#Jon J. Duerr Forest Preserve

[jerilynnphoto]

She's just a girl and she's on fire Hotter than a fantasy, lonely like a highway She's living in a world and it's on fire Filled with catastrophe, but she knows she can fly away Oh, oh oh oh oh She got both feet on the ground And she's burning it down Oh, oh oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh She got her head in the clouds And she's not backing down This girl is on fire This girl is on fire She's walking on fire This girl is on fire 🔥 (at Jon J. Duerr Forest Preserve) https://www.instagram.com/p/Ci8DRMlr5_v/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[jglasgowfit]

Beautifull day for a adventure!!!! (at Jon J. Duerr Forest Preserve) https://www.instagram.com/p/CCBdZ8BDj6MeO0WEpEBkwvISMgxrxNoBct81QM0/?igshid=4hewph4rz2n1

[tedschnell]

Big Birds: Cranes and a Heron

 They are two remarkable and graceful birds that share some similarities even though they differ dramatically, and both make their homes in the Fox River Valley.

I am talking about the sandhill crane, Antigone canadensis, and the great blue heron, Ardea herodias, whose elegance and subtle beauty reminds me always that God is as much an artist as a he is our creator.

Both are roughly the same size, largely prefer wetland areas, and both of which I encountered at the start and the end of the last week within roughly a mile or so of each other.

At first blush, great blues might appear to be the larger of the two birds, with a height of as much as 4½ feet to the sandhill’s 4-foot maximum. Both birds have long beaks, long necks and stilt-like legs, and each has a wingspan of as much as 6½ feet.

But the cranes, which can be a light gray and sometimes a rust color, are stockier, weighing up to 10.8 pounds. Great blues, whose color usually is a slate gray that has a bluish cast under the right light, typically weigh no more than about 5½ pounds.

Nesting habits, diet and even sounds better illustrate the two species’ differences.

I have photographed herons nesting in a rookery at Rutland Forest Preserve, west of Elgin, Illinois. Heron rookeries can be quite large, although the Rutland rookery this spring seemed to hold fewer than 30 adult nesting birds. What surprised me when I began photographing that rookery in 2014 was that these wetland predators build their nests as platforms high up in the trees.

Their nests, in fact, resemble smaller, more compact versions of the nests that bald eagles build and, like the herons, reuse from year to year.

Sandhill cranes, on the other hand, prefer to nest on the ground in or near wetlands. They build mounds from nearby plants. I have yet to photograph nesting cranes.

Another difference is in their diet. Herons largely are predators that are well-known for eating fish, crustaceans, frogs and other amphibians, as well as snakes and other small reptiles. But herons have been known to step away from their wetland haunts to hunt for ground squirrels and gophers, for example. There also have been reports of herons eating smaller birds from time to time.

Cranes are omnivores but are best known, perhaps, for eating farmers’ grains and other seeds, plus berries and other plant material, as well as small animals – The Cornell Lab of Ornithology said both vertebrate and invertebrates can be targeted. This can include many of the things herons eat, but the cranes mostly focus on seeds and crane, apparently.

Except for the nesting season, herons tend to be solitary. Cranes apparently travel about in small family groups, but join together in huge flocks to migrate in the spring and fall.

One final difference I will mention is the call each bird makes.

The great blue heron’s call is a throaty croaking or squawking that sometimes includes a honking reminiscent of geese but without the rhythmic cadence.

Sandhill cranes sound more like brass horns sounding off in stuttering, staccato bursts. In the spring and fall, migrating flocks often can be heard en masse, albeit at a distance, as they soar past high overhead.

I photographed the great blue heron in the images above while visiting Jon J. Duerr Forest Preserve, along the western shore of the Fox River, south of South Elgin, Illinois on Sunday, Oct. 9, 2016.

The sandhill cranes I came across on Saturday, Oct. 15, 2016 while driving on Courier Avenue toward the Valley View area between South Elgin and St. Charles, Illinois. The group appeared to be picking up and swallowing small stones and gravel, most likely for the gizzards. Lacking teeth, birds have muscular gizzards which they fill with small stones and grit to crush up their food before it gets digested in their stomachs.

SOURCE: Cornell Lab of Ornithology

[tedschnell]

River Preyers

 The sun shone brightly over the Fox Valley on Sept. 6, 2015, and in Jon J. Duerr Forest Preserve, just south of South Elgin, Illinois, a late summer breeze rustled through the trees and leaves.

Aside from the sounds of of the Fox River’s waters flowing past, the quiet was broken only by the periodic rumbles of bicycles crossing the river on a bridge across the river. Jon J. Duerr Forest Preserve borders the western shore of the river on its north end, but the river cuts westward, also becoming the preserve’s southern boundary.

Directly to the south from the preserve, the pedestrian bridge connects with Tekakwitha Woods Forest Preserve on the opposite shore. The bridge is part of the Fox River Trail, which comes from the southwest and veers up through South Elgin and Elgin on its way northward.

Downstream, between two of the bridge’s support piers, a great egret, Ardea alba, waded in the current, looking for prey. It’s movements were furtive, sometimes awkward as it twisted its neck and its head to look sidelong into the water below.

From time to time, the egret’s neck and head would lunge down into the water suddenly, grabbing some tasty morsel or other – a fish, perhaps, or maybe a frog, which it then would gulp down whole.

The shrill whistle of the trolley from the Fox River Trolley Museum in South Elgin, which from time to time brings its visitors to Jon J. Duerr Forest Preserve along its 4-mile long heritage railroad line, startled the egret, which flew off, downriver.

Later, it and a great blue heron, Ardea herodias, a related but larger relative.

An adult great egret weighs only a little more than 2 pound, but its wingspan can reach to 5½ feet. The great blue heron, by contrast, the great blue heron can weigh more than 7 pounds and have a wingspan of as much as 6½ feet.

Both are beautiful birds and fascinating to watch.

[tedschnell]

Season Endings

 The shift from season to season is subtle and often seamless.

Forgetting, for a moment, the sun’s movements, or dates on calendars, does winter end with the first real thaw, or with the first crocus bloom pushing its petals up through the snow?

When does spring end and summer begin? Or when does summer trade in its rich, colorful wardrobe for fall’s fashions, or fall fade into winter?

I am not certain there is one specific detail the lets us know, other than we step outside one day and realize, “Wow, it’s spring,” or “Summer’s begun,” or “Fall’s arrived.”

There’s also, “Damn, I better check out the snow blower.”

Still, there are clues, and for fall, those clues can be both subtle and much less so.

This trio of images, which I took Sept. 6, 2015 at Jon J. Duerr Forest Preserve in South Elgin, Illinois, illustrates how the season is beginning to change.

One leaf is starting to change – as the days shorten, the chlorophyll that provides its green color all spring and summer has begun to break down and fade in a few spots and along one part of the lower edge. Behind it is a blurred offering of late-summer berries on a bush whose leaves already have lost their green.

The next two images likewise show a leaf that has changed color, as well as a few in the foreground of one image that have begun to change.

Autumn is firing warning shots over the bow. Just a few weeks ago, I came across one woodland area farther to the northwest where a path was littered with fallen leaves.

Fall may not be here yet, but it certainly is on its way.

And, like every season, it will bring changes we can enjoy and, perhaps, even dread.