Sandy Hollow

 My list of top places in Illinois contains some obvious selections as well as a head-scratcher or two.  The Shawnee, of course, with its undeniable southern culture, quiet woods, and herpetological diversity.  The driftless region tucked up along the Mississippi River in the far northwest corner, where in places, time has stood still and where the mystical timber rattlesnake lives on in the most isolated outcroppings.  The northwest side of Chicago, where I was born and raised and where the promise of the plains gartersnakes awaits in its weedy alleys and railroad embankments.  The sand region of Will, Kankakee, and Iroquois Counties, its glacial relics, and sometimes unforgiving attitude. Forgottonia, its scattered towns devoid of attention and humanitarian efforts but replete with grit and self identification.

    Wild lupine.  Am I dreaming?

Then there’s the wetlands of Putnam County.  Specifically, the Dixon Waterfowl Refuge, a 3,000 acre preserve south of Hennepin, hugged by the Illinois River where it channels southward.  It is a place of stunning beauty and biological splendor, even more remarkable considering that most of it is restored former farmland.  There, you’ll find reclaimed lakes, springs, seeps, marsh, woodlands, streams, and incredible upland sand prairies and savanna.  You’ll also spot some indications that not long ago, this was all farmland.  Old, unused farm implements and infrastructure from a time past.  The Wetlands Initiative has worked extremely hard to maintain this site, and so it is quite a privilege to access all of it for free.

Hairy puccoon

I’ve only been there twice before.  The first time was for their first ever bioblitz in 2015.  Then, I visited with some friends in 2016.  A lot has transpired in the last ten years.  A few months after my last visit, my daughter was born.  Nearly a decade later, it seemed very appropriate and comforting to have been invited back for a mini bioblitz.  I couldn’t wait to return.

Cleft phlox

The bioblitz took place on a Sunday morning, but I arrived Saturday afternoon.  I hiked Sandy Hollow, the newest addition to the preserve.  This acreage serves as a buffer for the wetlands but is in itself an absolutely stunning landscape.  As soon as I exited my car, I was greeted by the most luxuriant display of wild lupine I might have ever seen.  Interspersed between were brilliant yellow hairy puccoon, cream wild indigo, and dainty blue-eyed grass.  The air smelled so good.  Working my way into the woodlands at the bottom of a hill, I saw lots of woodland phlox and huge swaths of blooming mayapple. The overall herbaceous layer was lush - lots of young budding plants and fresh green wood nettles.  There were songbirds aplenty; over a dozen species by my calculations, plus glimpses of bald eagles and turkey vultures through the gaps in the canopy.  Mosquitoes were abundant but they were not (yet) interested in blood.

Narrowleaf puccoon

Blue-eyed grass

After camping out in my vehicle overnight at the farmhouse, I awoke to a fresh morning and decided to take a walk along the much improved levee.  The last time I was on the levee, it was so muddy that one of the vehicles we used was stuck until a tractor came and got it out.  Today, the levee is paved in a dry layer of crushed limestone.  I enjoyed the quiet morning, but from a distance I could see some commotion at the farmhouse and I knew the bioblitz preparation was buzzing.  Shortly after I returned to the farmhouse, Tom Anton arrived.  Then a nice surprise - Trevor Edmonson, formerly of the Wetlands Initiative and now of the Nature Conservancy, arrived.  It was like a mini reunion of that memorable bioblitz from 2015.  

Honeylocust - a tree you probably don't want to hug

A view from the lookout tower

We stood through a short intro and then we were off.  There were about ten members of the herp team, guided by Reese, a Wetlands Initiative biologist, and led by me and Tom.  Over the course of three and a half short hours, we explored much of the site and came up with a respectable list of herps:  American toad, grey treefrog, cricket frog, green frog, painted turtle, red-eared slider, northern watersnake, eastern gartersnake, miksnake, foxsnake, blue racer, bullsnake.  There was no time for staging herps for photos and frankly I wasn’t in the mood for that anyway.  We caught and released as quickly as possible, taking only voucher shots which are not really worthy of sharing here.  

