EARLY SUMMER

Learning to Fly
The falcon fledglings that live on the fire escape of a certain grand old music theater in the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago are just starting their lives as urban flyers. For now, they awkwardly grip the railing with their talons, stretching their wings, working to improve their balance and coordination. Soon enough, they'll be among the premier aerial predators in the world. The rock doves in Lincoln Park had better keep an eye out.

Their historic urban home has served the peregrine parents well. The five-year-old female, Zoom, has raised families here since 2001. Her mate this year is from Porter County, Indiana. It's a nice neighborhood; the place is quiet now that the music has stopped. This theater always did attract wildlife, myself included. I attended the final show in 1981, which featured the appropriately named rock-and-roll animal Peter Wolf.

The Caterpillar Hunter
Fiery searchers are large, metallic green, highly predatory ground beetles. All summer they will relentlessly pursue their prey — all kinds of moth and butterfly caterpillars — over the ground and through the trees. The stunningly beautiful adults hunt during the day; the soft larvae hunt by night. They use their sickle shaped jaws to grab any caterpillar they come across.

The summer of 2002 seemed to be a banner year for fiery searchers, with many gardeners noticing them under rocks and logs. Don't touch them, though — they'll release a bad smell.

MIDDLE SUMMER

Alternative Life Cycle
Red-backed salamanders are not your typical amphibians — they are terrestrial. Mom will lay eggs in damp rotting logs, rather than standing water, and then she'll brood her eggs for up to eight weeks. Moreover, when the young hatch in August, there is no "tadpole" stage or metamorphosis. A newly hatched red-back is a miniature replica of an adult.

Adult red-backs are the smallest local salamander. They're as skinny as a golf pencil and rarely reach four inches from tip to snout. They belong to a group of lungless salamanders that respire through their skin and cloacal opening. Uncommon even in suitable habitat, quite a few of these tiny salamanders make their home in the forested parts of the Indiana Dunes. They are rarely seen in the open, tending to stay under the moist leaf litter.

Still Life on Water
I read somewhere that the American lotus "makes the soul forget the woes of the Earth." Damn straight. Their picturesque yellow flowers and flat green leaves on a still pond have inspired artists, poets, and spiritualists for centuries.

American lotus grows in the slow moving backwaters of our rivers and shallow lakes. The plant forms dense colonies, spreading through seed propagation, rhizomes, and tubers. The showy blossoms, which appear in July and August, are cross-pollinated by a host of flying insects.

Drops of Sun
The prairie sundrop sounds like a slick executive at a downtown marketing agency could have named it. But they are pretty prairie plants with bright yellow flowers and slightly hairy leaves, belonging to the primrose family. Unlike most of their family members, sundrops are diurnal. Their flowers open during the long daylight hours of June and July, and close at night. Although rare, colonies of prairie sundrop seem to be doing well at prairie restorations. A plant was discovered growing at the Fermilab prairie in 2000. One colony grows near the Burlington railroad tracks as they pass through Aurora.

LATE SUMMER

Foxy Snake
Fox snakes hatch hungry. In late summer, baby fox snakes will emerge from a slit in their eggs. These mini-constrictors will shed once and begin slithering about hunting for pink newborn rodents. Next summer they'll be eating furry creatures. Starting life less than a foot long, they grow big and fast. In suitable habitat, we have many individuals over four feet in length.

Historically, fox snakes adapted well when our lands were converted from savanna and prairie to agriculture. Today, fox snakes are still found down on the farm and in those few special areas where the people don't live. I've heard they get their name from their vile defensive tactic of secreting a substance that smells like fox pee. Ewww!

Catching Flies
A few Septembers back, I went to my friends' lovely wedding at a park along the DuPage River. During most of the ceremony, I watched an eastern kingbird sally forth from a sandbar willow to snatch a meal of flying insects. He did this over and over, always returning to the same limb. I figured he was fueling up for his long migration to Amazonia. Later, during the reception, he took off to chase a Cooper's hawk that cruised over the happy couple. Highly entertaining.

Kingbirds are one of the easiest of the flycatchers to identify, with their dark head and white band across the end of the tail. They perch on a prominent post, aggressively pursuing their prey and interlopers.