at Garfield Farm.

Jon proudly led me up that little hill the county has protected from the clutches of an aggressive developer and said, with wonder and appreciation, "Won't the view from here be tremendous?" The path now crests that rise in the ground. And it is a lovely view. Especially in the company of that little Henslow's, singing his humble song. "Tsi-lick." It's music to my ears, anyway.

True confessions of a bird census volunteer

2009-06-15T06:31:00.000-07:00

As birding trips go, squeezing in a half hour walk before work may not qualify as good strategy or good science. I mention good science in particular because I have never been particularly good at science.

That said, I did start college as a biology major. That effort lasted several terms before the director of the program pulled me aside and said something on the order of: "Chris, you have a lot of good attributes. But being a scientist is probably not one of them. So here's the deal. You donate those frog illustrations to the bio department and finish up these taxidermic specimens in your artistic style and we'll give you a B in this course (Field Biology.) But you're struggling in the lab work and I've already spoken to the Art department. They await you with eager and open arms."

So that was that. My career as a professional scientist ended in the middle of my sophomore year in college. I still conducted an independent study at the Laboratory of Ornithology at Cornell University that winter. My project was curating the entire collection of bird art in the lab library. I corrected a number of misidentified drawings of birds and hung around the Hawk Barn drawing peregrines and gyrfalcons, but you could hardly call my 3 weeks in Ithaca a scientific endeavor.

I mention all this because my walk this morning at Dick Young Forest Preserve/Nelson Lake Marsh reminded me of another somewhat failed effort at science, this time the citizen variety. From 2001-2005 I conducted bird surveys on the west side prairie restoration. I took this work quite seriously. Plotted my GPS points and logged them carefully on note cards. Counted off the steps to make sure I could return to the precise location each time. For 5 years I walked my line of observation points, writing down the species and numbers of birds I heard and saw. Something in me really wanted to do that project right. Perhaps it was the latent scientist in me, the part that never got to finish the biology degree.

There was just one snag. I could not get my entries logged into the Bird Conservation Network web site. I could log in. I could enter the data. But it never let me finish the part that would make my information flow into the database.

Later I learned it was a Mac versus PC issue. I am a Mac user and the software driving the BCN program did not recognize commands from a Mac. So I sent my forms In for the BCN volunteers and staff to enter, but somehow that never happened. I don't blame anyone for this. It is my responsibility to get that information into the system. You can't expect other people to do your science for you.

But then one morning in June a few years ago, I was walking back from conducting my first census of the new season when I encountered another birder walking the path toward me. I knew right away she was a serious birder. You know the look. Plus she had a notebook and the focused demeanor of some assigned to do a job. So I stopped to inquire about her purpose and she explained that she was there to conduct a census of the prairie for the Bird Conservation Network. I was shaken. "I've been doing this route for 5 years!" I exclaimed. She stammered an awkward reply about being assigned and made her way down the path.

I admit I was angry. But I realize I was more angry at myself for not having done a good job at my assigned task. Just the same I sent in my forms one more time only to have them returned a year later. Just for the record; I repeat that this dysfunctional approach to a job poorly done was no one's fault but my own.

What hurts is that my intentions have always been good. Way back in the early 1980s a group of us birders in Kane County formed the Nelson Lake Marsh Bird Survey Team. At that point the county only owned a quarter of the prop

erty now comprising the Dick Young Forest Preserve. Our team consisted of 5 or 6 birders including the late Bob Horlock, an avid birder and high school biology teacher who was known for his work in prairie restorations. He passed away in 1993 while burning the prairie at Garfield Farm in St. Charles. There was Bob Montgomery, then a biologist at Max McGraw Wildlife Foundation and a leader of Kane County Audubon. A few other members rotated in and out of service but our mission was to chronicle bird species both common and rare. We met quarterly and reported on our assigned territories. I think one of the Bobs collated our reports and turned them over to the county in case they were needed to justify further protections for the property. Perhaps these studies even contributed to the designation of Nelson Lake as an Illinois conservation area.

All these thoughts came rushing back as I wandered out on the prairie restoration area of the preserve. The sign documenting Dick Young's contributions to its preservation greeting me as I strolled the limestone path headed toward the new shelter. I could hear the songs of marsh wrens in the pothole below. A family of pied billed grebes was feeding there as well. Yellowthroats and song sparrows were singing. In the newly planted oak near the shelter I found a sight I'd always wanted to see; a dickcissel and western meadowlark perched in the same tree. Their bright yellow breasts with black bib matched almost perfectly. Each was singing their own song.

Out beyond the shelter I could hear the songs of bobolinks, the hiss of grasshopper sparrows and the distant chap-chap-chapperrrr of sedge wrens. It is census season and I assume someone is signed up to count that area. I've learned to follow through on spring and fall census counts, but still have a ways to go before having my work count for the summer census season. It's funny how our knowledge of nature comes down to keystrokes and paperwork.

The Greatest Hits of Nelson Lake Marsh: Bird Songs

2009-05-25T12:47:00.000-07:00

Five minutes into a Sunday bird walk I heard one of the sounds I’d come to hear: A Mourning Warbler singing in the thickets next to the main path. I never feel spring season is replete without a glimpse of Mourning and Connecticut Warblers. They always drift through around the fourth week of May, typically near the end of the warbler migration season. They bring up the rear of the migration march like some aging oompah band, one singing its thick little song, “chirry chorry chirry chorry.” and the other “tupa tepo tupa teepo tupateppoh.” If you’re lucky, you’ll see them both, but there are never any guarantees. These secretive woodland species seldom venture out into plain sight. They arrive when the foliage is full and their coloration is perfectly designed to help them remain invisible under the mottled canopy. More than once I’ve hung around a small copse of trees trying to call out a Mourning warbler with my poor imitations of its call, but it skulks around like an unclear thought. When they do flash into sight, it is only for a few moments, as if to say, “There, are you happy now?”

While searching for the precious glimpse of a Mourning warbler, a Wilson’s warbler arrived on the scene, working its way toward me through a hedgerow of honeysuckle. Wilson’s warbler sings its staccato song with verve and looks like a bird that never got “finished” properly in its plumage design. The bird from the shoulder down looks pretty much like a yellowthroat with no distinct markings. It’s yellow head is topped by a stark black cap that frankly looks out of place. Something in me wants that cap to be a black throat patch, or an eye patch like the yellowthroat. But the Wilson’s goes about its self-absorbed way, singing that “chichichi” song that only another Wilson’s could love.

The warbler that more than knows its place is the yellowthroat, aptly named and easy to see. The male bird’s bright throat is plainly off the charts when it comes to yellowness. The female also has a yellow throat, but it lacks the distinctive black eye patch that make the male so distinctive. The better for camouflage in the female’s case, we must suppose.

All summer long the yellowthroat sings, and at all times of the day. It is as if the bird has put its song on “heavy rotation” like they used to do with those annoying hit singles (“Alone Again, Naturally…) on WLS AM back when they used their 50,000 watt station to play the same 10 songs all day. You have to admit, it was an effective recipe, and WLS still plays repetitive tripe all day long, only now they fill the dial with a recipe of political Starlings convinced they own the country.

Back at Nelson Lake Marsh, you can find yellowthroats in a whole series of habitats. Some choose to hang with the marsh wrens in cattail havens near water. Others move out onto the west-side prairie and keep company with sedge wrens. Are you seeing a pattern here? Yellowthroats behave and sing much like wrens, whose niches they share.

In fact you can walk through four or five different habitat zones from cattail marsh to partial swamp to deep woodlands and onto restored prairie and find yellowthroats lurking about in all of them. They all “chirr” at you in that imitation catbird noise that says they’re irritated. Then they burst forth with that famous song! “Wichity witchity whichtity which?” I’ve heard that song clearly through closed windows in a car speeding along the highway at 70 miles an hour.

It’s time for a list of the most persistent singers at Nelson Lake, and their “greatest hits!”:

• “Fitz-bew” is highly distinctive call of the Willow flycatcher, a bird species that loves marginal wetlands and transitional zones between prairie and cattail meadows. Its close and nearly identical cousin the Alder Flycatcher has been seen and heard as well at Nelson Lake. It’s “fee-bee-oh!” song is slightly more enunciated than the Willow.

• The long, rambling call of the Warbling vireo tends to emanate from high trees even on the hottest days. The unmistakable call is a hallmark of summer.

• One of my favorite songs among all birds is the wren that sounds like an electric sewing machine, the Marsh wren. It sings from dense cattail hideaways and you’ll seldom call it out, but the song of the marsh wren is so distinctive you cannot miss it.

