Spring 2002

Here's what's debuting this season on nature's stage in Chicago Wilderness

by Jack MacRae

EARLY SPRING

Fashion Alert
Early in the spring, a male hooded merganser in full breeding plumage is hot stuff. His head and breast are a hip, Euro-chic look of contrasting bands of black and white. The trendy head crest suggests a vintage punk mohawk of the early ’80s. Their bills, stylishly slim, have a cool ’50s retro look. We’re fortunate to have a few families of these diving ducks paddling around this summer in our protected marshlands. Hooded mergansers construct their nests in dead, hollow trees near water. While monogamous, the father deserts his mate early after the eggs are laid, leaving incubation duties entirely up to the female.

Sucker
Be honest, how many of us first heard of yellow-bellied sapsuckers from Yosemite Sam? Warm spring temperatures means rising sap and arriving sapsuckers.

Sapsuckers use their strong beaks to peck a precise grid of holes in a tree. The holes need to be deep enough to reach below the bark, into the phloem layer through which the sap flows up the tree. The sap will collect in these wells, providing the sapsucker with a sweet, high-energy food. Yellow-bellied sapsuckers will use the fine, hair-like process on the tip of their tongues to soak up the seeping sap through capillary action. And they’ll eat some of the insects this sweet feast also attracts. Most yellow-bellied sapsuckers will migrate through our region, preferring to spend their summer in the cool northern woods.

MIDDLE SPRING

Jack and the Dragon
When I was young (well, 37) I remember attending a late spring nature hike and being sorely disappointed that the "green dragon" the naturalist had promised we would see was "only" a plant. I had high expectations of seeing something ferocious, if perhaps cold-blooded. The uncommon green dragon is an early wildflower similar in appearance to a Jack-in-the-pulpit, but with a much longer spadix (the jack) curling out of the spathe (the pulpit). Green dragons grow in moist woodlands among sugar maples and red oaks. Ironically, I now work for the naturalist who let me down, and I pull this same stunt on unsuspecting children in the woods today.

Mother’s Day Tribute
During the wet days of April, a certain group of expectant mothers will begin looking for a good nursery for their offspring. The ideal location will be close to food, which in their case might be a decomposing opossum. Exhibiting rare insect behavior, both male and female burying beetles are active parents. After locating a corpse with their sense of smell, burying beetles plow like a bulldozer through the surrounding soil. Eventually the carcass will settle into the loosened ground, becoming buried under several inches of dirt. To slow decomposition, the diligent parents will exude an anti-bacterial anal secretion. With their food safely underground, the female will excavate a small chamber and lay 10 to 30 eggs, which will hatch in a few days. The larvae will be hungry and the parents will lovingly regurgitate droplets of partly digested food for them to feed on.

Of the 31 species of our North American burying beetles, the once widespread American burying beetle (Nicrophorus americanus) has all but vanished. It was placed on the federal endangered species list in 1989 and was assigned G1 status by The Nature Conservancy, indicating that it is critically imperiled worldwide.

LATE SPRING

First Rainbow
Legend has it the first rainbow was discovered by Roy G. Biv. Scientific literature tells us the first rainbow darter came from the waters of Chicago Wilderness. Rainbow darters are small, beautiful, multi-colored fish that inhabit the riffles of clear, swift flowing creeks with a substrate of gravel and rubble.

They cannot tolerate a silt bottom, and may now be limited to the Kishwaukee and Kankakee River systems. The females will be laying their eggs when the temperature reaches 62°F, which usually occurs sometime in late May.

That first rainbow darter, a female, was found in the Fox River by Mr. S. C. Clark. It was identified by Massachusetts ichthyologist David Humphreys Storer in 1845, and is now deposited as the holotype in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University.

Flat as a Rail
I like urban legends, especially the ones that deal with natural science. For a number of years I had heard the tale of the squished rail, where a rare species of marsh bird was actually trampled by overly enthusiastic bird watchers. Bird Watcher’s Digest lists the story under the category of bird myths.

Black rails are considered by many to be perhaps the most difficult North American bird to see in nature. They are tiny sparrow-sized birds that live in the dense vegetation that grows along marsh edges. Like others of their kind, black rails do not flush when approached, but typically choose to sit tight, regardless of how close the threat may be.

In late May 2000, there was a black rail sighted in Springbrook Prairie Forest Preserve in Naperville. The marsh became a magnet for birders eager to add this elusive bird to their life list, so much so that the landowner was compelled to close the preserve to enhance the possibility of breeding — and perhaps to protect the bird from being flattened.