trees. or rather, trees

These elegant trees angle across the path in the Cook County Forest Preserve. They’re just moments away from the Leaning Tower of Niles. Coincidence?

Um, yes, probably.

indiana dunes state park

A little road trip with dogs in tow is getting to be an annual tradition.

Byron was ready to be out of the city.

Half an hour away, and like someone else’s world completely.

Ditto found his moment of serenity in mid-hike, middle of the trail.

I expected to marvel at the dunes, but the thing that really took my breath away was this vast sea, vast view of only trees. So deep that the brush of ten thousand years passed it right over.

From here, the city looked very far away.

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.

northern flicker, michigan avenue

Like all woodpeckers, the northern flicker (Colaptes auratus) has gripping feet adapted to cling to tree-trunks, and a strong sharp bill for puncturing through bark. However, the flicker is unique in preferring to feed on the ground, lapping up ants by the colony.

This male yellow-shafted northern flicker’s migration brought him south to Chicago on Thursday morning. At some point between 9:00 and 11:00, he collided with a black-beamed Mies van der Rohe tower on Michigan Avenue. The head injury killed him quickly, leaving his body perfectly intact. Taupe back inked with black calligraphy, speckled snowy belly, strong yellow feathers that had swept the air bright and clean behind each beat of the wide wings.

northerly island

The avian care center at Meigs Field sits in the middle of Northerly Island, a 90-acre peninsula diving into Lake Michigan just south of the Loop. Extensive plantings of native prairie species, in the wake of the 2003 closure of the Meigs airport, have created a sanctuary of stillness where butterflies and birds dart among tall grass spangled with wildflowers. It’s an amazing balance of immersion and retreat—home to several museums, 12th Street Beach and a concert pavilion, the park still feels distant and quiet. Last weekend I walked the paths amid a swarm of late-summer dragonflies, a crystalline friction of wings soaring over the cheers of Bears fans at Soldier Field just yards away.

the great migration

For spectacular phenomena in the animal kingdom, the seasonal migration of bird species has to be among the Really Coolest Things There Ever Were. The nightingale’s journey we discussed here of 38 million times its own body length—equivalent to me travelling over 41,000 miles by my own strength—is one typical example of this amazing navigational synthesis between genetic programming, cognitive mapping, electromagnetic orientation, and other skill sets not yet fully understood.

Ancient behaviors are continually adapting to the hazards and opportunities of the changing human landscape. To watch these forces collide, just picture the major bird migration route of the US, the Mississippi Flyway, which leads 250 species of birds across the Great Lakes to the river and the Gulf of Mexico beyond. And now see Chicago: a mass of skyscrapers positioned right at the juncture of lake and river, spiring suddenly up into airspace.

While many species use the sun to orient, small insectivorous birds like warblers and thrushes take advantage of night flight to minimize energy expenditure and maximize access to food species. And so right this minute, midnight central time, these migratory songbirds are moving closer to the place where they’ll find rest and food sources –or where the skyline’s hazards will end all their migrations.

Rooftop lights on skyscrapers disrupt flight and birds fly toward them, mesmerized, to circle endlessly until they drop with exhaustion. As the sky lightens, mirrored walls will throw back the same soft blue and more will collide without seeing. They may survive, dazed, and turn to evade the building only to batter into another building behind. They may avoid all these hazards and land safely, spot a lush spot of greenery promising shelter and insects, and wing towards it, not realizing that it lies in a building foyer behind transparent glass.

Efforts to protect these birds in the U.S. date back to 1918, with the passage of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Under this agreement, handling bird species for any reason is prohibited except by individuals holding a federal permit. Chicago’s unique location has inspired non-legislative measures to supplement national protection. In 2004, it became the first city to turn building lights off downtown during the spring and fall, increasing survival rates. Volunteer organizations have mobilized to patrol the Loop business district, collecting injured birds to provide veterinary treatment before releasing them to continue on their flight. And in 2006, the city partnered with Flint Creek Wildlife Rehabilitation to establish a treatment center in the former Meigs Field airport. By providing triage and emergency care within minutes of downtown, rather than transporting the birds to existing suburban facilities, rehabilitators can give them every chance for recovery.

