Critter Chronicles

This may become a department here, with no specific time or day for posting. Inspired by my friend Terry, who replied to an e-mail largely concerned with what I had seen in the park that day with "You're so newsy!"

So here's some news that's not about the Plague, or the incompetent in the White House, or any of the other disasters, major and minor, that are considered "news".

To bring this up to date, here's just a few comments from recent wanderings. (Yes, I try to stay in as much as I can, but I really can't deal with spending days at a time at home. So I put on my armor -- mask and gloves -- and venture out to the park, which is theoretically closed, but try to keep Chicagoans out of their parks. Closing the parks doesn't really make much sense to me -- people are being careful about maintaining distance from each other, and especially along the lakefront, which has some of the highest population density in the country, the park is the main place that people go to walk, or run, or ride their bikes, or give their dogs a walk.)

Down at the Zoo, which, like every other public attraction, is closed, the black-crowned night herons are back and are starting to refurbish their nests. I remember a few years ago, when they first started nesting in the Children's Zoo, there were maybe eight or ten pairs. Now, I've lost count, and the nests have spread from the north edge of the red wolf habitat to almost the entire Children's Zoo. (There's a story here: the herons apparently first started nesting on the island at the south end of South Pond, which is administered by Lincoln Park Zoo. The Zoo staff, being very conservation minded -- the herons are listed as "endangered" in Illinois -- set the island up as a nature reserve, with signage on the boardwalk opposite the island. The birds decided they liked the Children's Zoo better.) The herons seem to prefer rather spindly trees, like birches, which is odd -- they're quite awkward when clambering around the branches. They're rather bulky birds for their size, with huge feet much better suited to wading in muddy ponds than perching on a skinny branch.

Speaking of herons, I saw a great blue flying around North Pond. Don't know if it was planning on taking up residence are just passing through. It's a bit early in the season, I think, for there to be many fish coming out of winter quarters -- although on sunny days there are turtles basking on some of the larger branches that have fallen into the pond. It's just a few, so far, but I remember one time I counted sixty-four out basking, and another two or three swimming, while walking along one side of the pond.

There are no large flocks of geese grazing on the lawns like there will be later this summer -- they've all paired off and are concentrating on getting ready for goslings. You see them in pairs now, and ditto ducks -- I saw a couple of pairs of wood ducks at North Pond, in addition to the omnipresent mallards.

And of course, there are squirrels. At certain times of day, they seem to be everywhere, busily foraging and trying to remember where they had buried goodies, just in case. For some reason I find squirrels particularly entertaining. I remember one summer, in a former residence, I was sitting the back yard when I heard a scrabbling behind me. I turned just in time to see a squirrel diving behind a slab of limestone that was leaning against the neighbor's garage; I looked up and there was a very disgruntled hawk -- not sure if it was a peregrine or Cooper's hawk -- just alighting on a branch. A near miss. At any rate, I had a confrontation with a Lincoln Park squirrel the other day. The squirrels of Lincoln Park are legendary -- shameless beggars, they used to come up and practically demand to be fed. Not so much any more, but this one was a classic. Sadly, I had neglected to put my usual store of cashews in my bag. The squirrel was not pleased.

And I should mention the flowers. At this point, there are still scillas -- great swathes of blue under the trees in parts of the park -- and daffodils are coming into full bloom. And there are still hellebores in flower. There are still magnolias blooming, and grape hyacinths are starting to blossom. And the trees, finally, are starting to leaf out -- there are faint washes of green, like watercolors, on some of the branches.

So that's the news of the critters in the park so far this spring. We'll see what they're up to as the season progresses.