Midwest Interlude, Pt. 4

 

Virginia Creeper, National Grove Forest Preserve, Cook County, Illinois

I first stumbled onto the National Grove while making random explorations during a bike ride over the summer. Now that I'm back in Chicago for a spell, I thought I knew where I'd been and that it would be an easy walk to get there. I went the wrong way at one of the forks in the road though, and ended up having a different adventure than the one I'd expected. The next day I corrected my mistake and enjoyed an excellent stroll through the woods along the Des Plaines River, only to run my camera battery down to zero much sooner than I expected or desired. The forest preserve has since become my go-to, daily nature walk.

Around the house, all is quiet. The cicadas have stopped buzzing. Butterflies and katydids have moved on or died and left their eggs to carry on the next generation in the spring. A single squirrel occasionally nibbles maple seeds in the branches high above the back deck, unseen among the dense, still-green leaves; the oaks have been picked clean of acorns. A pair of rabbits hunker down in the yard once in a while, tucked into furry puffballs on the lawn. Even the robins and house sparrows seem to have gone elsewhere, and it's not even cold yet. I still go for my walks in shorts and t-shirt, with temperatures much like the west side of San Francisco. 

I came back out to Chicago on what turned out to be the last day my mother-in-law was still able to communicate with the aid of her LCD e-writing board after taking a sudden and precipitous turn in her battle with bulbar ALS. She is still on a respirator 24 hours a day, and during the month I was back in San Francisco an oxygen concentrator was hooked into the respirator. With very few, very brief exceptions, she can no longer open her eyes, and can make only the most basic responses to what she hears and experiences. 

For the last seven days she has been off food, water, and most medications on the advice of the hospice medical team. Toward the end of life, tube feeding only increases one's discomfort and potential for complications. It took a day or two for my wife and brother-in-law to get used to the abrupt end to her busy feeding and medicine schedule, but they're still administering anxiety medication and morphine via oral syringe, as well as continuing to keep her as comfortable as possible.  

During the last few days it was startling and awe-inspiring to watch her breaths, so light and apparently fragile, yet still bringing life. Only after eight days did that fine, frayed thread finally break, right along with our hearts. 

[I'll add new photos to the end of this post for as long as I'm here.]

I was surprised to find a new-to-me bird, a palm warbler, foraging on someone's lawn in Riverside.

Cottontail, National Grove Forest Preserve

Most days I see these cute fellows busily collecting food for the winter, including a couple of chubby-cheeked chipmunks that scurried across the sidewalk and ducked into cover, too fast for my camera.

It's hard to tell from this shot, but this is a yellow-rumped warbler. Around here they seem to travel in larger groups than they do back in San Francisco. 

Des Plaines River reflections on a sunny day.

In addition to the yellow-rumped warblers, I was glad to make another familiar find, a hermit thrush.

On another day I took a bike ride out to the Salt Creek Trail and spotted this coyote about to cross a somewhat open stretch of meadow. I tried to be sly, but the coyote turned around as soon as he saw me point a camera his way and disappeared into the taller weeds.

Still no chubby cheeks, but I liked the addition of mushrooms growing on the log.

North America's smallest woodpecker, the downy woodpecker, is among the more common species I've been spotting. Although they are usually too far away to photograph, I'll occasionally get lucky and have one land near me while I'm just standing still.

The cardinal was picking berries in a photogenic spot, only to hop over onto these cables to eat one. When it returned to the bushes it moved too deep into the foliage to give me a more "natural" shot. Deeper into the woods I discovered a new plant that turned out to be a kind of greenbrier with edible berries. I was surprised that none of the birds were going after them.

I wouldn't realize how lucky I was to get this view of a red-bellied woodpecker until around ten days later, when I used the Merlin app to identify a bird call that I'd been hearing every day without actually being able to put my eyes on the culprit. Sure enough, the mystery caller was a red-bellied woodpecker.

Downy Woodpecker

I was surprised to see this doe browsing in the woods from which a guy with two large off-leash dogs had just emerged. Somehow they must have passed right by without spooking the deer.

Not all the deer were easy to spot.

I felt right at home listening to a red-shouldered hawk calling out across the Des Plaines River, and then it swooped over the water and landed in a tree right above me. The red foliage on the tree snag to the left is Virginia creeper.

