Summer 2001

Story by Stephen Packard | Photographs by Richard Mack

This story started with sex. Masculine posturing. Maybe even polygamy. Many nature stories do. Worse yet, it began with a ruthless attack on innocent bystanders. People strolling along Chicago's Navy Pier — out to have a good time, see the sights, ambling happily, unsuspecting. Then, repeatedly, near the Ferris wheel, a feathered thug rocketed down out of the sky and pecked their heads.

This is a story about sex and violence. And yet — wouldn’t you know! — it’s also a story about generosity and love.

We start with Ray Cachares, a big man with a big job. Assistant General Manager for the Navy Pier Exposition Authority, Cachares began to get reports about the attacks near the Ferris wheel. He was not amused.

"I went over there to check it out, and this bird went after my head," he complained. "He got my bald spot. He got the Brinks guy, too. I didn’t know if we were getting into a Hitchcock/Tippy Hedren kind of thing."

A male red-winged blackbird was defending a nest near the Ferris wheel. "Frankly, I thought we could do without that bird," said Cachares. But he was also aware that the Mayor had a soft spot in his heart for nature, so he called the Department of the Environment, and the Department called the Audubon Society.

"When I first talked to Ray, I wasn't sure he was going to have a lot of patience for this," said Jerry Garden, Land Stewardship chair for Chicago Audubon. Garden has a sparkling eye and an infectious passion for birds. "We hiked around the pier and looked at birds. I showed him the barn swallows that nest under the pier. They clear the air of a lot of flying insects! I told him about the rare ducks that birders see from the pier during migration." Cachares told him that nine million human visitors flock to Navy Pier each year. They come because they have a good experience. They watch Shakespeare, explore the Children’s Museum, hear concerts, flirt, eat, hang out. They do not come to be dive-bombed by birds. No solution emerged.

Soon more Audubon activists were talking to more pier staff. A lot of issues and options were raised.

"The turnaround came in kind of a funny way," said Garden. "I was trying to evoke some understanding for the red-wing. I explained that he too had a hard job. He probably had a number of mates scattered around the pier — each with a nest of eggs or babies." This bird was working to protect his family — or families actually. Cachares started to joke about how this bird "thought he was Hugh Hefner" and was "a real stud." But a growing respect for this feisty bird began to spark conversations about how visitors to the pier might come to enjoy the gulls, the ducks, the swallows, the nighthawks, even the blackbirds.

Soon Drew Hart from the Department of the Environment was helping Audubon volunteers design interpretive signs for those nine million visitors. Ken Wysocki assembled a list of species. Karen Furnweger edited drafts provided by eight other birders. To date, 26 interpretive signs have been installed describing 31 species, from peregrine falcons to yellow-bellied sapsuckers.

The Pier's carpenters have been building birdhouses and platforms for purple martins, tree swallows, and ospreys. "The staff got excited," says Cachares, "including some people I hadn’t seen excited for a long time." After last year’s nesting season, bird-proof netting was placed over those shrubs near the Ferris wheel. The red-wings still nest, but in less exposed spots.

The Pier Authority has erected different kinds of nest structures (such as the one above) and is planting and protecting bushes and trees for nesting on less human-accessible parts of the Pier. Fidel Romero and James Soulias (right) show off the deluxe osprey nesting platform they made.

Now Cachares muses, "It’s changed this place. And to think it all started with a red-winged blackbird attacking people in line."

This story began with conflict. But it gradually became a story about discovery, the excitement of learning, of building something with that knowledge, of sharing. It’s a story about people and nature getting along with each other in the very heart of the metropolis. This is a story of Chicago Wilderness. And of Charlie red-wing.

Four-hundred pairs of ring-billed gulls nest just off the south edge of the Pier. But look around, and you may also see a common loon or a red-breasted merganser.