 

A bunch of crunchies

Tom with the first snake of the morning

Interesting dark patterning on the head of this foxsnake

Reese with a pair of blue racers

Our last snake was this bullsnake we caught crossing the road. We held up traffic for a bit. I wanted to recreate an occasion from eleven years ago, from the very same place, sans Tristan...

2015

Around noon, everyone returned to the farmhouse to recap their morning and then most took off.  I hung out a bit to catch up with Trevor.  Man, what a good dude he is.  Then I took one last lap over the gravel road before it met the pavement.  Call me crazy, but driving slowly over a gravel road is therapeutic.  The grinding and popping of rocks under the heavy tires works better to lower my heart rate than sitting in a massage chair, I tell ya.  

I’m privileged to know lots of places where everything just comes together, personally and psychologically.  I think the world would be a better place if more people felt such a strong connection to the land.  There’s a lot out there to discover, you just need to do it.

Slacks & muck boots

 I like turtles - a lot - but seldom are they the targets of my exploits.  Mostly, it’s because of the associated lack of tactile experience.  I mean, I’m lucky if I can even see a turtle basking on a log along the edge of a pond or river before it slips into the drink upon my approach.  I can respect the evolutionary adaptation that has kept these animals going for millions of years.  But the selfish part of me (and admittedly, it’s a big part) wants to admire them up close the way I can with other members of the class Reptilia.

Lately, I’ve discovered a new joy.  I have, in fact, picked up turtle-spotting with binoculars. 

And before I’m slandered for practically being one step away from becoming a birder, let me explain.  I work in a herpetologically depauperate part of the Chicago area.  The nearby natural areas are primarily wooded riparian preserves with heavy canopy cover.  These cool, high-traffic, high-impact strips of greenspace are pretty devoid of all but the most generalistic species.  A lot of common garters, with a few common frogs mixed in and not a whole lot else.  

I figured that the stream that flows through the local preserves may harbor a few turtles.  Salt Creek begins in northwestern Cook County before flowing in a general southeasterly direction until it meets the Des Plaines River.  On its way there, it flows through a very heavily developed suburban area, but also through Busse Woods and the leafy Brookfield Zoo.  Who knows what surprises it might reveal?

Until recently, all I knew about turtles and Salt Creek is that as a kid, I released a spiny softshell turtle there.  In junior high, we had two classroom turtles that coexisted in the back of the science “lab”, a red eared slider and the aforementioned softshell.  While in 8th grade, they were offered to me, and I was happy to take them home.  For reasons I cannot recall nor understand, I eventually decided to keep the slider and not the softshell turtle.  And I don’t remember where I read this, but softshell turtles lived in Salt Creek.  That’s what I knew, so that’s where it should go.  My mom drove me to somewhere along Salt Creek, a bit of a hike from our home in Chicago, and I simply plopped the turtle into the river and watched as it quickly sped away.  That thought - in hindsight, painful and embarrassing - is etched into my mind forever.  Of course, pets should never be released into the wild, but there was no one preaching that to me back in 1995.  

So for the last thirty or so years, Salt Creek has come to be synonymous with “softshell turtle creek”.  Therefore, as I walk through the preserves, roughly between Wolf Road and 25th Avenue, I train my eyes toward the river and move more stealthily than normal.  I’m looking for snags and muddy point bars, places where turtles like to haul out to warm up in the sunlight.  And yes, I’m sporting a pair of binoculars.

But the binoculars offer a dual purpose.  You see, I pursue turtles wearing a polo shirt and slacks with knee-high muck boots.  An unusual combination, for sure…but if people think I’m bird-watching (a much more highly-regarded pastime), then I don’t really get the side eye.  And this time of year I’m often not the only one with binoculars, as the songbird migration is in full swing.  But while most people are pointing theirs at the trees, mine are aimed at the river.

So far, I’ve spotted painted turtles, red-eared sliders, and even map turtles.  No softshells yet, but I believe I will see some eventually.

