It has been quite a few years now since I received a call from a young woman named Olivia Gentile. She was writing a biography of Phoebe Snetsinger and wanted to interview me. She came by the house and we spent some time talking at the kitchen table. Over the years, I wondered what [...]
Last Saturday (Oct 10) I met my friend Bob Russell, who was in town from Minneapolis, for a few hours of mid-day birding at the Skokie Lagoons (a Cook County forest preserve a little inland from Lake Michigan that’s located in the Northfield/Glencoe area). It was a cloudy cold day with strong northwestern winds. As soon [...]
Piping plover is the only federally endangered bird for which critical habitat has been designated in the Chicago region. That habitat is the open beach areas from Waukegan north to the Wisconsin line. A hundred years ago a number of plover nested on these sandy areas as well as those of northwest Indiana. Here is [...]
The weather has been rather stagnant, with the same stationary air mass hanging overhead for five weeks. Major bird movements have been lacking, particularly along the lake. But that was all going to end with the forecast of a cold front barreling into the region last Sunday night (September 27). Tim Hill, a birder in [...]