• Move out onto the prairie and find the slightly less common sedge wren singing in weedy transitional zones between prairie and cultivated field. Sedge wrens like it grassy and thick. They will perch up on pasture rose and sing their distinctive “chap-chap-chap-chapp-chapperrr…”

• The distinctive “wheeeeiieep!” of the Great Crested Flycatcher fills the summer woodlands, along with the answering, plaintive call of the Wood Pewee that sings its own name “peee-aww-weee?” in questioning fashion. Then you know summer has arrived.

• The varied song of a catbird, filled with quick imitations of other bird species and sounds it hears is a distinctive mark of an Illinois woodland. The bird pictured in the header above was photographed at Nelson Lake in full song. The songs of all these species draw you through the preserve and become part of your "template" in visiting the site. They are some of the “greatest hits” at Nelson Lake Marsh, the sight and sound of a healthy environment.

Stating what should be the obvious

2009-05-18T07:00:00.000-07:00

For a variety of reasons my birding and nature adventures have not been centered on Nelson Lake the last few weeks. Hence the “hole” in posts the last two weekends. Of course that is a bit ironic considering the first 14 days in May are some of the peak activity weeks for birds, wildlife and plant growth in the preserve.

I’ll beg off by stating that last weekend was the Spring Bird Count. My assigned territory was the Great Western Prairie Path west of St. Charles. I rode the mountain bike out to Virgil and back from St. Charles and saw 84 species. The whole venture took six hours. And it was windy. And I was exhausted.

Plus I’m not necessarily a big fan of going out on weekends birding. I’m too social and wind up petting the dogs I meet and talking with other birders.

So it was Monday morning early for me this week. 5:30 a.m. to be precise. There’s just one problem with getting up so early. Some of the birds aren’t even up. The faithful Warbling Vireos were singing in the trees. Chimney swifts were plying the air high above the north end of the marsh. But there were very few warblers singing, as might be expected the third week in May. The temperature was 39 degrees. That might have had something to do with it. I also wondered what kind of intrepid insects those chimney swifts were eating? Or were they just warming up their little cigar-sized bodies by flying around in the rays of the morning sun?

The yellowthroats were singing, of course. Warbling vireos and yellowthroats are always singing. It's what they do. Hot or cold. Early or late. Those two species will sing through almost any weather condition or time of day.

Probably they’ll keep on singing right through Armageddon itself, which may arrive sooner than we think if the television program I watched last night proves prophetic. The show documented the possibility that a black hole in outer space might someday “burp” out deadly gamma rays in the direction of earth. In case you did not know, this would be a bad thing for Planet Earth as we know it. The only good news is that it would also kill the Creeping Charlie and dandelions in your lawn, if you care about such things.

But at least that’s a non-partisan way to go. No arguments over faith or politics, but especially no "I told you so's" from the religious zealots who threaten us with extinction every 50 years or so. Instead, we'd be taken by surprise by a well-aimed supermass of dark energy pulsing forth to wipe out the ozone layer and convert us all into carbon matchsticks. Peace in the valley, for sure.

I think these thoughts because the human race keeps having arguments about how to treat the earth. The question itself is absurd! Do you know how far it is to the next inhabitable planet? We don’t even know where the hell that might be, yet we’re jumping up and down because we probably found ice on Mars? You can’t live on ice alone. I already know that. I was a bachelor once.

It will be centuries, probablly even millennia before we figure out how to travel fast or far enough to move off planet earth. We should not count on traveling to Alderon (or whatever fantasy planet you choose) for our next vacation spot. Besides, the last thing we need is any more reasons or excuses to junk this place up. There are floating rafts of plastic the size of Rhode Island bobbing around the Pacific Ocean, and you want to argue mankind can do nothing to harm the planet?

The famous philosophical argument about how many angels could fit on the head of a pin is not nearly so interesting as how many people can possibly fit on a finite planet. And how do you propose to feed them? What are the limits? We're at 6 billion now. What's the goal? 10 billion? 20 billion? 30 billion? Does the population have to match the global economic deficit before we realize we're going into the hole on this issue?

So the politics over the importance of earth’s preservation are patently absurd. Yet we wake up everyday to stories about people arguing whether protecting the ozone layer and reducing manmade global warming is too much trouble and requires too much money?

There is nothing so cynical as the idea that mankind can do nothing to harm the earth. Yet that's one of the principle ideological arguments against the theory of manmade global warming. Again: It is absurd when you consider our real position in the universe. We're a band of tiny, basically helpless living things with no place else to go in the universe except earth for material sustenance.

It is a sickness to suggest that pursuing spiritual rewards (life after death) is the more important priority than preserving life here on earth. If you believe in a creator, our first responsibility is to creation, out of respect for God.

If you believe in a creator, how can you not respect creation? I propose that God treats people who disrespect the earth like a fisherman who snag hooks a bottom feeder by accident. He throws them back for another try at comprehending the concept. God says: "Go evolve into a trout. Learn to occupy a nicer stream. Grow wise from your experience." And don't brag that you've "seen God" just because you glanced up at the Holy One as He threw you back. That doesn't count as enlightenment.

I'm writing about Nelson Lake Marsh from a global perspective, can you tell? Because the abundance May and an encounter with deer at dawn demand it.

I used to consider myself a partly militant environmentalist. Then I stared at the moon one day (it was at 1/4 illumination this morning) and realized that it sits about about 265,000 miles from earth, devoid of life and oxygen. That's the closest thing we have to another place to live in this universe. I quit watching "space movies" because there is no greater lie than the concept that we will soon be capable of flying around this giant soap opera of a universe at hyperspeed. That's a cruel joke.

Instead, I take a look around at the abundance of life in places like Nelson Lake Marsh and say to myself, “Self, It is perfectly right and just to protect these places.” No exceptions.

That’s not militancy. That’s common sense. The people arguing against this reasoning do not seem to be grasping the seemingly contradictory (but still true) notion that while the abundance of earth is apparently infinite, the position of our planet in the universe is absolutely finite. There is no other earth. In the words of the Eagles rock band, "There are no more new frontiers...we have got to make it here..."

That is why I’ve grown out of thinking of some species of wildlife as “common” and therefore potentially boring. When West Nile Virus hit the bird populations a few years ago we got a glimpse of how fragile wildlife populations can be when threatened by natural and unnatural circumstance. Native bird populations plummeted. I found one white breasted nuthatch helpless and quivering at the base of an ancient oak. It did not have long to live, victimized by the bite of a mosquito. Crows, blue jays and many other seemingly hardy species all but disappeared in some areas. Interestingly, catbirds seemed to have preternatural resistance to the virus, with blood concentrations of the virus that were "off the scale." Maybe that's why they sound so smug. They're sitting in the biological catbird seat.

But I do not take any species for granted, any more. Even deer. We hate what they do to our suburban gardens. But they are just doing what deer have done for eons; eating their way through the forest. They are creatures of habit (hence the presence of “deerpaths,” which in some areas have turned into roads for human traffic) and they are opportunistic. I have seen Mule deer in Glacier National Park nip off and eat the bright white heads of beargrass, a protected species of plant. Tough luck: Deer have a right to eat.

I’ve even seen a deer eat a bird right out of a mist net. Nature makes no apologies for these things. Abundance rolls through the food chain. In our area deer have become something of a “pest,” supposedly, eating precious woodland flowers as well as the garden variety. We cull them and shoot them and a few (sometimes many) die of starvation when populations get too high. Disease takes them out, too. Sooner or later, nature corrects these imbalances.

But when I encounter deer in the quiet light of dawn, I only think of how wondrous they used to seem to me. As a child I chased herds of them through the hilly woods of Pennsylvania. They disappeared like spirits into the forest. Deer were magical, strange and elusive.

It is so hard to keep our sense of wonder. Politics and prejudice toward nature in its many forms is rampant. These prejudices fill our heads with all kinds of absurd crap. I submit to you for comparison the image of two deer at dawn, framed in glory of mist and sunlight, and the image of the deer as skeleton. Both play a role. It is not entirely ours to judge.

That does not mean we do not need good management practices. Human beings play an important balancing role in nature as well. We have for hundreds of thousands of years. But we should be willing to look at ourselves as animals dependent on the environment as well as possessors of the land, lest we consume more than we can sustain. After all, we'd much more like to look like the animal at the top of this blog than the remains of the animal at the bottom.

Grumpy Cranes

2009-05-04T15:48:00.000-07:00

To arrive at dawn at Nelson Lake on a morning in May is to step into the height of natural potential. Arriving migrants awaken the woods. Rails lurk and flit from sight in cattail margins. Red winged blackbirds, male and female, bicker and fight over their chunk of marsh.

