lions, dearborn street

autumn in motion, 12th street beach

northern saw-whet owl release

At just 6 to 8 ounces—barely bigger than an American field mouse—the northern saw-whet is the smallest owl in North America. After months of rehabilitation, these three injured owls were released to continue their southward migration. Each will find its final destination in a conifer tree, somewhere between southern Illinois and the Gulf of Mexico, where it will roost until spring returns.

wild strawberry, washtenaw avenue

Just when I thought summer was gone, dead and gone, I find this. This field strung up in strawberries, tiny perfect twinklings way down underneath the leaves. Little lanterns, full of little fires. Almost in my own backyard.

canada geese, grant park

sacred datura, rockwell avenue

Sacred datura (Datura wrightii) isn’t just beautiful, with that lush tropical exuberance that seems so out-of-place in a Chicago-alley October. It’s also hallucinogenic. A close relative of both jimsonweed (D. stramonium), the mind-altering plant used ritually by Native Americans and Indian mystics, and devil’s trumpet (D. metel), whose pharmaceutical properties were recorded in medieval Persian texts, this version packs plenty of the psychoactive compounds atropine and scopolamine.

great horned owl, itasca

This Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus), the Spring Brook Nature Center’s permanent resident and educational specimen, is Just Not Sure About All of This.

Flattening his namesake horns sleek to the skull, he’s showing that he is defensive or wary, just as a cat might do. It might seem counterintuitive to batten down your ears just when you need them most—when you are keenly alert, trying to judge the safety of a situation—but in fact he’s taking no such risk. The feathery tufts bear no relation to his amazingly sensitive ears, which lie further down the sides of his head.

Among the adaptions that equip those ears so perfectly for nocturnal hunting are surrounding circular patches whose feathers angle, forming funnels to channel each vibration toward the ear itself. Those ears are asymmetrical, set at different heights along the skull with the right opening longer than the left. With the two organs differently situated, the owl’s head is a network to itself, triangulating the precise location of each scurry on the forest floor.

horse, lasalle street

Fascinating questions about the horse, as submitted to WikiAnswers:

When we talk about a horse we say that it has what?

Someone is being rude to your horse what should you do?

How to ride a horse and why?

What horse isn’t heavy?

How would you describe a horse?

Is a seahorse a horse?

Can you take your horse to a restaurant?

Can you eat a horse?

You are being blackmail for more money for the upkeep for your Horse I have this Horse these stables. they are demanding more money off us. but they are ill treating my horse?

What breed of horse is the Headless Horseman’s horse?

A black horse or a white horse hotter in the sun?

You want a horse but your mom wont let you cuz its to expencive you really want one and some times you want one so bad that you cry What should you do you already go to horse camps so dont recomend th?

Is there a horse game where you can be a wild horse or just a horse?

When take your horse to the field what shall you use?

tomato, federal street

This tomato vine is trailing its makeshift way along the rickety western wall of a real-estate sales trailer. I don’t know whether it was planted deliberately to lend a spurious domesticity, or whether an opportunist seed happenstanced into this sunny corner of a vacant lot downtown.

But I do know that nothing is so keenly evocative of a summer garden—a true and tended garden, the kind that marks a house as a living home—than the smell of the tomato leaf. High-pitched yet earthy and bitterly rasping green, the scent is so assertive that it seems to magnify this one rakish vine into a forest, a fairy-tale thicket of vigorous stems prickling with quicksilver hairs.

Geneticists now hold that these translucent fibers, known as glandular trichomes, secrete chemicals that repel animal pests and invading pathogens. It’s no surprise that the bitter scent is designed to deter: even those of us who love it can recognize a warning in its shrill pungency. But these chemicals’ antibiotic properties may have still more to teach about infection and human immunity.

pigeon, my balcony

There’s a hawk in our neighborhood. This pigeon dropped by for a late Sunday breakfast, but lost interest quickly when we heard the hawk screeching from somewhere near.