Winter 2002

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

by Jack MacRae

New Year’s Beavers
Back when we lived on an 80-acre island in the Des Plaines River, my wife and I maintained a New Year’s Eve tradition of building a fire at the river’s edge, sipping snow-chilled champagne, and watching the local beavers as they swam across the water with branches of cottonwood in their mouths. These branches would be used as a quick meal or snack. During the cold gray days of mid-winter, our adult beavers are snuggling up in their lodges and making babies. The young kits will be born in early spring, following a four-month gestation period.

Hot Nuts
I wonder if native Chicagoans Mel Torme (who wrote the tune) or Nat King Cole (who popularized the song) ever ate American chestnuts roasted on an open fire? The song was written in the 1940s – a generation after a fungal blight killed nearly every one of America’s magnificent chestnut trees from the Mississippi to the Atlantic. The last known American chestnut in our region was a single large specimen at Grand Beach, in Berrien County, Michigan.

Today, arborists are experimenting with a hybrid of American and Asian chestnut trees in hopes of developing a fungal resistant species. The majority of chestnuts we roast today come from Italy.

Hatching Nuts
Forest birds that travel head first down the tree trunk get their name from breaking (hatching) open nuts that they have wedged into crevices. The white-breasted nuthatches are year-round residents of our wooded area, and the red-breasted nuthatches come into our area in the winter and tend to hang out in pine groves. One would think it would be could easy to distinguish a white-breasted nuthatch from a red-breasted nuthatch by comparing the color of its breast. But actually, a dark eye stripe (on the red-breasted, not on the white-breasted) is the field mark used by most bird watchers.

Screeeech Owl
Our friendly neighborhood screech owls work the night shift. Starting after dusk, these quiet little hunters will be on duty, sitting on a low perch as they scan the ground for movement. They sit toward the end of the branch, where their view is less obstructed. When their hunting task is over, they will retire to the higher branches, and sit closer to the trunk
of the tree.

In late winter, when the female is busy incubating her eggs in a frosty hollow tree, the male takes over hunting for the pair. He will lovingly bring his partner an assortment of mammals, insects, and crustaceans while she keeps her eggs warm. What a sweet couple.

Glass Eyed Mink
My Aunt Mary thought mink were put on earth for her to wear. I used to be scared of her coats when I was a kid, particularly the ones with the snarling heads dangling from the collar. Not surprisingly, mink are much cuter in real life. They have soft brown eyes and their facial expressions are as adorable as a kitten’s. Mink can be found in a variety of our wet habitats. Typically nocturnal, male mink are out and about during late winter days furtively searching for female companionship.

Counting Crows
There are a few crow roosts in Chicago Wilderness, a roost being a place where all the crows for miles around will come together to spend the night. Northwestern University students share their campus with over 4,000 crows. During late January afternoons, hundreds of crows stream over the historic neighborhood of Naperville toward an old cemetery. Elmhurst also has a good size roost. A fun, though occasionally hazardous, activity is to follow the flightline of crows across the land toward their sleeping quarters. Watch out for traffic as you dash across the intersection with your eyes upward.