Nature walk this Saturday at 6:30 — Meet at east door of Museum of Science and Industry!

All photos have been taken in Hyde Park (Chicago) during the past few weeks.

Time to get out and see all these flowering plants before the goldenrods and asters take over!    Nature walk is Saturday evening at 6:30.  We meet at the east door of the Museum of Science and Industry.

Beaver spotted swimming off music bridge (bridge on north side of bobolink meadow -look away from the boat harbor)

rattlesnake master

moon rise on our last moon watch

photo darkened so you can easily see the rabbit in the moon.

Lots of green darner dragonflies were at the blue moon watch

silver-spotted skipper

question mark butterfly on butterfly bush

giant robber fly

Can you find the green caterpillar in this photo?

tall bellflower

fire pink (oops, this is royal catchfly!, thanks aaron!) 

We”ll sort out all the yellow look-alikes on the walk! Is this a black-eyed susan, a coneflower, a cup plant, a sunflower or something else?

another yellow flower to sort out

a primrose family member

swamp milkweed

jewelweed or spotted touch-me-not

A new local! A deer, who has been spotted with 2 fawns

cormorants enjoying the turtle habitat

black-capped chickadee

juvenile spotted sandpipers

monarch on butterfly bush

crabapple with cedar apple rust

elderberry berries

Summer Beauties: Butterflies, Dragonflies and Baby Birds

All of these photos were taken during the last couple of weeks in Hyde Park (Chicago)

We’ve got 3 nature walks on Thursday July 2:

12:30 at Burnham Prairie, 47th and Cornell, stroller and wheelchair friendly, parking $1.75       6:30 pm, meet at east door of Museum of Science and Industry-we’ll move cars to free lot before we start the walk
8:30 pm, meet at the Point, underpass at 55th and Lake Shore Drive, to watch the moon rise over Lake Michigan

To see some ducklings climbing up our make-shift ramp to escape from the 59th Street harbor, click on the link below:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/bs3cyaipe3erjek/AAASs3wNMNKyVSVHieQAMv7ha?dl=0

We think these were the trapped ducklings who are now happily living in the Jackson Park lagoon.

tandem pair of green darner dragonflies. These dragonflies migrate in the fall like so many of our songbirds do.

white-spotted tussock moth

Lots of indigo buntings at Burnham Prairie (47th and Cornell). Come see them on our nature walk on Thursday July 2 at 12:30.

milkweed flowers

butterfly weed, another milkweed plant with some unopened buds

Baltimore oriole in her nest

Another photo of baltimore oriole tending her nest

deer hoof print in bobolink meadow?

great egret

Our goslings are now teen-agers

The goslings sleeping in a pile.

red-spotted purple butterfly

Three photos of the same great blue heron. Here he is very tall.

very short here

and in between

green heron

chickweed geometer

erfc 

Video of spotted sandpiper (this bird nests in Hyde Park)

Spotted sandpiper is easy to identify because it wiggles its bottom and it is spotted but it only has the spots in the breeding season, see video above.

red admiral

gray catbird

question mark butterfly

The underside of the hind wings of the question mark butterfly has a dot and a curved line that sometimes, although not in this case, looks like a question mark. If the two marks are connected, then you have an eastern comma butterfly

coneflowers

Burnham prairie at 47th and Cornell

monarch butterfly

Summer wildlife in Hyde Park (Chicago)

All photos and videos taken in the Hyde Park (Chicago) area during the last month.  Join us for a nature walk this Tuesday at 6 pm.  Meet at the east door of the Museum of Science and Industry.

