Nature Preserves of Kane County: Ferson Creek Fen

Last Sunday, I trekked out to Kane County to tick numbers 43, 44, and 45 off of my list of Illinois nature preserves: Ferson (or Ferson's, depending on the source) Creek Fen, Norris Woods, and Nelson Lake Marsh.  Results were mixed.  Today I will just deal with...

43:  Ferson Creek Fen.  Dear Kane County, your parks and preserves are very nicely groomed, in that they have good signage, well-kept trails, and immaculate parking lots.  However, when one is situated so far away from civilization, it would be helpful to include even the most primitive of bathroom facilities, especially when your vegetation is too sparse to provide adequate cover for outdoor peeing.  It was a long drive out there, and I could not fully enjoy your preserve due to mounting pressure on internal organs.  Just a thought for the future.

FCF is a rather small preserve, the fen/marsh area walkable in a short time.  There is also allegedly a prairie trail, which I didn't explore because the literature doesn't make it sound like the showcase area of the site.  And there were more pressing matters on my mind, pun intended.  Near the first overlook platform, I was greeted by this ominous gatekeeper:

The poor little guy was shuddering and heaving with every breath, obviously in its final death throes.  I finally passed by it when I determined it was too feeble to launch itself at me in a rabid fury.  When I passed by it again on my way out of the overlook, it was too weak to even raise its head; it just rolled its head around on the ground and followed me with its horrible, sad, very human-like eyes.  Then I spent the next ten minutes choking back tears, probably not a reasonable response to the impending death of something most people consider vermin.  On to the botany!

The area to which the preserve map referred as the fen didn't appear to have any of the characteristic alkaline-loving fenny species touted by the INPC guide--turtlehead, grass-of-parnassus, Kalm's lobelia, etc.  I squished around in it for awhile, but all I could find were some nice quality marsh species, like the marsh skullcap above, and the marsh bellflower below:

It also had a nice thick mat of marsh shield fern, and some common species like Eupatorium maculatum and Verbena hastata.  Maybe I didn't squish around long enough or far enough to find the typical fen species.  Then there came an area along the trail populated almost exclusively by Sagittaria latifolia and this stumper:

A Hypericum, obviously.  It had fairly weak stems and formed a thick mat.  It doesn't appear to be any of the Hypericums listed in the Kane Co. plant guide.  Going through the Swink & Wilhelm key, it has more than 20 stamens (right?), petals solid yellow, plant herbaceous (not distinctly shrubby), flowers less than 3cm across, and I'm pretty sure the sepals were flat.  That brings you to H. sphaerocarpum, which does not have an official record in Kane County (although almost every other county in IL has it).  Did I find a new county record?

Then there was this species, which looked like nothing I knew.  For the first time in ages, I had to go through the entire S&W key, because I couldn't place this to genus or even family, and I hadn't brought Newcomb with me (or Kane County Wild Plants & Natural Areas, doh!).  Ah, yes.  Justicia americana, water willow.  Which I HAVE seen before, but very long ago.  There was quite a healthy stand of this lining the banks of the Fox River.  The damselflies were getting a kick out of it.

Circling back toward the parking lot, I took the boardwalk through what might have been a nice marsh in the days of yore, but is now a cattail desert.  The only thing that will save that part of the site from certain doom is a good aerial nuking with herbicide.  Or several. 

Final verdict:  Some nice spots, but definitely in need of some lovin'.  Celebrity species are either kaput, dormant, or hiding in hard-to-reach nooks.  Problem species:  cattail, RCG, purple loosestrife, glossy buckthorn.  An OK place to visit, but maybe not worth the trek from the city (unless you're on a quixotic quest to conquer all of the IL nature preserves, like some loonies who shall remain nameless). 

