Year List #1

"Jared, what is a year list?"

Well, everyone, a year list is all the nature I want to see within the next year. Yes, I know that you can't predict nature.  This is true.  However, in certain places, you can find certain animals and plants much more commonly than in others.  For instance,  you WILL find a garter snake if you go to the old Route 66 bridge off Woodside Road near Cherry Hills Baptist Church and cross it and look in the brush and under the broken part of the road on the right or upstream side. (Sorry about the run-on sentence.)  You have about a fifty percent chance of seeing a heron in the adjacent marsh.  If you find a patch of prairie trillium in a woods,  they will almost certainly be there the following year, provided that conditions change little.

Thus, the following is my year list for the upcoming winter, spring, and summer. Next fall, I'll probably make a new one.

1. Find a Lady Slipper Orchid (Cypripedium spp.)

This has been a life goat of mine (I'm not changing that spelling.  It makes me laugh too much)  aka a life goal of mine.  Perhaps the most beautiful plant in North America is the queen ladyslipper, Cypripedium reginae.  That is a lifetime goat to find, but a more easy goat to fulfill is finding one of these species.  Populations of yellow ladyslippers and white ladyslippers are found in central Illinois, though not in this county.  I plan to find at least one of the Illinois species this upcoming year, fall equinox to fall equinox.  I will be perfectly happy even finding it in a state where orchids are more common, aka all states east, north, and south of Illinois.  Wisconsin has a preserve in Door County with 26 species of orchids.  I plan to try and go there ASAIMOJA (as soon as it's May or June again)

2. Find eastern prairie fringed orchids in Loda Cemetary Prairie. 

This is a place an hour and a half away with a federally threatened and state endangered species of orchid. On top of that, it's actually quite nice-looking.  As the preserve is small, it ought to be somewhat easy to find this species come June/July next year.

3.  Find two new snake species for me.

I have seen only a few of Illinois' snake species.  I want to see at least two more species.  Some form of green snake and hognose snake would be especially fun, or a poisonous species, like a Copperhead or Cottonmouth.

4.  Visit two new state parks.

There are so many state parks.  I have yet to see most of them.  This should be rather easy to fulfull.

5. Find short-eared owls /northern harriers in Nipper Wildlife Sanctuary.

 A restored prairie area half an hour from my house has hosted these two rare migrants/winter visitors.  If I visit in January/February,  I have a pretty good chance to see one of the two.

6.  Visit Revis Hill Prairie

 This place has several insects found only here in the state, as well as the state's only population of Western Hognose snakes and a number of rarer prairie plants.

That's about it for now.

A Civic Service Announcement, Followed By Considerable Irony

I go out walking in my neighborhood.  Whilst doing this,  I encounter one of the more dangerous plants in Illinois.  I don't mean poison ivy.

The plant with the reddish stems is known as pokeweed (Phytolacca americana)  

Don't those berries look just like grapes or blueberries? It's often mistaken for blueberries by children.  It's fairly common in suburban neighborhoods, too.  A cluster can kill an adult, and children have been severely poisoned by eating a few.  The boiled new leaves of the plant are known as poke salad, and are eaten by rural Southerners.  If not boiled, they would be poisonous and inedible.  I'm really trying to avoid making derogatory comments about the culinary habits of rural Southerners, but this is essentially hick fugu, unnecessary to eat and dangerous to do so.

Further along, I spotted these Verbena bonariensis with several butterflies.

I tried to find more wildlife, but it didn't happen.  Meanwhile, my brother went outside and mowed around our house.  In the shed, he found a northern black widow spider, and under our pine trees he found a garter snake.  Both were found around our house for the first time.  I find the irony of this just plain sickening. 

On What to Do With Wildlife

So, this weekend I saw something rare and awesome.  As with most UFO sightings and other unbelievable incidents,  I didn't have a camera or phone on me, and thus didn't get any pictures of the event.  While walking through the Boy Scout's Camp Bunn on a trail lined with hickory shells, I saw a shell that looked different.  It was a baby BOX turtle's shell, complete with living turtle.  I misidentified it at the time as a baby snapping turtle.  I then promptly put the turtle by the water's edge, something I should not have done.  What I should have done is put the poor turtle off to the side of the path instead of take him to the wrong environment.

Box turtles, for the uninformed, live on land, and not in ponds.  They can live to be over a hundred years old.  An excellent place to see them is Lincoln Memorial Garden's visitor's center.

The real problem with what I did is that I left the turtle on the open shoreline of the lake, making it much harder for him (or her) to avoid predators.  Thus, if you ever encounter some form of wildlife and decide to move it for whatever reason, I recommend putting it as close to the spot where you found it as would be safe for you and it.

 I don't necessarily recommend trying to grab any wild animal you see.  They won't react well, and it may cause them undue stress.  Stress is a chemical response that animals and even plants have, not just an emotional state.  It can cause health problems in both humans and other organisms, so stressing the poor turtle probably didn't help it.  Then again, it came about six inches away from being stepped on, so that didn't help it either. That's why I picked it up and moved it in the first place.