On May 3, I parked at the old entrance and walked quietly into the preserve along the main trail. Blue-gray gnatcatchers were busying it up in the oaks. These birds twist and wheeze their way through life, posing briefly on each branch they meet. A few years back a pair built a nest almost in hand’s reach on a long bur oak limb. The nest was made from bits of lichen and spider web. A masterpiece of natural engineering.

Everything of consequence in nature is a question of engineering, one kind or the other. The muskrat dens built from mud and cattails are converted to nest platforms by the geese. The beaver dam that once plugged the southwest exit stream kept the water levels high for years. In May the whole preserve seems to be under construction. Nests show where birds place their hopes and mud holes show that some creature got out and about for a stroll in darkness last night. Crayfish? Frogs? They’re all rising to the surface in the make or break pattern of spring.

The first large creature I encounter is a lone sandhill crane. It stands waist deep in a conflicted landscape of new grass and burnt cattail stems. Out with the old. In with the new, spring always says. The bird at first has its head down and is digging vigorously in the ground with its beak. I know that turf. It is boggy, wet and full of peat. What might he or she be digging out? There must be something good to eat down there. When the crane raises its head on that long neck, its expression seems forlorn or tired for some reason. Through the mist the bird’s rust colored plumage looks dirty. It’s probably just west and tinged with black ash from walking through the burnt cattail stems.

The anthropomorphic side of me asks: Can a crane have a bad day? Was it banished from its nest site by an ornery mate? Kicked out of bed for snoring? Do cranes even snore? Imagine that sound! But I doubt it. A snoring crane could fall prey to coyotes or other predators, and given that they’ve made it through some 60 million years of evolutionary history, I doubt that such a fateful slip in adaptation would serve them well.

I leave the bird to its morning devices after taking a few photos. It would be the first of 10 cranes I would see on site that morning. A group of five has been hanging out together in the center of the marsh. There were two more preening by the north shore of the lake, just past the viewing platform. Another two were working the prairie plots west of the woods.

I heard the different sets of cranes all calling from separate points during my walk. Their voices raise as if in a cone of sound.

Then, a disturbing sight. The paraglider that used to fly around south of the forest preserve now has found the wide open spaces of the prairie restoration. He’s got a full mile of open air between the woods and Bliss Road to the west. The sound of his roaring engine carried across the burnt spaces of the prairie. He looked like an odd bug hanging by a spiderweb below a brightly colored canopy. To and fro he went, having fun on a Sunday morning. Then he spooked a crane feeding on the prairie and it flew northeast, fast as it could go (it seemed.)

But then the crane settled down by the broken-tile wetland on the north end of the prairie. It looked around in a nonchalant manner and proceeded to walk within 75 feet of me on its way to the savannah. (photo at right)

The fact of the matter is that sandhill cranes are highly adaptable birds. In Florida they hang out on suburban yards, casual as herons on a fishing dock. I’m not saying that the paraglider did not have a disturbing effect on the bird, or that cranes are immune to human disturbance. In DuPage County certain portions of Pratt’s Wayne Woods are banned to human presence during crane breeding season. But where do we draw the line? If there were motorized hang gliders buzzing over the lake (which seems unwise, but people do a lot of unwise things) should we not be concerned for nesting cranes, bitterns or for that matter, Canada Geese which are common but protected species?

One wonders what laws cover use of motorized paragliders over county forest preserves. I wonder if such laws even exist.

Perhaps that’s why the first crane I saw looked so grumpy. He doesn’t like the new neighbors.

Best Plaid Plans

2009-04-19T15:03:00.000-07:00

I had my weekend all mapped out. Saturday morning: Cycle 45 miles with friends. Sunday: Birding at Nelson Lake, rain or shine. My plan was to ride the mountain bike and bird the vast western stretches of the prairie to see what sparrows might be in town...

I definitely got the bike ride in on Saturday. But it's amazing how you can cover a distance that far and see so few birds. We passed wetlands and flooded fields, sunshiney woods tinged with new green buds and fine, palatial homes out in the middle of nowhere. But very few birds.

Perhaps it's a question of focus. When you're doing your best to keep your front wheel five inches from the back wheel of the guy in front of you, it's a little hard to keep an eye out for kestrels.

So I figured on catching up on April migrants Sunday morning.

But then, in the middle of Saturday afternoon, our neighbor called me over. Her son had found a small gray baby bird on their driveway. It was barely larger than my thumb and sported a head of gray fuzz and the early makings of feather quills tipped in white sheaths. Parts of its body were still naked. It looked reptilian and seemed to like the fact that my hands were warm. It nestled down and didn't make a peep when I scooped it up to hold.

"What can we do with it?" the mom who lived back door asked in a voice as beseeching as it was curious. The neighbor boy wanted to see the bird survive. "I'm not sure right now whether it has a chance or not," I admitted.

My wife and I were in the middle of a series of backyard projects, so we plopped the bird in a shoe box where for the most part it hung out and didn't make much noise. Finally I grabbed a worm from the garden, split it into pieces with my fingers and offered it to the baby bird. It snarfed down several lengths of worm and was still begging for more. I did not know if you could overfeed the thing, so I stopped after one small worm.

By late afternoon my photographer daughter had taken photos and videos of our little guest and sent them to her most sensitive friends. "Awwwwwwwwwwwwwww! one of them wrote back. "I'm coming over!"

She spent an hour or so trying to feed the hungry little beast. It has a bright yellow bill and red throat. There's not a mother bird on earth who could resist such a craw. Neither could my daughter's friend. But the bird finally fell asleep in our shoebox and stayed that way all night.

My wife asked: "Do you think it will still be alive in the morning?"

"No way of knowing," I told her. "I raised a robin when I was a kid and it was a ton of work, that's all I know."

I could not tell the species of this bird. I'd searched all the nearby bushes when we found it, looking for a nest. Then I inspected the blue spruce under which it had been sitting. Seeing a chickadee flitting about in the branches above me, I wondered if this little bird could be a chickadee chick. Perhaps it climbed out of a nest cavity and tumbled to the ground.

I also wondered if it could have been carried there and dropped by a predator. More than once I've seen crows raid songbird nests and carry off young twitching in their bills.

We looked all around the yard for nests. A few neighbor kids and I then walked four blocks to one girl's house where she'd seen nests in the trees along her street. There were two nests alright, both from last year.

My thinking was that any bird would raise the little chick if you got it back into a nest. This was admittedly not a theory based on any scientific knowledge. I'd heard cowbirds in our neighborhood the day before and figured if it worked for them it might work for me. So my initial plan on rising Sunday morning was to combine my Nelson Lake birding trip with a search for a host nest for the orphaned bird.

This plan became a little less desirable when rain clouds started to form on my way out to Nelson Lake at 7:00 a.m. It occurred to me there was no chance in hell of finding a suitable nest. Frankly I have not yet even seen an active robin's nest this year. I also realized the bird in the shoe box was probably a house sparrow. It's begging call sounded similar to the adult "scheep scheep" of an adult house sparrow. But then, might evolution have somehow have contrived to make all baby birds sound alike, just in case?

Rescuing a house sparrow actually seems a bit illogical to me. I've read that people kill house sparrows nesting in bluebird boxes and martin houses. English sparrows can be a pest. But I have nothing against them personally or ornithologically. I've learned to be less judgmental on all species. "Good or bad," common or uncommon, they are part of the bird world. Even the starling at the top of this blog looks rather dapper, don't you think? I can see why some daffy Englishman imported them to America, hoping to bring the birds of Shakespeare to life on the New Continent. We daffy humans. Always messing about with nature.

Actually I am equivocal in my philosophy about rescuing birds at all. Even the great horned owls that nested in a tree on the Kane County Court House lawn did not gain my sentimental favor. A couple times their young wound up in a window well, and I thought, "That's because the parents are stupid. They should not be nesting where the safety of their young is at such risk. That means they should not survive."

But I know there are dedicated people who figure wildlife gets such a raw deal from people that it is our responsibility to help orphaned or injured wildlife. This is the God instinct in us. Never mind that the process of evolution has killed off 99% of all living things that ever existed. Our view that "life is precious" separates us from the real fact that nature is not always kind. Nature is benign to all that at best. But the perception that nature is cruel is also our impetus to impose human emotions on circumstance, which rules all. We live in a random material universe, but it is our choices that determine the order of our emotional world.