Getting back on track: months-late recap of Sagawau Canyon Nature Preserve

[blushes wildly]

It has dawned on me that I have not posted anything in 3+ months.  Flat out, this is because my job is hellacious, especially the last month and a half or so of the school year.  You have been out of school for over a month, you say?  Why, yes.  I fled the continental US immediately after I escaped the clutches of my workplace, for a week's trip to Puerto Rico; then, I spent several weeks catching up on all of the errands and stuff I am not able to do during the school year because I am a slave to my job, and any miraculous free moment I get is spent melting like a puddle of slime mold into my couch.  It wasn't until last week that I was actually able to get out in the preserves for some unfettered nerd-bingeing.  But before I dissect that, I will recap a visit I made in May (for school, of course) to another as-yet-unvisited (by me) spot on the IL nature preserves list:  Sagawau Canyon.

Camp Sagawau is a frustrating place, in that you must make an appointment, or attend a special event, to go there.  Since I care not for pre-planning, I had never been there.  Luckily, having a troupe of students who need edu-ma-cating is an accepted reason for visiting the place, so I brought ALL of my AP students, both classes, 54 in total after absences, all at the same time, to get a grand tour of the place for their spring field trip.  I am not a well woman.  However, it turned out great, because the staff there are wicked cool and brusquely divvied up my kids into 3 groups and shuffled them through SIX different activities throughout the course of the day.  Kicknetting for benthic macroinvertebrates, water quality chemical analysis, limestone canyon tour, garlic mustard pulling, prairie tour, and herpetology lesson.  Pretty sweet.  I, of course, was free to tag along and look at plants while the guides talked about geologic history of the Chicago region (which I already know).  Here are some of the highlights of the day:

About half of the kids hanging out in the gorgeous environmental learning center.

Collecting water samples in the high-quality stream for chemical analysis.  If I remember correctly, this rocky-bottomed stream is spring-fed, and flows to its doom in the Cal-Sag Channel.  I would wish that on only my worst of enemies.

Netting benthic macros.  They were very timid at first about getting wet and touching squishy things, but they quickly got over it.

A baby northern water snake one lucky dipnetter caught.

The staff, having to do chemical tests all the time for school groups, had a sweet setup near the stream with tables and kits neatly lined up.  I am forever spoiled.

Trying to identify our benthic macros. This looks like an arranged photo for some kind of educational brochure, but I assure you it was candid.

The dolomite canyon.  Allegedly, the only one in Cook County.  They also claim that a tiny cave in the canyon wall is the only cave in Cook County.  I find it difficult to believe that one can confirm such a claim, but I'll let them have their fun.

 On to the flora...some lovely columbine against the canyon wall.

Cornus alternifolia, or the prosaically-named alternate-leaved dogwood.  It's pretty unusual in these parts, preferring to hang out in calcareous places.  

 Cystopteris bulbifera, bulblet fern. The little-bitty bulbs on the underside of the blade allegedly drop off and spawn baby ferns.  Can one use the word "spawn" when referring to plants?  If not, you're all just going to have to deal with it.

That's all the flora I captured, sadly.  Too much of my attention in the canyon was spent making sure my kids didn't slip off the rocks into the stream.  But overall, I give this site a thumbs-up.  Good quality stream, rare habitats, neat geology, great staff, fun times.  I'm actually glad they regulate visitors, so that they can maintain the quality.

Coming out of the winter coma

This cold spring is dragging on and on.  It's reminiscent of the spring of '97, which I spent glued to The Weather Channel from my dorm room in Indiana desperately waiting for the temperatures to bust out of the 50s (which I don't think they managed to do before classes got out the first week of May).  That year, we also spent a cold, gray Memorial Day in sweatshirts.  After a freakishly warm December and January this winter, we've had a freakishly cold and raw February, March and April.  Whereas I have a photo from a late March workday with my kids from last year in which the honeysuckles were already leafing out, everything is still bare and grouchy-looking this year.  I have a garlic mustard pull scheduled for two weeks from now, but I have yet to see any garlic mustard plant showing its crinkly green face.  The scientist in me knows that this is not proof against global warming, but just the stochastic nature of nature....but it can't help be a little relieved, as well.

