Tag Archives: animal

Arachnid architecture

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With the warmth we’ve experienced this October, I have spent many mornings drinking my coffee outside, watching the early sunlight glint off strands of spider silk that have encased my tiny porch overnight. While I’m enchanted by this maze of webs, my next door neighbor is not. I’m quickly called next door to clear a web-free path as she rushes down the stairs and off to work. I feel a bit of guilt as it takes me seconds to paw through a huge orb web that I know took the spider hours to intricately create.

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Goldenrod galls

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September in Lake County, Illinois is a month of big sky punctuated by tips of tall prairie plants in an array of autumnal colors. Before the trees really get going with their own colorful show, sparks of bright yellow from the many varieties of goldenrod (Solidago spp.) dominate the open spaces. Most of the summer these plants go unnoticed, adding merely another green hue to the lush surroundings, but September is their time to shine. What may also go unnoticed, even now as goldenrod demands our attention, is the hidden world inside each plant in the form of a gall.

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“Kwirr, churr, cha-cha-cha”

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Walking through the woods in late fall, everything seems to be settling in—the colors calming to variations of brown, the dull roar of the wind the only sound. That is, until the staccato “cha-cha-cha” call of a red-bellied woodpecker breaks the lull of the wind, and a tiny black and white tuxedo (complete with a red cap) flashes past me, announcing the bird’s entrance into the woods.

Red-bellied woodpeckers (Melanerpes carolinus) are year-round residents of Lake County, Illinois. The sounds and sights of these birds in the woodlands and at backyard feeders command attention, especially against the bland backdrop of late autumn and early winter. Like its six fellow species of woodpeckers in Illinois, the red-bellied woodpecker excavates holes, commonly called cavities, in trees for nesting and shelter—all the while snacking away on the tiny critters crawling under the bark. Continue reading →