	So fall has started, and I’m now waking up at 4:00AM to travel downtown, sleepy-eyed and officially-permitted, net in hand, in search of birds on the streets.
You can expect loads of updates in the weeks to come—so sleep in, and then check back here to get to know the hermit thrushes, American woodcocks, and whatever else the wind brings our way.

from the archives: le mort d’autruche

In 1899, the New York Times reported a tragic tale from Chicago: the suicide, by drowning, of a lovelorn ostrich.

If you wonder by what criteria authorities rule an ostrich death a suicide, you are not alone. Indeed, the Times’ hard-boiled correspondent seems disposed to consider the incident—in which the ostrich escaped from the Lincoln Park Zoo before eluding “pursuers by taking a flying leap from the high bridge across the lagoon into the placid waters”—an accident.

Still more sinister a possibility was raised by “many who claimed that the ostrich was driven to make the jump by the band of implacable hunters,” suggesting yet another category of death. From ostrich mischance, to ostrich manslaughter. The plot thickens.

Making the case for suicide was “Zoo Keeper De Vry.” He insisted the flight was clearly an attempt at suicide, and there was nothing of must or of chance about it. You see, this poor bird’s husband dies some four months ago while the two were in transit to our Zoo here. I have always noticed that this bird seemed to suffer from melancholia or some kindred ailment of a purely mental origin. Now its strange act in leaping from the ‘suicide bridge’ has certainly confirmed my worst suspicions.”

You can read the complete article in the Times’ archive.

Suicide in the animal world is controversial. By general consensus, animals lack both the individual consciousness and the reasoning capacity to plan and perpetrate their own deaths. Survival instinct calls the shots in the animal kingdom—and only humans are compelled by their complexity of intellect to act contrary to this central drive.

But some believe that non-human suicide has been documented, with incidents among dolphins providing the strongest support. Mass beachings, in which the dolphins resist efforts to return them to the water and will repeatedly return to the shore, are frequently termed “mass suicide”; two notable recent examples occurred in Iran, killing 152 striped dolphins in October 2007, and in Cornwall, where 26 common dolphins died in June 2008. On an individual scale, the most prominent suicide story is that of Cathy, the bottlenose dolphin made famous by her title role in the series Flipper. Cathy’s trainer, who was present when she stopped breathing and drowned, believes that her act was a deliberate suicide in response to the stress and isolation of a life in captivity. That experience contributed to his activism in abolishing whale and dolphin captivity.

tiger swallowtail, western playlot park

field trip, party of four

Am I excommunicated from the fellowship of city lovers if I admit that, from time to time, I want nothing more from my love than to get the hell away?For the first time in months, I headed beyond city limits to celebrate the long weekend at Starved Rock State Park. My good friend, confirmed urbanite and fellow volunteer piled me into her trusty little car along with two of the adoptable dogs from our animal shelter ARFhouse Chicago, Deck and Peach, and hit the road. Destination: cheap gas, cornfields and frolicking in the forest. Starved Rock’s thirteen miles of trail wind through a series of sandstone canyons along the Illinois River. The well-marked paths are meticulously groomed, with solid wooden stairs at each change of elevation: all designed to keep it an easy hiking experience for families and for dogs. (We were clever enough to discover one notable exception, when our triumphant arrival at the final trail marker brought us within feet of our exit—facing a steep metal staircase edged in sharp, jagged scales. Great for steady footing if you’re hiking in foam flip-flops, but impassably cruel for dogs.) Peach flashed her lunkety pit-bull grin from the first minute to the last, while Deck bounced along like a champion on his three strong legs. And though it’s easy to get blasé about the brown old Midwestern temperate forests, the right combination of travelers can still feel, and share through each other’s eyes, a magic there. Glimmering spiderwebs, luminous emerald semaphore-flashes from slick black cavern walls, slender moon-headed mushrooms, the scent of soil and stone and water… Deck and Peach ended the evening back in their cages, where they’ll continue to wait for their families to come along. But for those few full hours together we clambered, and pointed, and basked, and bounced, and grinned the day away.

scratchin’ and survivin’

This is the Cabrini-Green housing project.

