Wild dogs

In January I posted about a coyote I saw at Montrose Point. Since then I've come across two local coyote videos, one from Uptown in February and the other from the Lincoln Park area this week (above). The Uptown coyote ran out of the Truman College parking garage, in a very urban area about a mile west of the lakefront. The other appears to be somewhere in Lincoln Park itself, on one of the overpasses near North Pond.

Marching onward

March is mostly a dreary weather month around here. It's not quite warm enough to be conducive to springtime outdoor activities, and it's not cold enough to be conducive to winter sports. But there are some subtle signs of spring that give us hope. I recorded my first red-winged blackbird of the year on Feb. 24. Red-wings don't completely leave this region in winter, but they do leave my haunts at Montrose Point. They also were plentiful on my ride to and from Springfield.

On March 3, I heard a killdeer flying around at the workplace on the Southwest Side; that same week a house finch was singing in our alley for the first time in months. Then this weekend produced a couple of spring-like scenes--turkey vultures soaring over the road to Lockport, and common goldeneyes displaying at Montrose Harbor. There also seems to be a great movement of raptors afoot--I've seen three peregrine falcons in the past two weeks.

Raptor ride

I made the 207-mile journey to Springfield, Ill., yesterday. The majority of the route uses I-55--basically from Lake Shore Drive to the outskirts of Springfield itself. The highway cuts across the Southwest Side of the city, continues along a heavy industrial corridor and the Ship and Sanitary Canal before encountering the distribution centers and nondescript warehouses of Bolingbrook, Will County and the I-80 corridor. South of 80, the landscape opens up, from farmland to restored prairies and woodlands. It was a bright, sunny day and everything was sort of a brownish yellow color from horizon to horizon--the fallow fields, the turf grass, prairie grass, everything was the same drab color. There were a lot of raptors, from dozens of red-tailed hawks and kestrels to an osprey hanging out by a small farm pond. The highlights from today--another bright day--included a rough-legged hawk flying low over a field near Normal, and many more red-tailed hawks.

Water everywhere

A big thaw is under way since the Blizzard of 2011. It was 45 yesterday and over 40 today, too. The forecast high for Thursday is 58! We really didn't have a January thaw so maybe this is making up for it.

There is actually grass visible in many places now, though the big piles of snow persist. Many sidewalks are still lined with steep snow banks. All over the city there are narrow passageways, cut by generous snowblower owners, that lead to the street.

The primal practice of dibs has left shattered patio furniture and other household items scattered all over. Dibs seems to have fizzled out about a week ago as more parking spaces have been cleared.

Cleaning up

It took more than 24 hours after the blizzard before I even bothered to venture to the alley behind our house. I had previously glimpsed the alley from Clarendon Avenue, and it looked like a series of 6-foot high ski slopes. It seemed it wouldn't be passable until spring. The lower photo shows what the alley looked like Thursday night. It remained unplowed and unshoveled until this morning when a group of neighbors took to the alley with shovels and cleared the last remaining drifts in about an hour. There is just enough space now for a car to make it through the alley (upper photo).

The cleanup by the city has been amazing in many ways, at least if you live on the North Side. The giant drifts on the west end of Lakeside were cleared (amazingly) by Thursday morning. Lake Shore Drive also re-opened Thursday. The only down side to the cleanup is the inane practice of "dibs." Our street usually isn't afflicted by this, but a few people have "claimed" their parking spots with lawn chairs. It's so silly--if we all just shoveled the snow in the street, even the piles that aren't "ours," there would be plenty of room for all to park. Dibs just makes me lose faith in humanity.

Snow job

It finally stopped snowing at about 12:30 today. Almost immediately, people began emerging from their homes. They shoveled, frolicked and generally absorbed the storm's aftermath. Our street was completed blocked as of a couple hours ago. There was a five-foot drift, maybe a 100-yards square, near the west end of our block. It's hard to imagine it being cleared any time soon. There are cars nearly entirely buried like the one above. Also, there are still cars abandoned on Lake Shore Drive. The temperatures are expected to plummet to minus-4 tonight in the city and minus-10 in outlying areas.

Snowbound still

We're still snowbound, with lake-effect moisture now coming into Chicago from the northeast. I've never seen our street like this--snow is caked onto every surface, our windows are snow-covered in amazing patterns. The photo above really doesn't do the storm justice, but those are drifts right through the middle of the street.

I've heard from two friends now who were stranded on Lake Shore Drive for hours. One abandoned his car and another somehow made it off a ramp and back to Uptown. I don't see how the city can clean this up in time for school/work even tomorrow.