Until I have time to expound on my spring break road trip to the southwest two weeks ago (prevented thus far by end-of-3rd-quarter madness), here are some tiny, hopeful signs of life from the Chicago region.  The following photos were snapped yesterday while spreading native seed mixes at Bunker Hill.  It snowed while I was doing this, by the way.  On April 13.  Snow.  Unapologetic snow.

 A timid rattlesnake master peeks above the charred debris in the mesic prairie area of Bunker Hill.  They got a pretty extensive prescribed burn in the first week of April.

Guess who--wood betony (Pedicularis canadensis)!  I've never seen it in hot-pink pre-photosynthetic mode.  There's usually no reason for me to be poking around in a prairie this early in the season.

A freshly buzz-cut-by-fire prairie dropseed clump sprouts some new growth.

Winter trip to Florida, brought to you by Abraham Lincoln!

One way in which we did not get screwed over by the teachers' strike in September was that they let us keep the Lincoln's birthday holiday, even though they took away Presidents' Day (to make up for days lost to the strike).  Lincoln's birthday is a far superior holiday for travel, because nobody else in the country has it off, so airfares are not elevated as they are on the much more common Presidents' Day.  Plus, it plopped itself on a Tuesday this year, so I could take one of my use-or-lose sick days on Monday and make it a 4-day weekend.  Shhh, don't tell.  Actually, I don't care--I'm mentally exhausted and spiritually sick, which seem legitimate reasons to take a sick day.  (That would also explain why it's taken so long to get around to posting about this trip.)

The gods were smiling on this trip.  It was nasty cold and snowy in Chicago, and it was sunny and 80 (+/- 1) in Sarasota all four days I was there.  This was apparently to make up for all the times I went down there and the gods forbade the mercury to rise above 65.  I was alone and free to do (or not do) anything I wanted.  I was in relatively good health for a change.  So, I slept--a lot.  I made use of the rails-to-trails Legacy Trail bike path every day and kept up with my 8K race training.  I went birding.  I went on a day trip down to the Naples/Ft. Myers area.  I buried myself in an awesome Stephen King book.  I drank lots of Yuengling and ate lots of seafood.  I went to the beach.  Here is the evidence...

My day trip took me a couple of hours south to Naples, where I visited the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary run by the Audubon Society.  I got up at 5 (on vacation!) and drove the two hours in the dark to get there at sunrise for the birds.  The sun rises really late in Florida.  I took this photo to prove to my students that pine flatwoods are real; our textbook has an extended project centered on the Florida upland ecosystem, where the students have to solve the problem of building a new school on land occupied by the threatened gopher tortoise.  They have to learn all about the pine flatwoods & scrubby flatwoods communities and all the different species interactions.  It's a hypothetical situation, but the setting is real.  I don't think I really believed it either until I went there.

Surprisingly, this is the first time I've seen bald cypresses.  I love their knobby knees.  This reminds me...I need to get down to southern IL at some point in my life.  Other than the one-night college road trip to see Smashing Pumpkins at SIU on my 18th birthday.  There was no bald cypress viewing scheduled on that trip, unfortunately.

There they are, the pine flatwoods.  The prairie below was recently burned & rejuvenated.

This strangler fig looks like an alien parasite.  Can you imagine it reaching out those two long tendrils like fingers to grab you and suck out your vital fluids?  I can.  And did.

The sanctuary was crawling with herons and egrets.  I think I saw all of them there--great egret, great blue heron, little blue heron, tri-colored heron, reddish egret, snowy egret, both night-herons.  OK, so maybe I didn't see the green heron or cattle egret.  I love how majestic and graceful they are...and then they open their mouths.  They sound like a bunch of grumpy, hoarse old men bitching at each other: 
"Hey!  Willard!  That was my fish, ya lousy bastid!" 
"I didn't see you makin' any moves on it, ya lazy chump, sittin there in the muck ova there!"  "BLAAAAAAAGGGHHHHHHH!!!"
"SHUT UP OVA THERE!!!"