This was my first-ever Nashville warbler. I've seen a few other beautiful and new-to-me birds but have unable to lock focus on them in the subdued light of recent cloudy days.

You can see the chubby cheeks in this one, even though they appear to be empty at the moment.

I was looking at the mushroomy stump where I'd photographed a chipmunk on another day when I realized a doe was bedded down and ruminating not far behind it. Had I not looked at the stump, I'm sure I'd have walked right past the deer without seeing her.

This might be as close as I get to photographing a chubby-cheeked chipmunk.

When I first heard these alarm chirps, I assumed a bird was making the sound. I was surprised to finally track down the chirp to a chipmunk.

When I saw how difficult it was for this yellow-rumped warbler to pick off one of these berries high in a tree I realized why the birds haven't been going after the greenbrier just yet. The greenbrier berries look black and ripe at first glance but show their green side on closer examination, and are still quite firmly attached to the stems.

I don't try to photograph the squirrels for the most part -- and they don't usually stick around to tempt me. Woodland squirrels are much more skittish than yard squirrels. I'd been standing still when this guy climbed into view, and he fled as soon as he noticed me.

One of the reasons I was standing still was in the hope of this winter wren, which I'd seen busily hopping around near the ground, making an appearance out in the open.

Several northern flickers were flying to this tall tree to peck at something in that bowl.

A brown creeper gave me a nice view, then moved on with all the other birds of a feather. This area that had been quite birdy just moments before, suddenly became a ghost town.

The yard rabbits are often hunkered into a furry ball, like this one trying to stay dry in a light rain.

Crime Scene, Downy Woodpecker

Having just walked past a doe and her two youngsters I wasn't sure this was a buck until he stopped browsing the ground cover and raised his head.

Mallards and Reflections, Des Plaines River

Orb-weaver with fall colors.

Ruby-crowned Kinglet

Another Nashville warbler showed up along with the usual yellow-rumpers.

After flying off the previous branch, I got another chance to photograph it before it became lost in the foliage.

As I was on my way out of the woods, this raccoon was just heading indoors to curl up for a nap.

Snug Quarters

A Room With A View

Coyote Caught Napping

I was showing my wife the nature route I've been walking, and we spotted this coyote sleeping out in the open. It reminded me of another coyote I spotted napping in Hellman Hollow back in San Francisco.

That's the edge of the forest preserve in the background.

I thought the coyote might take off at a run when it spotted me, but it had quite a bit of post-nap scratching to do before it ambled off toward the woods.

We had some rain over the weekened that brought out some inky cap mushrooms on a stump along the banks of the Des Plaines River.

Another flush of mushrooms that wasn't there before the recent rain, this time familiar oyster mushrooms. I spotted my first golden-crowned kinglets in the woods on this trip but was unable to get a decent shot of one. I'm not sure how much longer I'll be here, but I hope I get a better chance before I head back home. (Two days later, this flush had dried out.)

There's a yard rabbit that, when it isn't busy feeding on grass, has been hanging out under the back deck. I didn't see it in the yard when I stepped out to look for it, and I didn't see it in its usual spot under the deck either. Then I noticed another denizen under there.

The cat surprised me by not running away, and then again by coming closer to me and finally even letting me pet it. Turns out it's not one of the feral neighborhood cats, but the next-door neighbor's pet cat who sneaked out when someone had a door open.

The yard rabbit likes to hide in plain sight, especially when the grass hasn't been mowed in a while.

Minutes later, the sun went behind some clouds and changed the light.

It's October 22 now and the morning temperature is in the mid-40s. Cold enough to second-guess my decision to wear shorts, especially since there was a strong wind chill under overcast skies. The woods were quiet at first, and I thought my hike was going to go relatively quickly, but a hermit thrush broke the fast.

There was actually a pair of hermit thrushes, but this squirrel, perhaps trying to keep its distance from me, got too close to the birds and scared them off. I couldn't tell what the squirrel was nibbling on, and I wondered if it could possibly be a truffle. Not too likely, I suppose, but nice to imagine the possibility.

Just a little farther along I spotted these two downy woodpeckers chasing each other through the trees. They didn't go far, so I wondered if there was a territorial dispute. At one point both birds were out of view behind a tree when a small cloud of little feathers wafted into view, so whatever they were doing was probably a serious affair.

As they chased each other around, I tried to position myself to be able to include some colorful fall foliage in the background.