And finally, I’ve learned that spotting reptiles from afar can be just as satisfying as seeing them up close and even handling them.  It requires additional skills, forces me to re-think my approach, and provides a glimpse into a window I'm not all that familiar with.  So yes, dang it, I enjoy it.  And no, I do not plan on using the binoculars for birds any time soon.

Florida's Lower Keys: The Skeleton Keys

Last week, for the first time ever, I visited the Florida Keys along with my wife and daughter.  The trip was predicated not by my long-standing fascination with the string of tropical islands but by an episode of Coyote Peterson's YouTube series.  That's right, the guy famous for making wasps sting him and then acting super dramatic in the aftermath dictated my spring break plans.  My daughter, who has become a Coyote Peterson fan, was absolutely fascinated by an episode wherein Coyote visits an aquarium in Marathon and gets to handle giant live deep-sea isopods.  In the same episode, he also hand-feeds a group of tarpon and ends up with bloody fingers and whatnot.  But it was the shoebox-sized isopods that struck a chord with the kid, and she talked about it a lot until we just decided to go see them for ourselves.  So, that's what we did.

I was really hoping to see some of the few species of reptiles native to the islands while there.  Most notably, the rosy rat snake - Florida Keys' smaller, lighter version of the corn snake.  I wanted to witness the habitat of Nerodia clarkii, or the Gulf saltmarsh snake, in the keys.  I figured if I were lucky I might run into a Florida Keys mole skink.  Despite my best efforts - and they were spirited efforts - we didn't see those species.  Not only was the dry season in full gear, but it has been an historically dry dry season.  We did see the usual invasive suspects, species built to ensure harsh environmental conditions.  There were the Mediterranean house geckos that appeared around dusk on the sides of buildings.  Sun-loving northern curly-tailed lizards gesturing atop landscaping boulders and large chunks of fossilized corals pretty much everywhere we went.  Stately green iguanas foraging along the roadsides, and often, caught on busy roads by rental cars and left to bake into leathery husks in the tropical sun.  Brown anoles on just about any type of surface imaginable.  And greenhouse frogs, those miniscule little jumpers that have made their way across the globe due to their specialized method of reproduction that involves no water and no metamorphosis.  It can be frustrating seeing such an array of established non-native herps, especially in lieu of natives.  But there's also a hard lesson to be learned, and ironically, a sense of respect for these pioneers who are simply trying to survive a world they never asked to be part of, having been chaperoned by human beings at some point in recent history.

This is an area of the resort in which we stayed.  This view gives you the impression that you are on a sandy beach when in fact this is completely manufactured.  The coconut palms have been transplanted from somewhere else and the sand is a thin layer built atop an artificial surface itself built atop a shelf of fossilized coral reef.  You will not find a natural sand beach anywhere in the lower keys because the islands are surrounded in shallow coral reefs.  Still, it's hard to deny the relaxing aesthetics created here.

A non-native collared dove 

A local restaurant offered a selection of tropical fruits and vegetables in a beverage machine

The Florida Keys Aquarium Encounters was a fun place to take the family.  Lumen finally was able to interact with the large isopods.  The water in their tank was bone-chillingly frigid.  She also got to feed wild tarpon, albeit not by hand (obviously)

A young northern curly-tailed lizard on the aquarium grounds

Like anywhere else, there appears to be mixed sentiments about the natural heritage of the Florida Keys by residents.  This sign was posted by a homeowner in Marathon.  I liked it

Back at the resort, while the family was doing normal things like relaxing on hammocks and looking out at the water, I was poking around for reptiles as usual.  In a thick patch of tall ornamental grass, I found a sleeping adult green iguana.  It did not put up much of a fight, so after a few minutes I let Lumen hold it.  It was placed back into the vegetation after about 5-10 minutes.  I realized later that evening that this experience comes exactly one year after her first wild green iguana interaction from the Virgin Islands

A scene from No Name Key, where State Road 4A dead ends into the Gulf of Mexico.  This was formerly the site of a ferry before a highway extended between No Name Key and Marathon.  There are rosy rat snake records from this site so we hiked along the shoreline as well as a former road that leads to nowhere and is now a seldom used hiking path.  There was a stench of what I'm assuming was decomposing sargassum at the coastline.  I can easily mow through most any smells - dead animals, hot garbage, stagnation and so forth.  But five minutes of this and my eyes were beginning to burn.  The family REALLY didn't like it.  So we moved on

