Alex Palmer's Natural History Notes and Thoughts

If you're out prepping your garden bed for winter, listen closely.  A little more closely!  Alongside the noise of the city and up in the sky, you might here a chorus of trills.  Look up!  Those hauntingly primeval sounds might be those of the Sandhill Crane ( Antigone canadensis ). Yes, we have cranes in the Chicago region!   And right around Thanksgiving is one of the best times to see flocks of them flying over (figure 1) as they make their way south for the winter.  In fact, over 80,000   of these elegant, heron-like birds with wingspans in excess of 6 feet fly over the Chicago region during fall and spring migration each year. Figure 1:  A flock of migrating Sandhill Cranes in flight.   If you are a city dweller, more often than not the best view you'll get of these birds is like the one shown in Figure 1.  As such, people often confuse them with geese.  However, just a few extra moments of observation is all that is needed to distinguish clumsy Canada Geese ( Br

This blog post consists of my notes from a lecture on the natural history of turtles in Cook County, Illinois, delivered by Chris Anchor, wildlife biologist with the Forest Preserves of Cook County.  The lecture and following staff training was conducted at Thatcher Woods in River Forest, IL during the morning of August 29, 2018 to an audience of mostly Forest Preserves staff.   Native Cook County Turtle Species: Common Snapping Turtle ( Chelydra serpentina ) Painted Turtle ( Chrysemys picta ) Spiny Softshell ( Apalone spinifera ) Stinkpot or Musk ( Sternotherus odoratus ) Box Turtle ( Terrapene carolina ) Map Turtle ( Graptemys geographica ) False Map Turtle ( G. pseudogeographica ) Red-eared Slider ( Trachemys scripta ) Spotted Turtle ( Clemmys guttata ) Snapping Turtle Figure 1:  Common Snapping Turtle displaying its jaws Snapping Turtles have jaws that crush prey rather than cut them (figure 1).  Males frequently wander to look for females to mate with.  They e

"BzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!"  As if late summer in Chicago isn't already noisy enough, with late night street festivals, the screech of school buses stopping to pick up children for their first day of school, the thumping sounds of college students moving back in, and all of the other late-season cacophony, you can now add in the nearly constant buzzing call of the Scissor-Grinder Cicada ( Neotibicen pruinosis pruinosis ) (see figures 1 and 2) to the summer's concluding jam. Figure 1:  Front view of a cicada Figure 2:  Dorsal (top) view of a cicada You rarely see these noisy creatures, as most of them are high up in the trees.  But when one pops down onto the ground, like the one shown in figures 1 and 2, their formidable appearance can be quite a surprise!   Do not be alarmed, however, as cicadas are harmless to people. Figure 3:  Location of tymbals on a cicada.   Cicadas actually spend most of their life underground as larvae, feeding o

The next time you are down on the ground pulling weeds out of our garden plot, look up!  On a hazy late afternoon you might see dozens of sooty-colored birds twirling around and around in the open sky.  And you'll hear a lot of "chatter chatter" calls as these graceful urban birds catch and gobble down insects.  These birds that you are seeing and hearing are most likely one of the few native city birds we have in Chicago, known as the Chimney Swift ( Chaetura pelagica) .  You can view a short video clip of Chimney Swifts flying over the Chicago Lakefront: Chimney swifts live up to their name, as their primary choice of nesting locations are in old, brick chimneys commonly found in older neighborhoods like the University Village neighborhood in Chicago.  Historically these birds likely nested in large tree snags, but as cities in the United States grew, the population of Chimney Swifts increased in correspondence with the construction of open brick chimneys.  Chim

Birds chirping.  The sounds of children laughing and playing.  A monarch butterfly drifting by a small garden patch of flowers.... ...Honking, shouting, a bus slamming into a pothole, and the roar of a generator from a large concrete building with two giant smoke stacks. The sights and sounds when I cross Ashland Avenue from my quite residential neighborhood of University Village in Chicago to the industrious Illinois Medical District are quite contrasting. This is a common scenario across the city of Chicago.  One corner will be a serene and tree-lined residential neighborhood, the next block a noisy and aggressive 4-lane highway with faded brick buildings and the musky smell of diesel exhaust.  These disorienting "hard edges" between neighborhoods are easily visible in aerial imagery, such as the Google satellite view of the western edge of my neighborhood (figure 1). Figure 1:  The land cover of the western edge of University Village (right) contrasts sharply wi

"Is that a weed?  How about that one?  Or that one??"  This is a question I have heard countless times from plot renters at the Taylor Street Farms urban garden in Chicago.  What exactly is a weed?  And how does one know what is considered a weed and which is not?  Are humans just arbitrarily biased against some plants, and subsequently do we just label things a weed when we don't like it? The confusion arises from the fact that there are actually two definitions of "weed" in this context (ignoring a deviant third definition, of course).  One definition of a weed is any plant that is considered undesirable.  Dandelions ( Taraxacum officinale ) are great examples.  Ugh, who wants those ugly yellow flowers disrupting a lush green lawn?  And they're impossible to get rid of it seems!  This definition of a weed is inherently biased, as the very same plant could be considered by others as a prized botanical specimen.  In many parts of Europe, for example, Dande

The next time you are digging in your garden plot on a hot summer day, be on the lookout for our colorful and winged insect friends, the butterflies.  While the idea of bugs in the garden might detract the squeamish, butterflies are more often than not a welcome visitor in urban gardens - and in fact many gardeners will try to attract plants they find at home and garden centers that claim to be a "magnet" for butterflies.  Indeed, common nursery stock plants like Butterfly Bush ( Buddleia davidii ) do attract many species of butterflies, giving the false impression that planting ornamental garden flowers will increase the amount of butterflies.  It's deceiving because there is a difference between attracting butterflies and supporting the life stages of butterflies.  Most garden plants that people plant provide a source of nectar for them to feed on, but that's it.  They do not provide the necessary elements to support their growth and development, which for butterfl

The next time you visit the Taylor Street Farms, and urban organic community garden in Chicago's Little Italy area of the University Village neighborhood , I want you to do something.  On a nice sunny spring day, I want you to sit somewhere in the middle of the garden, anywhere you'd like, and close your eyes.  As you close your eyes, imagine that you are sitting in this same spot 200 years ago.  You look around and for miles you see nothing but tall grass prairie gradually descending into a marsh fed by the blue waters of Lake Michigan.  Try to tune out the sounds of trucks and honking cars and imagine those sounds being replaced with the trill calls of  thousands of Sandhill Cranes flying overhead as a gentle breeze brushes your ear.  You hear the warm, sweet song of a bright orange Baltimore Oriole singing from the tops of a 500 year-old Bur Oak tree which is surrounded by blooming yellow-lady-slipper orchids.  You are in pre-colonial Chicago.  Now open your eyes.  You