Mid April is an odd time of the Chicago area birding calendar. The mass of waterfowl have passed, although a fair number of species are still around in favored locations, but the big waves of passerines are mere expectations. And I think that is part of the problem: we are being teased by yellow-rumped warbler [...]
Continue reading about Chicago Lakefront: Missing Migrants and Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum
Wednesday Cindy and I left Columbus bright and early for a trip south to Piketon, Ohio to meet Geoffrey Sea. Geoffrey has spent years studying passenger pigeons and the Hopewell Mounds, that occur in several places in Ohio. To familiarize ourselves with the mounds we stopped at Chillicothe to visit the National Historic Park which [...]
Continue reading about A Trip to the Holy Land, Part II, Piketon and Cincinnati
A favorite spring activity of mine is woodcocking. It wasn’t until the early1980s that I discovered woodcock enacted their marvelous nuptial displays just a short walk from where I grew up. Perhaps, the connection was a consequence of reading Aldo Leopold’s “Sky Dance,” his lovely account of the display in Sand County Almanac. (The first [...]