Summer 2004

By Jack MacRae

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

EARLY SUMMER

Brown thrasher. Photo by Art Morris, Birds as Art.

Unarmed Tree Hugger
Black rat snakes are our most arboreal serpents. With bodies adapted to climbing trees, they can move up the craggy trunks of oaks with little effort. Naturally, the early summer diet of these constrictors includes a high percentage of fledgling downy woodpeckers. On the ground, these big, black snakes move slowly, deliberately, in a straight manner.

Black rat snakes were often called pilot black snakes in the older field guides. These great snakes live in Will County, and a few may still live in rural parts of northwest Indiana.

Thrashin'
Fledgling brown thrashers shouldn't worry about long falls from the nest. Most nests of this species are built low to the ground, a few feet high, often within tangled vines and thorny thickets. Low nests allow the parents to remain close to the young as they forage through the leaf litter. The male is a tenacious defender of the nest and its young occupants.

My rocker son thinks the Brown Thrashers would be a cool name for a heavy metal band, although he didn't seem impressed when I told him male brown thrashers supposedly have the widest vocal range for birds, with 2,000 to 3,000 songs.

	Queen of the prairie. Photo by Donna & Tom Krischan.

MIDDLE SUMMER

Queen of the Prairie
Queen of the prairie is an appropriately named flower. During midsummer, her blossoms are a cluster of pink buds and poofy flowers.

A close-up view of the tiny flowers show five little pink petals, with long, white stamens capped with deep pink anthers. Exquisite! The queen is rare in our land — endangered in Illinois, her reign is restricted to a handful of scattered, springy calcareous fens.

Young Coots
I learned at an early age not to mess with old coots, those interesting-looking water birds that paddle through our marshes with large, lobed feet. They live as a nuclear family, with mom and dad sharing the parental responsibilities throughout the summer. Two friends and I were swimming in the back slough of Bakers Lake, when we abruptly came across a coot family sitting on a wet platform in the reeds.

The female and her highly precocious "cootlets" scattered, while the protective father flashed his blood-red eyes, shook his wings, and let loose a long, throaty hiss. We made a hasty retreat to shore.

American coot. Photo by Rob Curtis, The Early Birder.

Go Ask Alice
It's no secret that rabbits breed prolifically throughout the summer months. Some of our female rabbits will give birth to 15 young this year. And many females born this summer will themselves be giving birth by fall. Even so, rabbits don't lead an enviable life. From birth, they are targets of predators, 24/7. Most eastern cottontails don't survive two summers in the wilderness. I remember making the argument in college that rabbits might actually dash in front of cars for recreational purposes, as a way to relieve stress from their lives.

During the summer growing season, cottontails find an interesting way to get more nutrients from green plants. They eat — and digest — their food twice, by eating their own feces. This practice is known as coprophagy.

LATE SUMMER

All the Young Newts
Newt babies are 5/16th of an inch when they hatch from gelatinous eggs in early summer. Fish-free ponds are the safest places to live if you're a developing salamander. Young newts will spend the next few months swimming about the pond, passing, tadpole-like, through their larval stage. By fall, they may transform into the mysterious creature, the red eft.

Efts, as crossword puzzle aficionados know, are the land (not water) stage of the newt. While scientists have found newt eggs, larvae, and aquatic adults in Chicago Wilderness, they almost never find the mysterious eft stage, prompting speculation that our newts don't become efts. In recent years, however, efts have been found in DuPage and Cook Counties.