That is why I drove 12 miles out to the Fox Valley Wildlife Center with that cheeping little bird in a shoebox. I'd promised that little boy next door (and his mother) that his bird would be safe. There were a few moments yesterday when I thought it would be better (and frankly more naturally just) to let the bird die, make its way as a meal or back to carbon where we all belong.

Instead I woke early and zipped past the Dick Young/Nelson Lake Forest Preserve sign on my way to Elburn. I actually followed the forest preserve ranger from Johnson's Mound out Hughes Road to 47, then up to Route 38 and over to Elburn. He unlocked the gate at Elburn and I parked my car and birded there for 45 minutes because the FVWC does not open until 8 a.m.

I left the bird back in the car and rode my bike through the dank morning light to find bluebirds, an Eastern Towhee singing high atop an oak tree and kinglets everywhere. A pine warbler paused in the oaks, and there were yellow-rumped warblers too. We called them Myrtle Warblers when I first went birding in Elburn woods 39 years ago. I was a kid, just learning my birds with my brothers when we happened upon a Myrtle Warbler and a White-throated sparrow on the railroad tracks in the fog. It was a magical moment. The reason you keep birding is moments like these, especially at the beginning. Such gorgeous, beautiful things, these birds.

When I got back to the car it was time to deposit the bird with the FVWC. The young gal working the receiving station was so patient and non-judgmental about my humble cargo. "We know their diet," she told me. "Generally these birds need to eat every 10 minutes."

I pulled money from my wallet knowing that it was only half the minimum suggested contribution. My relationship with FVWC goes back a few years. One of the organizers used to call me when she had rehabilitated birds to release. "Where can I find some cedar waxwings?" she once asked. "I have one to release and I want it to find a flock of its own kind."

The question stumped at the time, and it stumps me still. Cedar waxwings are highly mobile birds. Unless you know a berry tree where they like to hang out, there is no way to predict where they might be on a given day. Even if you released a rehabilitated bird near a flock of other waxwings there is no guarantee they would have any beneficial effect on the released bird.

There is no question wildlife rehabilitators do good work. After man-made tragedies like oil spills, there is no substitute for rehabbers who clean birds and get them back into the wild.

But there is a chance we recognize that all our environment is now a man-made tragedy. That's the statement we might be forcing ourselves to accept by saving even the tiniest bird from its natural demise. And because a little neighbor boy needs to believe that some good can come from an act of kindness.

Short and Sweet

2009-04-12T07:07:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was marked by a persistent cool breeze. Not the kind of day for aimless wandering in the open fields. My brother and long time birding partner was in town from Ohio, and his 5th grade daughter Sophi is a beginning birder. We decided to bird by car instead of freezing ourselves in the April chill.

First stop was the Black Necked Stilt by Orchard Road in Montgomery. They had both seen stilts in Florida or some other trip, but it was still a treat. Sophi added Shovelers to her life list along with greater yellowlegs, and we move on.

Taking Jericho Road west from Orchard, we happened upon a giant fluddle where pi

ntail and green-winged teal were some of the best birds. A pair of gadwall was muddling about in the shallow water as well. The heat rising off the tilled farm land made everything look a bit like a mirage. A coyote skulked along the shoreline, its shoulders raised like a hyena. The ducks took little notice.

We moved on to Denny Lake north of Sugar Grove where we hoped to find yellow-headed blackbirds. This used to be one of the few locations where the birds

could be found in northern Illinois, but I have not seen them here in the last 4-5 years. It was pretty quiet save for some ruddy ducks that Sophi found amusing to look at through the scope.

Our final destination was Nelson Lake Marsh. From the viewing platform Sophi saw her first ever Horned Grebe, a beautiful spring plumage bird hanging out within easy viewing from the east side platform. It was an active bird, diving constantly to feed, but we all got good looks.

Then my brother noted the call of a purple martin. One might expect tree swallows this time of year, but purple martin? A scout, my brother told me. The ideal time to put up a martin house, when the advance troops are looking for nesting spots.

We wrapped up quickly because young Sophi was pretty cold. But her enthusiasm and methodical notes about new bird species brought back many memories of starting out as a birder. I guess the "sport" of birding or whatever you want to call it can be passed along. It still takes a certain interest and appreciation of nature

. I've shown people the most amazing birds, but they take no interest. By contrast, I have led groups of novices into the field and watched transformations happen right there on the spot. It's like people's senses awaken when they see a scarlet tanager or a rose-breasted grosbeak for the first time. Really, it's like seeing the world for the first time for some people.

I used to lead a lot more trips at Nelson Lake, and once took a group of church members on a Sunday morning walk in May. The warblers by then were largely quiet, but we found thrushes and cedar waxwings and a cooperative osprey flew over. It's a bit tough to communicate the wonders of nature without making reference to God's creation when you're leading a church group, but I resisted the temptation to make too many connections. I believe nature is its own, random wonder. I see rhythms of destruction and renewal, life and death, and yes, even resurrections of a sort. The prairie burns and new green grass comes along a few weeks

later. One creature dies so that another may live. Night falls and day awakens. These are the rhythms of creation. The Bible relies on many organic images to convey its spiritual truths. In my book "The Genesis Fix" I call these underlying natural metaphors "organic fundamentalism." That is, nature is the principle way spiritual truths are communicated in the Bible.

It is Easter Sunday as I write this. Off to church we go to hear about the miracles of Christian faith. But those of us who make a habit of getting out in nature have our own opinions of what miracles may be, and what renewal has to do with our souls.

That has been one of the reasons I go afield, and why Nelson Lake is a special place to me. There have been visits both short (like today) and long (sometimes hours...) and over the years these form a continuum of sustenance for the soul.

Burn Baby Burn

2009-04-08T19:27:00.000-07:00

I have never seen such a complete burn of grasses at Dick Young Forest Preserve and Nelson Lake as they got this year. In some areas there are nothing but singed twigs of pasture rose sticking up through the prairie. At twilight you could see the backlit wings of robins flitting about the bare ground from a distance of 300 yards. As my wife and I walked along the trail on the edge of the west woods, juncos and song sparrows moved in visible waves out onto the blackened flats. You would never know what kind of plants grow on these fields from looking at them now.

Likewise the marsh and ground surrounding it are an entirely new landscape. I'm a bald man and the preserve looks like my head right after a close trim. If you want to get a real feel for where the ground ends and the wetland begins, now is the time.

But I would advise being judicious as well. The sandhill cranes are setting up shop to nestfor the season somewhere in the marsh. It is better to respect their needs and let them have the room they need.

There were plenty of birds to be seen on our 3 mile loop around the lake. Lots and lots of Fox Sparrow. Have I said I love these birds? Yes, I know I have. But I love these birds. They are so classy in both appearance and song. What makes their voice so appealing is that they vocalize almost as if they are modest about their singing, like the tenor in the church choir who has this pure, wonderful voice but does not like to sing solos. There is also a definitive wildness in the clarity of a Fox sparrow's song because we know they will leave us in a week or so. Off to the real North. So it is worth listening, because their song is a rare treat, like ice cream at a roadside stand in Wisconsin. Better because of circumstance. Right now there are thick pockets of Fox sparrows all along the west side of the marsh and also the southeast hedgerow just past the washed out "bridge" as you head south of the viewing platform. Fox sparrows are early spring perfection.

There were also huge numbers of rusty blackbirds on the southeast side of the lake (seen here in a small pic...) I'm not talking just 40 or 50 rusty blackbirds. There were 10 or 15 batches of 40 to 50 blackbirds roosting in the scrubby trees along the south shore. My wife muttered, "Sounds like fall." So she remembers. She's not a birder, but she remembers that call. We hear them in late October and November on our walks. Something in their voice and that clustering blackbird habit reminds her of approaching cold weather. She remembers way more than she lets on sometimes.

I love that woman.

Out on the lake sat a large, mixed raft of scaup, ring-necked ducks, a lone redhead, patches of ruddies and buffleheads all doing their diver duck thing. Some sitting around, others acting horny and displaying. I was surprised to see so many ducks. A group of four common mergansers circled the lake and settled down. Must be twilight, I thought. In the distance we also saw a group of six white pelicans swimming in a row. A few minutes before my wife had noticed them flapping around. "Why do they always act like that?" she wanted to know. "I dunno," I told her. "That's what pelicans do." As if to mock me, they now were behaving in such a civil manner.

"Where are the redwings?" my wife also wanted to know.

"I think we're seeing less because the burn was so complete," I told her. "They've got nothing to hang onto."