Anhingas.  Such weird birds.  Very graceful in the water, then they get out and flop clumsily on the shore.  Then they have to sit and dry off in the sun with their wings outstretched, because their feathers get waterlogged.  Not enough oils to repel the water, or something like that.  Not a very good evolutionary strategy for someone who lives in gator-infested swamps....like THESE!

These baby gators look like they're having the best time.  No wonder people want them as pets.  For awhile.

Bald cypresses...and blue sky.  Did I mention, the sky was like that for four days, with the convenient and thoughtful exception of the evening I had to do a 4-mile run?  Like I said...the gods were feeling sheepish about their past cruelties.

More proof for the kiddies.  This was at the nature center at the J.N. "Ding" Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel Island, the second stop on my day trip.  It's quite an optimistic and misleading sign, since most of the refuge is mangrove swamp and open water (not prime GT habitat).  The guide at the info desk looked at me pityingly when I asked her where the best places to see tortoises would be.  Well, shucks--don't put up signs like that if you ain't gonna deliver!

 A handsome crab on a mangrove.

 Some kind of Ipomoea, I presume?  I had no plant guide with me.

I believe this is a brown water snake, snoozing on some mangrove prop roots.  It was pointed out to me by a group of senior citizens who were freaking out about it (men included) even though we were separated by it by a couple of meters and the boardwalk handrail.  Sissies.

Okay, so the lady at the nature center did tell me that there were some GT burrows at the very end of the road through the refuge, near the higher ground at the center of the island.  I got out of my car and went poking around, and sure enough--some holes in the sand/gravel that were very likely GT burrows.  This was one of them.  The GTs were all snug inside, or out at the GT bar for the afternoon, because I didn't catch a glimpse of one.

Ta-da!  I rode my bike down the Legacy Trail to Oscar Scherer State Park one morning to hang out with my pals, the federally threatened Florida scrub jays.  This is also how I know the gods were feeling bad about their past treatment of me:  the first few times I went here, prime scrub jay habitat, I saw zilch.  It was maddening; pretty much all the other people I saw in the park those other times had reported seeing the jays, but then they would apparently hide when they heard me coming.  It wasn't until my last visit before this that I finally saw them.  And on THIS trip, I ventured no more than about 10 yards down the Blue Trail when this cheeky little bugger landed on a scrub oak just a few feet away from me.  I laughed, said hello, and bent down to pull my camera out of my backpack.  Then I felt him alight on my head.  I straightened up, holding my breath, not sure what to do.  He seemed very satisfied with himself.  I asked him what he wanted me to do.  He didn't answer, naturally.  I took a series of about 15 pictures of him, and he showed no signs of wanting to leave.  I walked a few steps--he stayed put.  "Now, that's just lazy," I said.  "I am not walking you around this park."  For about five minutes we went on like this, and finally I tilted my head back to see if he would look down at me.  He tried, but slipped on the floppy brim of my hat and flew away. 

 Here's another one, part of a family that was checking me out from a much safer distance.

Eastern corn snake!  I saw him on the Green Trail, where I had gone to check out the bald eagle nest in the park. The eagles were not visible in their nest, but at least I got to see this handsome devil.

So yes, it was a smashing good trip.  I added a few life birds (roseate spoonbill, barred owl, Wilson's plover), got just enough color to make me not look like a sickly wintertime Yankee ginger, and reinforced my mental health a bit.  Next up:  Nebraska, Arizona, and New Mexico for spring break!

Winter jaunts

Ahh, winter break.  I've managed to take some time off from lounging on the couch (in an attempt to ignore this mysterious headache that's been torturing me for days by watching old movies on cable) and get my caboose out the door.  The fresh air has helped a little.  Then I go back inside and hunker miserably under a down throw and whimper a little.  Most of the time, I feel I would be a scrappy, survivalist fighter when the inevitable zombie apocalypse or devastating plague arrives.  In this current funk, I'm pretty sure I'd get my sissy, myopic ass beaten to a pulp and the brains sucked out of my skull.

