Bird Banding Fall Conclusion

Bird Banding has concluded for this year.  I posted back at the midpoint on what we had then.  This semester,  the LLCC Bird Banding station banded 2047  different birds of 80 species.  Considering that all happened within about a three month window of time, this is very impressive.  New birds for all time include the Blue-headed Vireo and Cape May Warbler, pictures from Wikipedia below.




Blue-headed vireo above, Cape May Warbler below.

Below is information copied from the notes of Vern Kleen, Banding Station President and Very Important Bander (VIB)

Species with new “Seasonal” Highs

Mourning Dove                                    17

Red-bellied Woodpecker                    12*

Downy Woodpecker                            33*

Hairy Woodpecker                               4*

Yellow-shafted Flicker                        12

Eastern Wood-Pewee                           4

Blue-headed Vireo                              1

Blue Jay                                                  22

Black-capped Chickadee                    26

Tufted Titmouse                                   33

White-breasted Nuthatch                    9

Golden-crowned Kinglet                    23

Ruby-crowned Kinglet                        34

Veery                                                       6

American Robin                                    84

Cape May Warbler                             1

Black-throated Green Warbler           15

Wilson’s Warbler                                  5

Eastern Towhee                                     4

Field Sparrow                                         27

Fox Sparrow                                           13

Song Sparrow                                        120

Lincoln’s Sparrow                                23

Slate-colored Junco                              284

Northern Cardinal                                 77

The area is a mixture of woodlot, lawn, and prairie restoration, allowing for a diversity of birds.   This has been explained in a previous post, and also in this other post.   As such,  I refer you back to the other posts.  I have plenty more information about the bird banding program, but much of it is technical.  If interested, post in comments below, as so many of you have done.  (That was sarcasm, in case you couldn't tell.  I presume you could, but there's always that one person...)  Anyway, before I get any more bird-brained puns (for their body size, birds have large brains and most birds are very intelligent),  I will conclude this summary.

*Woodpecker numbers may be up due to emerald ash borers killing trees in the counties north of the banding station. I believe this has been noted in other blogs.  (I look forward to seeing "Woodpeckers on the Rise!" posted in an alarmist article in the mainstream media.)  I do think this is a sign of a serious problem.

Why We Illinoisans Live In the An Excellent State (for nature)

I follow several other blogs closely, all of which are located in beautiful places like British Columbia or Pennsylvania or North Carolina or even southern Ohio.  All of these places, especially British Columbia, are beautiful, and I find myself suffering from location envy.  Even in Ohio, there are hills.  We of central Illinois, on the other hand, have heard that steep elevation changes exist and some of us have marveled at them on vacations.  Then we come home to a place where the curvature of the earth is visible.  Elkhart Hill, a small mound of earth, is a landmark along Route 55 north of Springfield and south of Lincoln, because it is the only hill in the area.  And if there were more hills in central Illinois, what would we look at?  Corn, with occasional soybeans.  Between fields, there are rows and occasionally hedges of trees. Along waterways, there can be a good deal of second-growth, second-rate forest, but that seems to be about the most interesting landform in central Illinois.

Yet, this is too harsh, although this description does seem accurate at times.  For instance, the Illinois River provides abundant exceptions.  Grandview Drive in Peoria Heights, Illinois is one of the best exemptions.

Lovely, isn't it?   In reality, central Illinois residents have plenty of nature all around them.  For instance, we have every type of weather invented, short of hurricanes, and we occasionally get the aftereffects of those, too.  I've lived through a tornado passing over my house, multiple ice storms, temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit for a week, three month long droughts, floods, five inches of rain in an hour,  a couple of blizzards, more severe thunderstorm warnings than you could shake a stick at, and hail an inch deep. That was all just earlier today.

I might be joking, a bit.  But in comparison to someplace like Portland, Oregon, where it's only rainy and cloudy, with sunshine once in awhile, we have a good variety.  All of the above have happened in the last ten years, by the way. 

Of course, Illinois has other wonderful nature perks.  Within a three hour trip in any direction, a majority of Eastern Plains and Eastern Hardwoods plants and animals can be found, as well as the abundant, Midwest-only, Prairie Trillium and a few other similar species:  A prairie trillium is found below.

This is not a typical prairie trillium, as this is the only trillium out of the thousands that I have seen with four leaves and four petals.  This is an infrequent genetic mutation among all trilliums, and especially, it seems, among Trillium grandiflorum and Trillium undulatum of the Appalachians.  Granted, these are the most noticeable and photographed species, thus biasing the sample. 

Anyway, Illinois has nine of the eastern  U.S. Trillium species, including three species.  (Trillium nivale, Trillium recurvatum, and Trillium viride) with  a predominantly Midwestern distribution, We also have three species of Opuntia or prickly pear cactus.  Foxglove beardstongue, Penstemon digitalis, turn prairie fields and roadsides white in May, and several more western penstemon grow along the western edge of Illinois.  Scorpions roam the bluffs of southwestern Illinois, while several species of traditionally Appalachian  Plethodon salamanders hide out in Vermilion River woodlands.  Both the western Massasauga rattlesnake and the eastern Timber rattlesnake live in Illinois, though unfortunately I have seen neither.  