The next morning we decided to visit Key West.  Aimee wanted to go, and it turned out to provide a highlight of our trip.  Architecturally, the island is a gold mine.  There are a lot of early twentieth century homes and buildings in original condition, which was surprising to me considering the frequency and power of hurricanes.  I guess the secret is regular maintenance.  Here, a man is painting a front porch

Another old home.  Note the fossilized coral foundation, solid shutters, and steel roof

And then, there was this. To most people, nothing but a rusty old gate, not even worth a second glance.  But the moment I saw it - immediate flashback to my childhood.  Because this is the same 1920's Sears make and model gate I had growing up in Chicago.  I haven't even seen it in over thirty five years but it was like seeing an old friend.

We also visited the legendary Nancy Forrester and her bird sanctuary.  Nancy has lived on Key West since the 1960s, originally working as an artist focusing on marine life.  She owned the last acre of undeveloped land in the historic center of the island and created the "Nancy Forrester's Secret Garden" in the 1980s. After someone dumped a parrot at her house in 1993, she started a rescue that continues today.  Sadly, due to financial woes (read: increased taxes), she was forced to sell most of the wild acre she had spent years meticulously maintaining and today her reduced property is surrounded in upscale villas and rental units.  Her current property still sticks out like a sore thumb in the neighborhood and at nearly ninety years of age she still hosts visitors and educates them about the realities of exotic bird breeding and that industry.  She's a little eccentric, but what artist isn't?  I really enjoyed having a discussion with her, and relayed my own concerns about the captive reptile market.  Once she was aware of my interests, she told me that she used to see five different species of snakes on her property, including the rosy rat snake, which was often seen eating rats.  Now that those snakes are gone, rats have returned in number.  Looking at Key West today, it's hard to imagine rosy rats surviving anywhere.  

I truly, truly hope that her property is kept up in perpetuity.

Big Pine Key contains more undeveloped land than most of the other keys and I wanted to explore it.  We spent a good deal of time there on a very pleasant day.

An old reclaimed borrow pit now supports a pair of American alligators.  Alligators are rare in the keys, maybe the rarest reptile there (although much more conspicuous than the Rim Rock crowned snake or Keys ringneck snake).  These would have had to migrate across the Gulf from the mainland to establish here in the very limited sources of freshwater.  We first saw this adult female out in the center of the pit, then watched her make her way toward the observation platform.  This is an indication that visitors are probably feeding them.  Later, the male showed up as well

A large yellow-bellied slider, native to Florida but probably introduced here.  The pit also contained cichlids, and we were told by a ranger that visitors frequently dump their unwanted fish here

An anhinga along the edge of the pit

Key deer were commonly seen on Big Pine Key as well as a few other of the "quiet" keys

We hiked up to near the northern tip of Big Pine Key and found some rather interesting and beautiful habitat.  Entire swaths of these shrubs/trees were dead, and I wondered if it was related to storm surges inundating these rocklands with saltwater.  In this area, we did come across a very swift black racer, the only snake of the trip

And then back toward the center of the key were these classic pine rocklands.  This particular area is part of the National Key Deer Refuge and is actively managed.  Because I wasn't finding any snakes, I tried REALLY hard to find either a Keys bark scorpion (Centruroides guanensis) or a Florida tailless whipscorpion (Phrynus marginemaculatus).  All I got out of about an hour of searching was a fresh Centruoides molt.  There were zero macroinvertebrates anywhere which was kind of puzzling to this neophyte

Later that night, I committed several hours to road cruising the back roads of Middle Torch Key, Big Torch Key, and Big Pine Key, hoping for a rosy rat snake on the move.  I was skunked.  Photo of the dead end of Dorn Road on the north end of Big Torch Key at around 10:00 PM

Later, I tried once more for scorpions/whipscorpions, using my blacklight I brought with me.  Again, nothing.  The moon was full and very bright; this photo was taken after 11:00 PM on Big Pine Key

On our final day in the keys, we spent several hours at Crane Point Hammock, where I searched high and low for Nerodia.  I didn't see any, but we really enjoyed the place.  Some Nerodia habitat...