We have seen four Phoebes as we circled the lake. The last was singing a quiet song to itself, it seemed. In two weeks there will be other flycatchers joining the Phoebes. Willow and Alder are both found at NLM. So are Least, in the woods, and Wood Pewee, which sing even during the hot daylight hours of summer. "Peee-ah-weeee." With that song I expect the slap of a hand on a mosquito as well. Then kingbirds complete the mix, out in the fields, and Great Crested in the woods. That's a fairly complete set of flycatchers, accented at some point during migration by possible yellow-bellied, olive-sided and a rare occasional western kingbird when the wind blows them up from Arkansas or Kansas or wherever the wind blows from...

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Now it is still early spring. "There are not many signs of spring here," my wife observes while walking up the small hill through the west woods. She is a plant lover. She knows spring beauty, anemone, trillium and the like. Those are her "birds." She raises some of them in our "woodland" garden out behind our house. It is a nice little imitation of the wild woods. In May she picks woodruff and makes an airy German punch. She is a German girl, you see. They like punchy things, those Germans.

Our walk concludes as the sun is setting and a huge moon rises in the east. "Look," Linda says (did I tell you my wife's name is Linda?) "The sun and moon are even," she says, holding her hands out parallel to the ground. "One in the east and one in the west." She is correct. The sun and moon are perfect opposites in the east and west sky. "The weatherman said to look for beautiful sunsets because a volcano erupted in Alaska," she tells me. I look at the sun. I have seen a lot of beautiful sunsets at Nelson Lake Marsh. This one looks normal. But who is to say if it could be a little redder than usual?

The whole world is connected. We get a red sun because of airborne particulates in the atmosphere. The sun is burning billions of miles away. Its heat dissipates perfectly on its way toward earth, so that this little ball in infinity is a fit place for us to live. The sun melts the April snow with ease. The snow was here just a couple days ago, white and sodden. Now it is gone and the black earth absorbs more of the sun's energy during the day. Burn baby burn. It all keeps us alive.

Signs of Change

2009-04-05T19:53:00.000-07:00

I don't know why we pretend to be surprised that April weather in Illinois can be a little capricious. As I write this there is 3" of snow accumulated. The morning winds were persistent and smelled of precipitation.

That meant it made sense to enter Nelson Lake close to where I wanted to bird, which required a little cheating. I parked at the "old" entrance that was once the only way to get into the park. I noticed things were different than usual. There were muddy tracks and mounds of black dirt heaped at the spot where a former concrete platform once served as the foundation for a large metal Quonset building. That hut and the mechanical cranes that drove to and fro in the marsh are now long gone, removed by the county. It was quite an effort to extricate one crane literally bogged down in peat and tilted to one side. It took years and lots of volunteer effort to clean up all that industry. The only remaining vestige of the peat mining business is the crushed gravel road bed that leads from the old entrance to the base of the woods on the west side of the marsh.

The road had been used by hunters as well. Every fall the marsh would convert to an extended hunting lodge, one of the best places for shooting ducks and geese in northern Illinois, it was reported. A small shack at the end of the road held flat-bottomed boats good for waterfowling. Hunters stored decoys in the shacks and would nail the heads of ducks they'd shot to the walls to keep track of the number of species they bagged each fall.

Back at the entrance there is another vestige of days gone by at Dick Young/Nelson

Lake Forest Preserve––the little flip box that stands mounted to a post. This is where birders could make note of what they'd seen that day at the marsh. The system was

simple. A set of birding lists was kept inside the box. You'd fill out what you'd seen so that other birders would be aware of interesting species.

Kids visiting the marsh often would open the box and write obscene names on the sheets. They did not seem to know that many bird names already sound obscene. Red-shafted flicker. White breasted nuthatch. Brown creeper. And I dare you to Google that European species, the Great Tit!

Of course words like these were the very reason I took so much grief for being a birder during high school. My classmates would make up even randier sounding false names for birds. Some of these attempts at teasing me about birds including made-up names using the first or last name of a particular promiscuous girl. My sophmoric buddies thought it SO funny to ask me if I'd seen the Paula Boobalicous Bird lately...

We birders survive these travails one way or another. These days the guys who used to tease me now call to ask what bird they're seeing at the feeder. This birding avocation has gone mainstream.

Just past the forlorn little box that no longer gets any attention (thanks to IBET and a hundred other ways to post your bird sightings) a male cardinal was singing his guts out from a windy perch. It was so dark and the wind was so strong I could not get a decent photograph even though the bird was singing tantalizingly close. For all my attempts over the years, I have exactly three good pictures of a cardinal, and dozens of missed opportunities. They are a jinx bird for me when it comes to digiscoping, but no so bad as blue jays, which are an evasive species of bird when it comes to photography. You wouldn't think so, but they are.

At the first pond a small group of bufflehead ducks was engaging in mating antics. They get quite animated, raising themselves above the surface, diving and chasing the females and each other around. Totally entertaining ducks, these. I took some pics but again, the light was dim and their movements made them blurry. Keep trying...

The county conducted a burn this past week and the marsh was blackened and thinned-out looking. But that's a good thing. Nature will roar back with even more bio-material. The cattails succumbed to the burn to a degree, but it almost seemed like they conspired to let the tops singe off and keep the crucial parts intact. Cattails advance every year at the marsh, doing their natural succession thing. This process is running its course by filling in the old peat ponds. That's how the peat formed in the first place, with vegetation falling into water and rotting at the bottom. No surprise here! But our expectations for stasis in nature tend to be sentimental. Nature doesn't give a rip. Evolution demands that new niches be occupied. Where open water from peat mining once hosted frogs and ducks, red-winged blackbirds and marsh wrens now make their nests.

For some creatures the cattail zone is like a choked up urban street, a good way to pass undetected from one point to another. I do not suppose deer cut through the cattails in water that runs a foot deep, so I surmise the trail

may be the work of a beaver or muskrat. At more than a foot wide, the trail suggests something big and persistent makes a habit of cutting through there all winter.

I met up with a herd of deer in the woods. There were six of them, all with goofily cocked ears and no antlers, of course. These were young specimens as deer go, dainty and coy looking. They were also quite hairy

looking. Their dull brown winter coats seemed ready to shed. As I stood there taking pictures of some Fox sparrows, the deer struck that balance between curious and being on guard. When I lifted my scope to leave they all ran like a pack of mischievous kids. They were probably headed over to the old lift box to write obscene things about bird watchers.

I stopped my walk at a spot where the burn was complete. The ground was formed of a thick, loamy peat soil. All around me birds were feeding in the low vegetation, out of the wind. A set of newly bright goldfinches flitted about in their half moulted plumage. Song sparrows and Fox sparrows seemed almost interchangeable in the dull early light. The Fox sparrows sang so beautifully you could not miss their presence. One sat long enough for me to get a half decent photo. The red coloration in their plumage and that perfect white breast make a great looking bird. I wish they stayed with us to breed here in Illinois.

Far in the distance near the east side viewing deck, I could see one remaining pelican. The male bird sat on a spit of ground jutting out into the lake. He was resting peacefully enough. A couple years ago one pelican remained for weeks, apparently too sick or hurt to migrate. One wonders where they go to die. Later on IBET there was a report of 7 more pelicans that I did not see. The bird I saw was keeping company with a flock of American wigeon, which tend to be sociable birds. Meanwhile a flock of green-winged teal flew back and forth in that frenetic teal way. They seemed edgy and nervous, whipping around like anxious thoughts over a burned out marsh. Even nature seemed a bit haggard and depressed this morning, stuck in a spin cycle of late winter weather. This too shall pass.

There is always some change going on at Nelson Lake Marsh, either man-made or natural.

Pelicans in the Snow

2009-03-29T11:26:00.000-07:00

It was considerably quieter in terms of human traffic this morning at Nelson Lake Marsh than a week ago. Mine were the first footprints leading out to the viewing deck in newly fallen snow. Rain from the previous night formed large, slushy puddles on the trail. The wind blew fiercely. I was disappointed not to have elected to attach the hood on my winter jacket. My fleece gloves were also a bit thin for conditions with 25mph northwest winds and intermittent snow.

Despite my stupid mistakes in attire, the scenery was nevertheless striking and there were (as expected) quite a few birds present. On my way to the east side viewing deck, a brightly colored eastern meadowlark perched to sing on one of the wire cages set up to protect a group of young oaks planted by the County. The meadowlark's loud calls seemed defiantly musical in the early light and its yellow breast stood out against the background of gray woods and snowy white fields. (photo above).

There were golden-crowned kinglets flitting north through the woods, and into the wind. The orange (male) and lemon-colored (female) crowns of these birds always catch the eye. I first saw kinglets as a young birder in Elburn 38 years ago. They are birds that will not sit still to be seen. Some things never change.