The point I am trying to make is that Illinois is a crossroads.  Plants from all over the U.S. grow here, whether western, eastern, northern, or southern.  Jack pines, little bluestem grasses, eastern hemlocks (I will prove that soon enough) and bald cypresses all grow in Illinois, as the borders of their ranges fall here.  Thus, within a short drive to any nature preserve, I can see a vast variety of the plants and animals of North America. This is why Illinois is amazing.  We have bald-cypress swamps and glacial bogs, hill praries and rich woodland, and plant and animal species to match. Granted, not all of these are found in Central  Illinois, but we have a few prairies, including the largest hill prairie in the state.  There may be many cornfields, but there's invariably a nature preserve within an hour of any location in Central Illinois.  Thus, while we lack the natural spectacles of mountains and landforms, we have a pretty amazing state as is.*

*It would be even better if IDNR and the rest of the state had money or at least a budget.  Our DNR is the most underfunded in the country.  (UPDATE, as of the time of this writing, I mean.)

New Tree Species Discovered in Illinois, by Me! (Sort of)

This is history for this blog.  I have discovered a population of a tree species that theoretically does not exist in Illinois.  I visited Starved Rock State Park in LaSalle County recently.   For those unaware of Starved Rock State Park, it's a series of canyons and bluffs along the Illinois River likely carved by a massive flood many thousands of years ago.  The rolling topography is unusual for Illinois, and reminiscent of the Blue Ridge Mountains that I visited last spring.  The leaves have fallen mostly off the trees.  This makes all the white pines (Pinus strobus), eastern red ceders (Juniperus virginiana), and white cedars (Thuja occidentalis) present very visible. I found something else that looked a lot like a hemlock tree.  However, Tsuga canadensis, the Eastern Hemlock, is not recorded from Illinois since 1962. The record was found on the Illinois State Museum's herbarium website. The Illinois State Museum records are rather hazy and it's unclear whether naturalized trees were used or not.  Conditions change a lot, and it seems that this record of the plant has been lost in the depths of the Illinois State Museum's herbarium.  Tsuga canadensis is not listed as a threatened or endangered species in Illinois, it's just not listed at all according to Illinois Department of Natural Resources or essentially all Illinois wildflower related sites.  For all practical purposes, eastern hemlocks do not grow wild in Illinois.

This picture contains two suspected hemlock trees in the center and on the left.

I took a hike today along St. Louis Canyon in the park. This is a fairly popular trail, with people visiting all year long... and yet, most people seem to only record the waterfall present.  Notable plants in the area include the aforementioned white pine and white cedar, as well as forbs like harebells (Campulana rotundifolia), all of which are rare in Illinois.  Starved Rock also has a third of Illinois' fern species, and I saw at least seven there even after several frosts had already come through.   So it is a very biodiverse area.  The canyon was cool and damp all year round, just the way hemlocks like it.  So seeing about a dozen of them, with a few more growing up in moist crevices along the cliffs, was unsurprising.   I positively identified the plant  with two biology professors as witnesses.  I fully expected to come home and see that eastern hemlocks are a threatened species in Illinois.  It took a full half-hour to find out that they have even been recorded in the state once, albeit 50 years ago.  Below is the Bonap range map of eastern hemlocks.  Note how they come close to Illinois in Indiana and Wisconsin, but never into Illinois.  I have seen hemlocks at Shades and Turkey Run State Parks in Indiana, which contain environments nearly identical to Starved Rock.  (North-facing heavily wooded canyons, cool, damp canyon floors, exposed upland bluffs, large populations of disjunct species, etc.  The differences are actually very minor in climate and ecosystem The four yellow-shaded counties in western Indiana represent the hemlock populations in those two state parks)



Here's an interesting fact,  Canada Yew, Taxus canadensis, is recorded from Starved Rock, and I have never seen it there.  Superficially, at least, Canada yews and hemlocks look fairly similar.  However, Canada yews lack the upright habit of the trees I saw today, and the trees I saw today have needles about half an inch long at the most.  Canada yews have needles roughly an inch long.   Could hemlocks be misidentified as Canada yews?  Possibly.  I suspect Canada yews are also found in Starved Rock, however, as I saw Canada yews for certain in Shades State Park in Indiana and Canada yews are more common in other parts of  northern Illinois as well.

Below are a few other pictures.  I forgot to get a close up, which would have been much more helpful.  The lighting in the canyon was also very bad, so I am unable to present crisp and clear photos.  I feel not unlike a Loch Ness monster photographer, except trees are immobile and easier to locate.

After all this, I have drawn the conclusion that eastern hemlock trees do in fact exist in the wild in Illinois.  A  population grows in St. Louis Canyon, and at least one other hemlock was spotted in Kaskaskia Canyon later on the same day.  Therefore, it is likely that Illinois has a new record, at least, for a tree species, and possibly a new tree species for the state entirely.   I'm extremely excited to be the one to find it.

UPDATE:  It's been over a year since I made this discovery, and I have since learned that the Eastern Hemlocks discussed above are an introduced, nonnative population.