Lumen and I under a large Florida strangler fig

We drove to Coral Gables, an historic and trendy/snazzy suburb of Miami, where we stayed a couple of nights.  Our hotel was nice and I was without a doubt the least fancy person in the history of that hotel to step foot inside.  I pulled my rental Toyota Rav4 alongside several Italian sports cars that each cost about as much as my house.  The valet was really nice but inside he must have been wondering who this filthy guy in field pants, a tee shirt, and bandanna thought he was.  A customized Cybertruck slowly pulls up, and a man steps out, wearing an expensive suit and watch, and I caught a whiff of his expensive cologne.  Yep, definitely out of my element.  

To wrap up our trip, we spent the entirety of our final full day in the Everglades.  It was hot and dry but we got to experience some cool sightings.  

One of many Peninsula cooters(Pseudemys peninsularis).  We also saw Florida red-bellied cooters (Pseudemys nelsoni) and Florida softshells (Apalone ferox)

Lots and lots of alligators.  The highlight of our trip was watching a large-ish gator catch and try to eat a large cooter.  The cooter would free itself from the gator's vice grip, only to be caught again and tossed around in the gator's jaws.  The spectacle attracted a crowd, which made the gator feel uneasy.  It took its meal elsewhere.  The last thing we saw was the turtle's emotionless gaze and it fully extended its neck beyond the gator's large teeth and kick in protest.  Nature is pretty brutal, and while it was tough for my daughter to see, it was a lesson. 

Rest assured, there will be a part two to this, one day.  In the wet season.

White wind

 It's times like this I wish I could express myself poetically.

We are in the midst of the first real warm spell of the year.  Yesterday afternoon, I raced home after work to experience the remaining hours of a dream of a day.  A stiff southwesterly breeze blew across the landscape, and the sounds of birds, for the first time in months, filled the air.  Earlier in the day, it had rained for hours, but now the sun was intermittently poking through the clumpy gray clouds.  The temperature stood at a very comfortable 66 degrees Fahrenheit.  My soul was feeling restless.

Once home, I made a quick change, then headed out across the street.  I could have gone anywhere, but the atmosphere was especially powerful in that moment, and I didn't want to lose a moment of it driving around in my car.  Besides, "my" prairie is always devoid of other humans.  There is an air of ancient wisdom here, in the soil, in the rocks, and in the breeze.

Just a few days ago, the prairie was burned.  Where it had been all but impenetrable laid barren black ground in waves.  The aroma of char hung heavy everywhere.  Here and there were items exposed by the flames - smooth glacial erratics, a few golf balls appearing as roasted marshmallows, and a couple of flattened aluminum cans, the old ones that were missing their pop tabs.  In time, these will be swallowed up in a sea of big bluestem.

Muskrat lodge

The crunchy ground turned squishy beneath my boots as I approached a marsh full of cattails that had their tops burned off.  Entering the marsh, I kept my eyes focused for groggy, torpid frogs.  I was surprised that the chorus frogs were not calling.  Great groups of killdeer nervously cried and fluttered about.  Flocks of Canada geese and sandhill cranes made their ways across the sky, and the red-winged blackbirds gave me the side-eye as I trudged my way close to their projected nesting sites.  Across the marsh were a group of ducks that sounded very much like wood frogs.

Northern leopard frog emerging from the cold floor of the marsh

Standing in the middle of the marsh, about shin deep in the muck, a long break in the clouds delivered warm sunlight to my face.  A gentle breeze instantaneously reminded me of a time past.  It felt incredible.  I may have stood there for ten seconds, or ten minutes.  

I'm not sure.

But it signaled the beginning of another season, as in millennia before.  Nature knew the routine.

"This restlessness has always been the foam sleeping in the waves; my heart is betrayed by silence, like a thief who lies in wait" - School of Seven Bells, "White Wind"

Sandhill cranes heading north