Alex Palmer's Natural History Notes and Thoughts

Hello readers! Follow me on Instagram for photos and video clips of all things urban in nature!  Search for: chiurbannaturalist

If you're sheltering in place and can't get out to a large natural area, then here are some tips and suggestions for learning about and admiring Chicago's urban street trees.  Enjoy!   Download a free field guide to the Trees of Chicago in Winter: https://fieldguides.fieldmuseum.org/guides/guide/885

This blog post is my first attempt of publishing entirely in Spanish.  For those that are fluent in Spanish, please lend me your feedback and suggestions for improvement.  Thank you.  - Alex Palmer ~ Si vives en algún lugar alrededor de Chicago que tenga por menos algunos poco arboles, verás a menos algunos aves.  Los aves están en casi todos lugares, pero los lugares con más árboles tienen más especies de aves.  En esto entrada de blog, vamos a aprender sobre algunos aves comunes los cuales puede ver de tu ventana durante el invierno en la región Chicago. Mirlo Primavera .   Esto ave no solo aquí durante la primavera.  Los tenemos también en el invierno.  Sin embargo, la comida de este ave se cambia a frutas en lugar de los gusanos.  Muchas arbustos ornamentales mantienen sus bayas por el vierno, se les proporciona comida durante la clima dura. Fig. 1: Mirlo Primavera. Foto de Jakub Fryš vía Wikimedia Commons ...

September is the month of yellow, and for gardeners the easy-to-grow and popular choice of flower  is the Annual Sunflower ( Helianthus annuus ) which adorns garden borders and roadsides across the Chicago Region.  Numerous cultivars of this urban weed have been developed, and the source of commercial sunflowers and sunflower oil are derived from the Annual Sunflower (figure 1).  Figure 1:  Annual Sunflower growing  at the Taylor Street Farms community garden in Chicago.   But prior to European settlement, the Chicago region was largely absent of this tall and showy late-summer wildflower, whose range historically included the south-central United States into the plains and grasslands just to the east of the Rocky Mountains.  Instead, the prairie landscape of Northern Illinois would have been adorned with several species of native sunflowers and sunflower-like plants (figure 2).  Figure 2:  Although virtually absent of the notor...

Did you know that Illinois has a state "nickname?"  In fact, most state's do, and the nickname for Illinois is the "Prairie State."  A prairie is an open grassland without much trees that thrives in semi-arid climates, or in the case of Illinois, in areas frequented by wildfires (figure 1).  Wildfires prevent encouragement of woody trees and shrubs to allow sun-loving and deep-rooted prairie grasses and flowers to thrive.  Illinois at one point was covered with about 60% tall-grass prairie, but today less than 1% remains.  The city of Chicago was once a mixture of wetlands and prairies with small patches of forest. Figure 1:  Tallgrass prairie in the northwest suburbs of Chicago.   Over time, however, and with European colonization and eventual industrial development, the landscape and the flora and fauna found upon it changed dramatically.  Removal of topsoil, chemical pollution, introduction of non-native and invasive plants and other...