 The first trip was the day after school got out--my field trip to the North Branch solstice bonfire.  Sixteen of my best and brightest came out on a Saturday morning on winter break, without receiving any reward of extra credit or service-learning hours, to hang out with their teacher in the woods on a cold day.  Kids these days--they're not all lazy bums.  We hiked around Somme Prairie Grove for a couple of hours, then headed over to Somme Woods for the bonfire.  It's delightfully pagan, what with the bagpiper and drummer and flutes and all.

 

I also shot some videos, with the club's little flip-cam purchased with Climate Cycle funds.  I am not an accomplished cinematographer, as evidenced by the vomit-inducing video I captured of the bagpipe procession from the parking lot to the woodpile.  Not a good idea to videotape while walking a rugged woodland path, it turns out.  Instead, I will treat you with a short clip of the bonfire in full flame:

Next trip:  Christmas Bird Count at Gensburg-Markham Prairie (not on actual Christmas, but 12/29).  I have always wanted to do a CBC, but never quite got around to it, due to sheer laziness and lack of confidence in my birding skills.  This year, despite the snow showers, I decided to sack up and go, figuring I could just keep notes for the experienced birders and absorb some expertise from them, like a leech.  The bird show was, well, underwhelming.  I was easily able to ID the few species we saw, and actually was the first one in the group to pin down the ID of a flock of sparrows...American tree sparrows.  Other than that, there were a couple of flocks of Canada geese flying overhead, a pair of red-tails, a few crows, and a ring-billed gull.  Yawn.  The joint was eerily silent in the snow, except for the distant roar of traffic from I-294.  Beautiful lighting for photos, however.  It was a damned shame my fingers were so cold and I brought my small camera whose settings I still haven't bothered to figure out.  Despite this, I got some good shots of cream false indigo in its subtle winter colors, and a neat shot of the burned vs. unburned side of the firebreak:

Last outing:  workday at Bunker Hill yesterday, 12/30.  This was my and Rebecca's first stint as apprentice stewards.  It went acceptably well.  There was some grumbling, bumbling, and passive-aggressive jabs from the volunteers at the outstart, since we did not plan to burn brush piles and it was rather nippy at 9am.  The reason for this is that Bunker Hill is in the confrontational zone, where the anti-restorationists have their last meager foothold.  The special rule for this zone is that any brush piles have to be out cold--not just flame-free, glowing embers as at the other sites, but cold enough to sit on--before you leave.  This means either sticking around until sunset to let the coals burn out, or putting the fire out with snow or river water (which is undesirable in that it leaves permanent piles of charcoal that will stick around for decades, as opposed to piles of fluffy ash that dissipate in the wind).  I didn't want to leave a legacy of charcoal at my new site, so we opted instead to drag all the brush to the bike path and leave it for the district to put in the chipper.  This warmed everyone up pretty quickly, so things were friendlier after the first half hour.  We only had visits from 3 of the antis, who stood out on the bike path and accosted walkers and joggers with their misinformation campaign, but kept rather quiet relative to the noisy, offensive protests of their heyday.  Since I was busy keeping the show running, I just got a couple of post-mayhem shots...the little oak grove we cleared the buckthorn and ash saplings out of, and one of the impressive piles of brush waiting to be chipped:

May the new year bring more and better opportunities for nature-gazing...including my upcoming Lincoln's bday trip to Florida, spring break to see the sandhills in Nebraska and backpack in national parks farther west, and--dare I jinx myself?--possibly Thailand and/or Central America this summer?  I wipe my hands of you, 2012, and good riddance!

Pop quiz--Bark!

I've been saving this entry up for a slump, to break the monotony of a long period of not being able to get outdoors.  Well, I did actually get out last Saturday, for our annual post-Thanksgiving workday, but I was too busy with the merry slaughter of buckthorn with my mighty chainsaw to take any photos or deeply contemplate the beauty of nature.  How I love thee, dear chainsaw (even though, after long stretches of time without you, you make my core muscles scream like I've been hit by a freight train)!  It was a great workday, with a small group of turkey-fattened troopers, ending with roasted apples and potatoes over the coals of a raging brush pile.  I learned an important lesson that day, as well--avoid coring an apple with a paring knife while said apple is held in your other hand.  I sliced all the way through the first layer of skin of my left hand, all the way down to the meat.  It looks like I have one half of a pair of stigmata.  The skin has healed nicely, but I have some nerve damage; I have pain shooting up my ring finger every time I brush the wound ever so slightly.  I am a fool.