15,000 inhabitants once lived here in 3600 units, divided between row houses and high-climbing towers. Like all public housing, it was begotten by optimism mated to pragmatism. Given: that the poor, mostly Italian laborers were going to cling where they had carved out a precarious shantytown living; so clean and healthy homes could be provided, a springboard to stability. The first construction in 1942 created the Frances Cabrini Rowhouses, named for the Italian nun who ministered to these same poor neighborhoods. She would become the first American citizen canonized in 1946, the patron saint of immigrants.

Then came the high-rises. Then came the white flight from cities across America, the shift in Cabrini-Green’s population to become almost entirely African American. Then came the factory closings, the shift in Cabrini-Green’s population to become marked by poverty, unemployment, death of the dreams of improvement, advancement, transcendence. Optimism’s race was run, and pragmatism’s roots spread. Green space: paved. Fire-damaged apartments: boarded up, left charred and vacant. Stalled elevators: grounded on the bottom floor. No longer a stepping stone to higher ground. The last stop. Wrap the buildings tight in wire, like a cage.

Amidst the gang wars, the crime, the fear so intense that police refused to patrol, Mayor Jane Byrne moved in. Her presence was supposed to mark yet another new era, a reclamation. Instead she left after three weeks; and her fourth-floor unit, with its rear door welded shut for protection, proved such a popular innovation with the gang members who moved in that it became standard practice for drug dealers throughout the projects.

Fifty years after it was built: demolition. Forced by the federal government, Chicago’s Plan for Transformation calls for the destruction of all its existing high-rise housing. Officials estimate 2,000 to 4,000 current residents; no one knows how many squatters remain, pressed behind plywood in the empty spaces.

And now this Queen Anne’s Lace has staked its claim. A ruthless opportunist, Daucus carota is supremely adaptable to disturbed soils, and brutally efficient in strangling out other species that try to lay their thin roots down. Neltje Blanchan rhapsodized over its imperial domination in her 1917 work Wild Flowers Worth Knowing: “Having proved fittest in the struggle for survival… it takes its course of empire westward year by year, finding most favorable conditions for colonizing in our vast, uncultivated area; and the less aggressive, native occupants are only too readily crowded out. Would that the advocates of unrestricted immigration of foreign peasants studied the parallel examples among floral invaders!”

Inspired by Blanchan’s mad anthropomorphizing, we might be seduced to believe that Queen Anne’s Lace deploys even more insidious tactics to defeat its competitors and predators. The flower’s seeds have been used as a contraceptive—preventatively and morning-after—at least since the time of Hippocrates. Chinese laboratory trials indicate that terpenoid compounds in the seeds block production of progesterone, which is essential to uterine implantation. Would that the advocates of unrestricted procreation studied the parallel… well, enough of that.

Maybe—just maybe—there’s nothing sinister in the wild carrot’s quest to inhibit human reproduction. (Did I mention that another of its nicknames is Mother Die? Apparently bringing it into the home presages the death of the gatherer’s mother. I’m just sayin’.) Abortifacient charms aside, I’ll add in the interests of full disclosure that this Class C noxious weed is my favorite flower. Spotted in highway medians, it’s my heart’s true sunshine. It’s an unlikely choice for me, with its old-fashioned frills and abundance. I’m usually drawn to sleek lines, single blossoms, the chilly groomed economy of a calla lily. But there’s something raffish about this hairy-legged, tumbling thing. It’s a tomboy flower in lace collars and petticoats. Blanchan sums it up as “sprangly”, and I can think of no better word for its exuberant self-sufficiency. If the supermodel calla lily is my aspirational bloom, then the untidy urban wraith Queen Anne’s Lace is my own soul’s flower.

White gave way to black. Upwardly mobile gave way to desperate. Construction gave way to decay, and then to destruction, and now the next wave has taken over, an advancing tide of white foam washing over it all.