I wondered if the large group of pelicans present at the lake the last 2 weeks might have moved south or found someplace else to park it during the snow storm. But where would they go? Not to worry, there were dozens of pelicans perched on their favorite point of mucky land near the east side viewing deck. Across the lake were dozens more, all with bills tucked into their back feathers, huddled behind walls of cattails. Standing near the pelicans, up to their crooked legs and shaggy butts in water, were a pair of rust-colored sandhill cranes. All the biggest birds were taking it slow this morning. No rush to feed and fight the elements.

Soon enough the pelicans got active, stretching and swimming around. A few took to the air and found it slow going across the lake in a persistent wind. My fingers grew numb holding binoculars, focusing the scope and flicking snow off the camera before taking pictures. Anyone who has a digi-scoping setup knows how difficult it can be to use when the weather's cold, the wind is up and the light is low. Quite difficult to get good results.

While watching the pelicans wake up I found an active squadron of ruddy ducks among a large number of scaup dispersed about the lake. Some ring-necked ducks were found too, identifiable by that distinctive white patch between breast and side. Many of the scaup were busy feeding, arching into the water with the distinctive slick dive they do. A pair of wood ducks flew over as a slug of buffleheads began conducting courtship activity on the near shore.

My eye jumped from the buffleheads to another set of ruddy ducks feeding in the northeast corner of the lake. Behind the ruddies was another shape; thinner, with a black neck & face and a thin quiver of yellow feathers behind the eye. A spring plumage eared grebe! The bird dove quickly and repeatedly. Either the fishing was very good or very bad. The bird looked so small among the waves tearing at the surface of the lake that I studied it long and hard to make sure my eyes (or scope) did not play tricks on me. It was most certainly an eared grebe. That one's worth posting to IBET, I thought.

I wondered what kind of fish or crustacean (crayfish?) these diving ducks and grebes find to eat at Nelson Lake. Pondering that thought brought to mind an exaggeration I posted last week about what how much pelicans eat. I inaccurately supposed that pelicans eat their body weight in fish each day. An IBET reader who read this blog more accurately pointed out that pelicans are known to eat about 3 lbs of fish each day, not 20 as I'd proposed. I stand corrected.

I get a little too excited and literary about all this to qualify as any sort of true scientist. But I do want to know what grebes eat, and how much, so I'll now look that up.

In fact I want to know what every bird eats at Nelson Lake. I have seen a few prime examples of bird diet in action. I saw an osprey grab a bright orange carp (about 10" long) from the surface of the lake and ingest the whole thing in a single sitting. Flying to his feeding post, the osprey looked like it was carrying a big hunk of bright orange candy.

I also saw a great blue heron gulp down a giant carp that looked too big for its throat. The heron first used its bill to stab the fish through its middle section, then flipped the 15" carp face first so that it could slide down the heron's convulsing, bulging neck. I almost threw up watching it.

Seeing events like these makes you realize the natural abundance in terms of food stocks at Nelson Lake. I've seen greater yellowlegs catch leeches in the peat ponds at the north end of the lake. The yellowlegs I was watching first chomped the leech down its entire body length before tossing it down like a sardine.

I've watched shrikes tackle songbirds and stick them on thorns and kestrels tracking down grasshoppers on the wing, then perch and eat them like leggy tacos. I've also watched a red tailed hawk snatch up a snake on a hot summer day. Its crop was so full it did not fly for a while. All these meals keep the food cycle going. In future posts I'll share some of the eating habits of shrews, mink, beaver, muskrats, gray fox and coyotes seen at Nelson Lake.

I've witnessed some cool things in nature, but I admit I am not a real ornithologist. I love science but its pure objectivity comes difficult for me. I am more fascinated by the attainment of knowledge than any analysis of its results. Heck, I'm even a screwup when it comes to turning in results from census projects. I've learned that if I don't turn the results in right away, it simply doesn't get done. I did five years of census work at Nelson Lake but could never get my results entered with the Bird Conservation Network site. Turns out you have to use a PC, not a Mac.

It all seems to build character in some way, but there seems to be some gap between my love of nature and assembling the critical data to truly know much about it. Perhaps there is something in me that does not want to resolve these issues. While I'm no longer the nature romantic I once was, it is still largely an emotional, not a scientific connection––I seek in going birding.

I do know this: Cold as it was outside today, the sight and sounds of Dick Young Forest Preserve and Nelson Lake Marsh captivated some deeper side of my imagination. I happily trudged through clear pools of water in my LL Bean boots.

See, I love this side of spring; the early ugly happy wet rainy slushy water running down hill side of spring. Life is full of mess and promise. It shows you that certain acts of nature never change. Water runs down hill. Mud erodes. Snow piles up in tiny crystals (billions of them) only to melt away when temperatures rise as the sun strikes the earth.

I go out to feel the elements. To see the birds. To watch water run down a hillside as it has for a thousand million years.

That's why I came to see pelicans in the snow, because they remain an original, wild element of experience in the natural world. It is a strange and actually non-present kinship. It was cold and the pelicans and I were alone together in a sodden landscape on the 29th of March.

A rite of passage. I could stand to go to church knowing I'd felt some small shred of my real self in that place. Windblown that it was.

Tons of pelicans and people

2009-03-22T15:43:00.000-07:00

It was a morning for people as well as birds at Dick Young/Nelson Lake Marsh this Sunday, March 22. The viewing deck was used by many to view the large flocks of white pelicans. In previous years the flocks arrived in early April. This year thanks to moderate weather or whatever pelicans use to judge their migration calendar, the birds showed up in Mid-March. Walking out to the platform with Jon Duerr (recently retired from working with the Kane County Forest Preserve...and for whom a preserve is named in South Elgin) it was interesting to hear his recollection that a couple decades ago the sight of a flock of white pelicans was considered quite a discovery. These birds were uncommon back then and an absolutely joyous discovery during migration season. Not quite an apparition on the order of a whooping crane, but almost.

As Jon and I made our way from the east-side viewing platform toward the south end of the lake, I commented how much I happen to enjoy robins. Jon noted that the topic of over-wintering robins once became a point of contention in the early days of IBET. Jon turned to look at me rather thoughtfully, and I realized we had stumbled on the same thought. "Do you remember that Christmas count we did in 1980?" he asked. Jon and I had discovered healthy flocks of robins in forest preserve near Carpentersville. It was considered an oddity to find one wintering robin back then, much less 50 or 60. It was fun to fill out the census report and have the list maker ask, "Robins? In December?" Now it's commonplace. "The trends have increased ever since," Jon noted.

You never know when it might be you that encounters the first sign of a bird population change.

The continuing growth in annual numbers of white pelicans visiting Nelson Lake Marsh is certainly noteworthy in northern Illinois. Local birding expert Eric Secker counted more than 300 white pelicans at Nelson Lake Marsh this past weekend.

I did some quick math with those numbers. If you figure each bird has a 8-foot wingspan and got them to fly wingtip to wingtip, their collective wingspans would cover 2400 horizontal feet. That's nearly half a mile of white and black elegance.

More bird math: If each pelican weighs between 18-20 lbs, a flock of 300 birds adds up to 6,000 lbs. of pelican. That's three whole tons!

They probably eat somewhere near their weight in fish each day. In 20 days of feeding at Nelson lake, that adds up to 120,000 lbs. or 60 tons of fish. That's plenty of competition for the cormorants. Maybe that's why there aren't too many seen at Nelson Lake yet this year. That and the fact that snow is predicted for the 28th of March. The cormorants must be paying attention to our local WGN weatherman Tom Skilling and staying down south until the threat of ice and snow is completely over.

The thing I like best about pelicans is that for such big birds they seldom look heavy or ponderous. To maintain their feathers they spend considerable time preening each day. Using their long beaks they pull and pry feathers into proper order. During this activity they also stretch their wings and raise their beaks into the air. The males show bright orange, black and red patches on the underside of the beak. The beak itself is orange-yellow, and the fleshy parts around the eyes are a parrot-like yellow. Their eyes are clear and bluish, almost human-looking.

Speaking of humans and pelicans, the two were mixing in rather interesting fashion this weekend. Bird photographers waded into the near edge of the marsh. A couple guys reported to IBET that they actually got stuck. Other observers stood back on the viewing stand or perched on a clearing of the bluff watching the scene with quiet marvel. Pelicans resemble ocean schooners with necks raised like masts as they leave quiet wakes in the water. Watching the people who were watching the pelicans was like standing at some park near the ocean. You could almost imagine some widow pining for her sailor to return from the sea...