Nesting killdeer, see video below of killdeer defending her nest by pretending to have 2 broken wings. She lures a potential predator away from the nest by making the predator thinks she will be an easy catch. Once she is away from her nest, she flies away

belted kingfisher

nesting Canada goose

young Canada goose goslings

Young goslings with their parents

Eight teen-aged goslings at the inner harbor!

mourning dove

red-winged blackbird

red-earred slider turtle

anemone at 47th Street Prairie (47th and Cornell)

cedar waxwing at 63rd Street Beach

First set of this year’s mallard ducklings

Very happy to see the draining of the lagoon didn’t decimate our bullfrog population! This one found at south end of bobolink meadow path near the golf driving range

Turtles using the new turtle habitat and so is a beaver! How wonderful it would be if we could protect this key stone species in the Paul Douglas Nature Sanctuary on Wooded Isle. Perhaps in addition to protecting our trees from the beaver’s teeth by wrapping them with wire, some local tree care companies could bring in some recently cut trees for our beavers to use.

A beaver in Hyde Park!

Easiest to see beavers at dawn and dusk. We’ll look for them on the nature walk Tuesday.

carp spawning

mallard duck moulting

green heron. See next photo to see how big she is compared to a great blue heron.

Compare the size of this great blue heron to the green heron. Notice this is a different green heron than the one in the previous photo because it has the bright red legs of a breeding bird

Caterpillar of black swallowtail butterfly

female cardinal

One of our winter ducks, a male hooded merganser, stayed behind this summer and is now molting.

Here is the hooded merganser next to a mallard duck so you can see the size difference

We had some interesting shorebird stop by during migration this spring because the lagoons were drained, including this red phalarope

And finally, a mockingbird has been singing from the top of a tree at 63rd and Lake Shore Drive.  In this video, I can hear the mockingbird mimicking a cardinal, a robin and a phoebe.    

Ducks, herons, kingfishers, terns and shorebirds

All photos were taken in Hyde Park (Chicago) during the last few weeks.  Come join us for a nature walk and moon watch tomorrow evening.  See post before this one for details.

Sleeping perched on one leg, a black-crowned night heron

Black-crowned night heron sitting in blooming box elder

male northern shoveler with american coot

female and male shoveler

male and female bufflehead in the rain

banded piping plover, endangered bird at 63rd Street Beach

caspian terns at 63rd Street Beach

great blue heron

great blue heron

greater yellowlegs, or if not, a lesser yellowlegs

gadwall

pied-billed grebe with goose head for size

Canada goose and pied-billed grebe

two male wood ducks

killdeer

pectoral sandpiper

hooded merganser with female bufflehead

hooded merganser with extreme feather- do to impress the females. To see his courtship moves while he is courting a female mallard go to this link: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/xx44zh4c8mbwoo9/AADXTfN0jIZUyseSOKzqw9npa?dl=0

male and female blue-winged teal

horned grebe

goose egg

belted kingfisher

belted kingfisher

Osaka Japanese Garden

Nature Walk/Moon Watch on Monday May 4

Click this flyer once or twice to magnify for easy reading

Come see me on Nature Walk/ Moon Watch on May 4

Intermittent spring: local gulls and first wave of migrating sparrows

All of these photos were taken in Hyde Park (Chicago) during the last few weeks, unless otherwise noted.

Robins waiting for snow to melt

And you thought all robins looked alike!

A ruby-crowned kinglet

A great egret

A great egret, 39 inches long, with a herring gull, 25 inches long, for scale.

An adult herring gull has red spot on bill and pink legs (photo taken in Cape Cod).

A third winter herring gull has pink legs but has a black spot on bill that is starting to turn red.

pair of ring-billed gulls (parking lot gulls). Ring-billed gulls have yellow legs and a black spot on their bill. They are 17.5 inches long.

First winter ring-billed gull (note it has pink legs like a herring gull). This photo was taken in August.

song sparrow, very stripy with spot on chest

Another view of a song sparrow The song sparrow’s song has three notes followed by a trill.

Fox sparrow is bigger than a song sparrow. It has a lot more gray and red feathers than a song sparrow. Both of these sparrows have a spot on their chests

red maple blooming

pied-billed grebe

black-crowned night heron