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Winter
2002
Here's
what's debuting this season on nature's stage in Chicago
Wilderness
by
Jack MacRae
New
Year’s Beavers
Back
when we lived on an 80-acre island in the Des Plaines River,
my wife and I maintained a New Year’s Eve tradition of building
a fire at the river’s edge, sipping snow-chilled champagne,
and watching the local beavers as they swam across the water
with branches of cottonwood in their mouths. These branches
would be used as a quick meal or snack. During the cold
gray days of mid-winter, our adult beavers are snuggling
up in their lodges and making babies. The young kits will
be born in early spring, following a four-month gestation
period.
Hot
Nuts
I wonder if native Chicagoans Mel Torme (who wrote the
tune) or Nat King Cole (who popularized the song) ever ate
American chestnuts roasted on an open fire? The song was
written in the 1940s – a generation after a fungal
blight killed nearly every one of America’s magnificent
chestnut trees from the Mississippi to the Atlantic. The
last known American chestnut in our region was a single
large specimen at Grand Beach, in Berrien County, Michigan.
Today,
arborists are experimenting with a hybrid of American and
Asian chestnut trees in hopes of developing a fungal resistant
species. The majority of chestnuts we roast today come from
Italy.
Hatching
Nuts
Forest
birds that travel head first down the tree trunk get their
name from breaking (hatching) open nuts that they have wedged
into crevices. The white-breasted nuthatches are year-round
residents of our wooded area, and the red-breasted nuthatches
come into our area in the winter and tend to hang out in
pine groves. One would think it would be could easy to distinguish
a white-breasted nuthatch from a red-breasted nuthatch by
comparing the color of its breast. But actually, a dark
eye stripe (on the red-breasted, not on the white-breasted)
is the field mark used by most bird watchers.
Screeeech
Owl
Our
friendly neighborhood screech owls work the night shift.
Starting after dusk, these quiet little hunters will be
on duty, sitting on a low perch as they scan the ground
for movement. They sit toward the end of the branch, where
their view is less obstructed. When their hunting task is
over, they will retire to the higher branches, and sit closer
to the trunk
of the tree.
In
late winter, when the female is busy incubating her eggs
in a frosty hollow tree, the male takes over hunting for
the pair. He will lovingly bring his partner an assortment
of mammals, insects, and crustaceans while she keeps her
eggs warm. What a sweet couple.
Glass
Eyed Mink
My Aunt Mary thought mink were put on earth for her
to wear. I used to be scared of her coats when I was a kid,
particularly the ones with the snarling heads dangling from
the collar. Not surprisingly, mink are much cuter in real
life. They have soft brown eyes and their facial expressions
are as adorable as a kitten’s. Mink can be found in a variety
of our wet habitats. Typically nocturnal, male mink are
out and about during late winter days furtively searching
for female companionship.
Counting
Crows
There
are a few crow roosts in Chicago Wilderness, a roost being
a place where all the crows for miles around will come together
to spend the night. Northwestern University students share
their campus with over 4,000 crows. During late January
afternoons, hundreds of crows stream over the historic neighborhood
of Naperville toward an old cemetery. Elmhurst also has
a good size roost. A fun, though occasionally hazardous,
activity is to follow the flightline of crows across the
land toward their sleeping quarters. Watch out for traffic
as you dash across the intersection with your eyes upward.
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