Back on track--during my epic cage match trip in October, I took a bunch of photos of tree bark.  Since the winter was coming round (and by this point, is already here), I was testing my skills at identifying trees solely by their bark.  This is a handy skill to have.  This became even more apparent on the AP field trips (also back in October), when my kids were struggling mightily with tree ID.  Even when they could reach the branches and see the leaves and their arrangement up close, they still had trouble distinguishing them by drawings.  When the leaves were out of reach, they were hopeless.  I finally started showing them the tricks of tree bark...the burnt potato chip trick, the ski slopes trick, etc.  This was infinitely more successful.  So here is a representative sample of northern Illinois trees...can YOU identify them by their bark? (Answers at bottom)

 1a.  Sapling with smoothish, nondescript bark.  This one always stumps me.  It doesn't look like anything.

 1b.  Same species, older tree.  The bark gets a little rougher, but still not any interesting pattern.  Those yellow-bellied sapsucker holes, on the other hand...very telling.

 2.  Long, peely strips of bark are a dead giveaway for this one.

3a.  Anyone paying attention to earlier entries will get this one.  This one mystified me, because the leaves were so far overhead, until I saw some saplings nearby...

 3b.  A-ha.  This one has the characteristic warty bark I'm used to seeing in smaller trees lining city streets.  They just don't get that big in captivity.

 4.  Diamond-shaped bark pattern, if you have an active imagination

 5.  Oooo.  This tree is unusual around here.  Perhaps reminiscent of its cousin, #4?

 6.  Rough and stringy-looking bark, with a hint of orange color.  Okay, so maybe this is not so representative of northern Illinois trees.

 7.  Striiiiiiated, like cat scratches.  (That would be a hint as to its scientific name, and how I first learned to remember it)

 8.  Burnt potato chips!

 9.  A harmless fungus makes the lower bark of this tree fall off in patches, or so they say.

 10.  Thick, corky bark helps protect this species from prairie fires.  (The National Arbor Day sent me a survey about trees in the mail today, in a thinly veiled attempt to get me to make a donation.  They asked whether I thought the white oak was an appropriate choice for the state tree of Illinois [no, I don't].  Had they given me space to write a rebuke, I would have said that THIS tree should be our state tree, and those airhead elementary schoolchildren should never have been allowed to make such an important decision.  But they didn't, so I didn't send in the survey. [Northern cardinal, state bird?  Bluegill, state fish?  What are these kids smoking?])

 11.  Near the top of the trunk, this tree has long, smooth, lighter-colored strips of bark running down its length, reminiscent of ski slopes.

 12.  Smooth, straight trunks with thin, indented cracks.  Often multi-trunked.  

 13.  A rough patchwork of multi-colored bricks--grays, creams, reds, black, and usually with a smattering of moss or lichen to green it up.

****************************************************************************

The answers! They're in alphabetical order by scientific name, because that's how my computer arranged them.  Hope that didn't make it too easy!

1.  Sugar maple (Acer saccharum)
2.  Shagbark hickory (Carya ovata)
3.  Hackberry (Celtis occidentalis)
4.  Green ash (Fraxinus pensylvanicus)
5.  Blue ash (Fraxinus quadrangulata)
6.  Osage orange (Maclura pomifera)
7.  Ironwood (Ostrya virginiana)
8.  Black cherry (Prunus serotina)
9.  White oak (Quercus alba)
10.  Bur oak (Quercus macrocarpa)
11.  Red oak (Quercus rubra)
12.  American basswood (Tilia americana)
13.  American elm (Ulmus americana)