A few newcomers did not know quite what to make of so many pelicans. I asked one group of viewers dressed in church clothes how they found out about the birds. "Some woman came to our church," a young woman told me. "She was dressed like some safari chick or something. She told us about the pelicans. So we decided to come out." The young woman then held up her camera to get a picture of herself and her younger brother with a raft of pelicans in the background. I knew from experience those pelicans in the photograph would look like nothing more than a rim of salt on a margarita glass. But at least she could brag to her friends. "Don't I look great? And look, behind me are pelicans!" Upon such experiences is new knowledge founded.

There were intermediate birders as well, people schooled enough to bring their own binoculars, but not so serious they'd go wading in up to their knees. One pair of women from Oswego were having fun watching flocks of pelicans congeal at different points on the lake. "I'd never heard about this place before," one of them told me. "How long has it been here?"

I explained that the preserve had grown in parcels over the years, starting with the main channel of the lake that reached to the north boundary where a peat mining operation once operated. Then came purchase of the woods, the south shore, the east farm, west farm and finally the wide expanse that now reaches to Bliss Road. That's still unexplored territory even for many of us regulars. It is hard to tear ourselves away from the lake and woods. But I am headed there in the next few weeks. I have a feeling there are wonders to be found. If anyone cares to join me...drop a line to cudworthfix@gmail.com. This blog is going to start including photos and observations from others. I know that marsh isn't mine alone...

But speaking of discoveries: There was a surprise find in the deep thickets of the near east shore. A young deer had succumbed either to hunger or predators. Its skeleton neatly lay in an open patch. Its fur lay in a wide mat nearby. Had coyotes had a feast?

If the birders aren't careful, they could end up stuck in the mud and turned to fossils like that deer might turn out if it were suddenly covered with mud. It is easy to imagine that skeleton turned from bone into stone. One more example of the processes of nature at work.

I turned away from the bones to enjoy the scene on a Sunday morning. People of all stripes were out enjoying nature. That is the stated mission of the Kane County Forest Preserve District: To set it aside and make it accessible. The plan was working today.

I don't know if the forest preserve pays the pelicans to appear each spring. If so, it is a good investment. By mid afternoon I read on IBET that the parking lot was overflowing. The handicap-accessible trail got lots of traffic. This was a Sunday people would never forget. The sun was shining. It was warm. There were giant white pelicans within easy reach for the average, everyday Joe who wants to see them.

So let's do some people math. If 100 people came by today to see the pelicans, and each person averaged 180 lbs. in weight, that's 18,000 lbs. of people walking the trails, standing on the viewing platform and enjoying Nelson Lake. Nine tons of people! The pelicans might be impressed to know they carry that much weight. Or maybe not. They seem to prefer ignoring people for the most part. Even the photographers jammed into the cattails did not seem to rattle the pelicans much.

You never know how many converts to birding a day like this may make. I would have liked to have shown some of the newcomers the delightful flock of Fox Sparrows along the south trail, or taught them to hear the rusty creak of a lone rusty blackbird in the culvert there. Jon Duerr predicted I might find them. Birders love to pass along potential sightings, it seems.

But the word is already out that the pelicans are here.

It's March. Gotta get that sparrow rhythm

2009-03-19T17:46:00.000-07:00

Over the years I've had many opportunities to lead groups through Nelson Lake Marsh. While it is fun to join other experts in the field and find unusual or rare birds, it is equally enjoyable to lead groups of novices through the paces of finding and identifying birds, plants and the occasional amphibian or reptile.

I kind of got pulled away from leading groups the last few years and I miss it. I'll probably join up up soon with the Kane County Audubon group that meets the first Saturday of each month (8 am). I'm vowing right now to lead other walks as well. So consider this an invitation. Want to meet me on some random occasion? Email me cudworthfix@gmail.com. That's my IBET handle too...

This blog got started as an effort to get out more. As you can see, it is off more to a rolling start than a sprint. But the pelicans are calling...

At Nelson Lake one never fails to find something of interest to look at, even when the birds are quiet. Today's photo of the moon reflected in a pond at the northeast end of the preserve captures my mood one recent Sunday during a walk just after dawn. There were plenty of birds about. Robins caroling from the burr oaks. A lone rusty blackbird singing among a flock of red wings at the top of a tall cottonwood. Chickadees flitted ahead of me on the gravel trail. It's almost like a Disney movie out there some weeks...

I stopped to look at a song sparrow singing his guts out at a nearby rival. I never tire of looking at song sparrows for some reason. They're with us through all seasons. I admire their fortitude. They really are beautiful birds. Common, but never boring. I listened to two song sparrows birds singing alternate territorial songs to each other. Their songs seldom overlapped. One used a slightly higher pitch. The other finished with a distinguished trill. Did you know song sparrows have "dialects" in different parts of the country? A song sparrow heard in the southwest sounds quite unlike a song sparrow here in Illinois.

It goes to show that even among common birds, there is incredible variety. That is the power of evolution at work, of course. Not only do sparrows vary by song, they often vary by color and size depending on where in the country they live and breed. Northernmost song sparrows tend to be larger and darker, an adaptation to their habitat and climate. Southern birds tend to be smaller and lighter, the better to shed heat and appear less conspicuous in dry, bright climates. Even those little populations of seaside sparrows show color variances based on habitat alone.

There was one Fox Sparrow singing on the west hill last Sunday, March 16. The song of a Fox Sparrow is so distinctive, rich and clear it remains a treat each spring when they migrate through. In late October or early November they arrive just ahead of the first cold winds. That is why I am so glad to hear them again in March. They bookend the winter for me.

Sparrows all have their rhythms. Swamp sparrows tend to hang in packs. LeConte's pop up for maybe three days each fall. Lincoln's fool the heck out of you with their Swamp Sparrow imitations, yet a clean plumage Lincoln's sparrow is a visual treat in its gray big and thin breast streaks.

Tree Sparrows are elegant and occupy their niche in rolling flocks that communicate with that slippery "chliep" note gives them away even in the thickets.

Come spring, Field sparrows trade displace the Trees. The whole of Nelson Lake has a sparrow rhythm. In summer you will find Vesper, Savannah and grasshopper sparrows in the restored west side prairie. Henslow's can be found some years at the far south side of the prairie where the weedy field plants and goldenrod mix with bluestem.

In fall the Clay-colored sparrows pop up next to the trail leading north from the east side viewing deck. Chipping sparrows are rare at Nelson Lake, but you can find them sometimes in the pines. White-throated and White-crowned sparrows can be found in the woods on both sides of the lake in spring and fall. A good plumage White-crowned sparrow is one of the best treats on any bird hike. So clean. So gray. So perfect.

I have yet to find many Sharp-tailed sparrows at Nelson Lake. That would make a perfect connection, though. A Nelson's Sharp-tailed sparrow at Nelson Lake. And I have yet to land a Lark Sparrow. Supposedly their range covers our part of Illinois, but in 30 years of birding I have yet to find one in Kane County. My loss. They're gorgeous birds too. I'll keep looking. I'm going to try the far western reaches of the preserve where there tends to be some open ground. That's the habitat I saw them occupying in Nebraska graveyard, along with some prickly pear cactus.

I know these sparrow species are mostly common. They aren't Lark Buntings wandering in from the plains or Solitaire's pining for northwest rainforests. Both those birds have been seen in the general vicinity of Nelson Lake Marsh. But I'll take what I can get. Gotta love these sparrow rhythms.

Anyone care to join me when the thrushes come through? That's my next common bird vice. On the right May day you can get 6-8 species in a single trip.

Natural Succession

2009-03-07T07:54:00.000-08:00

Friday was gorgeous weather for a walk at Nelson Lake Marsh.

Too bad I didn't get there. The birding posts on IBET were tantalizing. Pintail ducks. Shovelers. Teal. Scaup. Goldeneye. Merganser. Good work, Yeanette Johnson! Some of us had to live through your joys vicariously.

I did manage a noon walk near work yesterday at Pratt's Wayne Woods. It would be more accurate to call my visit there a "stand" rather than a "walk." I stepped out of my car, set up my scope and proceeded to find more active species of birds in 25 square yards than I have seen in weeks. Spring is here, you see. I found purple finch, cedar waxwing, rusty blackbird, hairy woodpecker, active flocks of redwings, grackles, robins (the beauty of robins––a thrush!––is underrated, which is why I featured them today) as well as some very active bluebirds.

When we finally get nice weather it feels like it will last forever. We deceive ourselves, in other worlds.

