Rodent fun

I'm a sucker for a squirrel-at-a-baseball-game video. It turns out that Target Field also had a kestrel hanging out on a foul pole recently, too.

Arboreal varmints

This post is long overdue, but I recently stumbled across a squirrel study that is right in my wheelhouse. Project Squirrel has been taking place for the past several years right here in Chicago. It encourages people from across the country to submit their squirrel observations. In particular, it focuses on the Chicago area's big three of fox, gray and red squirrels. (Recall driftless area's "Kankakee trio," recording all three in one day January 2009.) The observations are interesting as you dig deeper into the Project Squirrel Web site. The project studies questions like: Why do gray squirrels dominate college campuses? Why do fox squirrels reign in suburban areas? Can the species co-exist? It's great to see others getting squirrelly.

Park potential

The Chicago Tribune featured Chicago's "underbirded" parks this past week. The Chicago Ornithological Society's annual underbirded parks trip is this weekend. I am certainly one of the underbirders as I've focused on the popular Montrose location. There are some great parks in the interior of the city that can be tapped for birding, especially this time of year.

Virus definitions

West Nile Virus was sort of the asian carp of the early 2000s--a developing environmental story that received a lot of coverage in the Chicago area while inciting a mild panic. The virus sadly did lead to a few human deaths as well as the deaths of many corvids and a few smaller birds like titmice, too. Well, the virus is back for the summer of 2010, though one assumes it's not as prevalent as it was around the turn of the century. (This reminds me of a funny story a former co-worker would tell. That an elderly neighbor often expressed fears of the "Niles West" Virus, confusing the virus' name with the Skokie high school.)

Going yard

The past two weeks have seen an explosion of sorts on our yard list. We've added five species since May 2, and the tally now is at 31 species all-time (since our 2006 move). The latest additions are gray catbird, american goldfinch, ovenbird, veery and house wren. The veery, which possesses my favorite song in the avian world, pleases me the most.

I must admit we take liberties with the list, but with only a 50' x 20' front yard and a 30' x 15' rear patio we need liberties. So any bird we hear from the house, yard or environs is added to the list, regardless if it's singing across the street. Any bird we see from the property counts (i.e. a great blue heron flying in the distance, viewed from our back porch--which has happened). My favorite yard sighting ever: an american woodcock in the yard two doors down.

Gulf debacle

I'm back in action, and I must begin with the environmental disaster taking place in the Gulf of Mexico. I love how the news reports are all worried about the first oiled birds turning up on shore. What about the billions of gallons of seawater, and accompanying wildlife, already tainted? Appalling. Surely, though, it would be agonizing to live on the Gulf right now, awaiting further environmental calamity. As the oil continues to flow, the news coverage has ebbed and flowed, to the point where it's easy to sometimes forget how horrible this is. And it is horrible. Hopefully this stymies further off-shore drilling, which seemed dubious anyway given all the progress made toward renewable energy. This post is for all birds that use Dauphin Island and other areas down South as stopovers.

Carp supreme

I'm a couple days late in reporting that the Supreme Court will not reopen the Chicago River case or hear the asian carp case. So now we turn to all sorts of potential policy or legal challenges. But it's a small victory for those of us who think the river should keep flowing away from here.