The next morning brought low cloud ceilings and pending rains and the weather seemed to fit the morning news. Both the Chicago Tribune and Daily Herald carried stories about rolling waves of job layoffs, families with tight finances and warnings that the worst may be yet to come. Funny how the weather seems sometimes to fit the news.

All that engendered discussion in our household about money and work and life in general. That meant I did not get out to the marsh this morning until 8:30 a.m. By then the skies had turned threatening...

Fortunately I've always liked the marsh under dank conditions. Its normally dull colors in early spring turn rich and almost bright when they get wet.

There is even a certain romance to a so-called "bad day" for birding. The voices of Herring and Ring-billed gulls carry that thrillingly wild, oceanic quality to them even over an inland marsh. Both species were having a feast on fish left dead after ice-out at the lake.

I also found floating pods of ruddy ducks, scaup, ring-necks, gadwall and wood ducks flying past. There were common mergansers and one happy looking little flock of wigeon far off in the distance. At a half mile distant, their white foreheads were barely visible through the mist and gathering gloom.

This time of year the collection of ducks on the main lake changes day to day, even hour to hour. You can't expect to automatically see the same group of shovelers someone reported the day before. But at least in spring the ducks can be seen during the day. In fall the waterfowl usually rise off the lake before dawn and sometimes come back well after twilight. In autumn you have to be willing to get up early and freeze your fingers to see ducks or stay past sundown and try to identify waterfowl by silhouette and flight pattern as they swoop in to settle for the night.

In spring if you hit the right day and the angle of the sun is right, the main lake is salted with white shapes that almost magically turn into redheads, canvasbacks, ring-necked ducks and scaup when viewed through binoculars or spotting scope. Who needs virtual reality when you own a spotting scope?

I dug for more species but the rain kicked up and it kept getting darker. I decided to partake in some close up observation in the woods rather than fight for distant sightings through theforce of the elements.

Wandering north from the east-side viewing platform I found a few tree and song sparrows in the field margins. A red-bellied woodpecker called from the shagbark hickory grove overlooking a deep gully carved out by the seasonal wash of a runoff stream over the years.

At the base of the stream gully sat a greenish boulder. This rock is probably a glacial remnant since that is how the area around Dick Young Nature Preserve and Nelson Lake were formed. The boulder's coating of green lichens shone in natural glory under the wet conditions.

There were other colors to be found as well. All around me were little pink flags, leftovers from forest preserve restoration work. Pink is a most unnatural color on a dank spring day, but I do not begrudge their presence. They represent an environmental ethic that says "We shall not let this preserve degrade to ruin." Under that vow restoration managers fight invasive, aggressive species of plants. Crews cut down buckthorns and spray herbicide on the shorn shoots. Garlic mustard gets uprooted and purple loosestrife is attacked with clippers. Without these human efforts our forest preserves would turn into potentially ugly monocultures, lacking diversity, uninteresting.

I'm sure everyone realizes by now that nature is its own worst enemy. We can apply all the environmental ethics we like to managing natural habitat management, but it is nature itself we are battling.

Natural succession is the biggest challenge. There is a spot northwest of St. Charles that used to be a prime wetland. It has been privately owned for decades, and during 30 short years natural succession took over with cattails and dying vegetation. The lake basin has filled in completely. Gone are the 15-20 species of waterfowl that used to visit that wetland. No more least or American bitterns (I saw them in 1975) common gallinule(1978) or marsh wrens. Six species of swallows used to hunt the insect-laden air over that little lake. Nature took all that away. Now there are swamp sparrows and the requisite red-winged blackbirds. But diversity has diminished. Deer now walk across the property where a lake once sat!

That is the fate of wetlands in Illinois that do not get managed to maintain open water. That's why it is easy to panic then when water levels drop at Nelson Lake. The beavers who did the county a favor by erecting a dam in the southwest corner of the lake may or may not be counted on to keep lake levels high. In Pratt's Wayne Woods the DuPage County Forest Preserve District fought the beavers for control over water levels for a while. Finally the FPD elected to take precautionary measures by putting in dams to control water volumes in wetlands along the prairie path. They also conduct burns to knock back vegetation. Still the former lake 1/2 mile west of Powis Road filled in with cattails.

When I look at Nelson Lake these days I see open water and cattails in a constant battle for the mud margins between. The ponds that were dug out by peat miners on the north of the lake have almost all filled in. The drought year of 1988 killed off most of the native frogs anyway.

There are remaining channels of open water threading the north end of the marsh. I check them out each year when the ice is solid. But if the water level drops, these too will grow in with cattails.

There are signs that the lake has endured much lower water levels in the past. A fenceline runs through the mud on the northeast side of the lake. I can remember walking along that fenceline and barely getting my feet muddy. Now those fenceposts are neck deep in marsh muck. This is the yin and yang of natural areas management. The county tries to restore what farmers once claimed for pasture.

It is worthwhile to concern ourselves with what the future of Nelson Lake will be. Quality wetlands are so rare and examples of ruined wetlands so common that it is good to keep a vigilant eye on the "state of the marsh." We owe that to any marsh we love.

March 1st and other falsehoods

2009-03-02T17:47:00.001-08:00

One must begin somewhere. Perhaps a pair of cranes on ice is as good a place as any. These birds come in before spring has really arrived and leave well after fall has peaked. Cranes are hardy birds, resourceful, wary and seemingly pretty smart. Mostly they prefer to go about their business and keep out of trouble with people.

In that regard I share some history with the cranes when it comes to Nelson Lake Marsh.

When the Illinois Nature Preserve was established to protect the first patch of land around Nelson Lake, cranes were not often found on the property for very long. The lake in fall was used as a hunting preserve. The upper reaches were used by a peat mining operation with tough gravel roads cutting through the property. Hunters used these same roads to access duck blinds and hunting shacks come fall. One hunter told me his crew once bagged 20 species of ducks in one season. Having birded NLM for more than 30 years, I can just about name them all, some by their old hunter names; canvasback, bufflehead, baldpate, pintail, goldeneye, scaup, mallard, wigeon, blue-winged and green-winged teal, redhead, ring-necks, shoveler, black duck, hooded merganser, common merganser, ruddy duck, wood duck and the occasional scoter or two thrown in. The hunters surveyed the marsh annually by gun sight, and told tales of years thick with waterfowl.

The bulk of the property for years around Nelson Lake was private, and mostly farms. Hunters liked to sit on the hills north of Nelson Lake to peg ducks by shotgun. On the east side of the property was a busy farm where cattle nosed into the marsh margins. The fence lines from that farm still bisect the eastern edge of the marsh. When the county started tearing down the fencing I took a few posts as souvenirs of days gone by. One of those posts I took for safekeeping in my art studio and was used in a painting done as a retirement gift to Dick Young, for whom the property is now named. A picture of that painting is included with this blog.

The preserve is now well named, for it was the work of people like Dick Young and Charles and Dorothy Brownold that was responsible for its protection.

But I must relate that for a long time after it was first protected, Nelson Lake Marsh had something of a Wild West feel. I can remember standing on the north side of the lake wondering if shot from the pellets across the lake could travel that far. I also had a shotgun pointed at my head by an angry farmer who did not like the fact that I was walking his property on the east side of the lake. "Get your ****ing ass ooutta here or I'll shoot you,"he warned.

It would not be the only time a gun was pointed my way at Nelson Lake. A few other hunters did the honor as well, usually over disagreements about where the preserve line ended and where private property began. They were simply trying to protect their right to traditions that were probably handed down to them over the years.

But there were also moments when the law was clear––but priorities were the issue at hand––like the time an illegal trapper working his line for muskrats along the eastern lake rim stopped cold in his tracks, aimed his pistol in my direction and stared me down from 100 yards away. I had no idea if his little gun could shoot that far. But I had no interest in finding out. Not long after that incident the county purchased the whole east side and the angry hunters and illegal trapping slowly disappeared.

I almost miss them. There was a passion deserving of respect in their desire to carry out their hunting and trapping. Plus it always heightened your senses knowing you might have a gun pointed at you during a bird hike.

No matter how you take your fun when it comes to wildlife, the land around Nelson lake has probably been used in similar ways for a thousand years or more. Archaeologists found plenty of arrowheads on surveys of land around Nelson Lake. Now it's just us bird watchers who do our hunting around the shores.

And the cranes. They arrive in late February and stay through late November. In between they "own" the lake for themselves. Through cold and wind and heat and rain they occupy the turf I so enjoy. To the cranes, I am also something of an intruder. I guess some things never change.