Other than a couple of deer bedded down deep in the woody undergrowth, I noticed no other animal life until I stumbled onto a large flock of American robins that was capering in the forest and along the river, occasionally landing to dip their beaks in its barely flowing waters.

I was already starting to get cold by the time I stopped to watch this winter wren on 10/23. With the temp at about 42 degrees, I could keep warm, even wearing shorts, by walking briskly, but I would lose much of the heat generated by the walk shortly after stopping in the shaded woods to observe wildlife.

It's been a while since I was able to clap my eyeballs on a chipmunk. They have been so skittish lately! This one shrieked its panic call as it darted toward cover but gave me a nice pose instead of just disappearing into a hole.

I was listening to red-bellied and downy woodpeckers, as well as a few northern flickers, when this sharp-shinned hawk swooped onto the scene. I wondered if the recent downy woodpecker crime scene I encountered was due to this guy. A nearby flicker didn't even bother to hide, and the hawk soon flew into deeper woods.

Cardinal Basking in Morning Sunshine

Dreaming of Mt. Shasta

Eastern Phoebe

It was a gorgeous 50 degrees as I took my last walk through the forest preserve on Oct. 27, the day before heading back to San Francisco. Robins and blackbirds were making a ruckus like I'd never heard there before.

The big buck of the preserve was lying down and ruminating in the morning sunshine. I'd see the little buck later in my walk.

The year-round residents were on my mind with winter on the way. I'd like to walk through the preserve after a dusting of snow to look for animal tracks and take in the different woodland vibe. Maybe some other year. For now I'm just looking forward to getting back home.

* * *

That's Life

 

Townsend's Warbler on the Hunt

I'm about three-quarters of the way through How Life Works by Philip Ball, and all I can say is Wow. And I'm not alone either. 

Ball writes, "By 'interesting and wonderful,' I admit that I often also mean [how life works is] 'complicated,' even dizzyingly so. There are good reasons why most popular accounts avert their eyes from the baroque digressions of molecular biology. But the main reason this has happened is that researchers themselves have been baffled by it. Even to them, the complexity of cell processes often seems too much: we can watch the conjuring trick being done, and know there is a rational, nonmagical explanation for it, but we cannot for the life of us see what this explanation is." (p. 53)

I've always been awed by the fact that we start out life as a single-celled zygote that somehow knows how to build a human being. I mean, that vast knowledge  is somehow in that single cell! Ball also argues that it's the cells, not the genome, that runs the show. That is, the genome is a resource used by cells, not the other way around.

A big surprise for me was the author's allowance that cognition pertains even to cells: "[I]t is meaningful to regard lower-level adaptive processes in biology as cognitive too -- even in the way single-celled organisms operate. Life is, as biologist Michael Levin and philosopher Daniel Dennett have argued, 'cognition all the way down.'" (p. 137)

Later on he elaborates a bit more, writing that, "Cognitive systems exist to integrate information from many sources to produce a goal-oriented response. To that extent, all living systems have to be cognitive agents almost by definition. And the fact that evolution grants this capacity should really be seen as unremarkable, for cognition is clearly a good way to deal with the unforeseen: to develop versatile and instantly adaptive responses to circumstances an organism has never encountered in its evolutionary past.... 

"I don't anticipate a consensus any time soon on the question of how to define life, but it seems to me that cognition provides a much better, more apt way to talk about it than invoking more passive capabilities such as metabolism and replication." (pp. 265-66)

And, "The idea that cells are 'building blocks' of our bodies makes them sound rather passive, like bricks that can be stacked into the edifices of tissues. In fact they are much smarter than that. Each cell is, as we've seen, a living entity in its own right, able to reproduce, make decisions, and respond and adapt to its environment." (p. 268)

Ball also writes that there are 80,000 to 400,000 varieties of protein molecules in human cells, and no, that is not a typo. I keep thinking I must have read it wrong. Figuring out what they all do is going to keep a lot of people busy for a very long time. And how to do you come up with names for them all? Luckily, most of the names follow a convention, but not all. Where would we be without proteins like Sonic Hedgehog and Shrooms? (Answer: It wouldn't be pretty.)

I found this interesting tower of fungus on Mt. Tam yesterday.

Nearby was another tower that was further along in its construction.

And finally there was this cheerful colony. I uploaded pictures of this polypore to iNaturalist which identified it as Onnia subtriquetra, but it doesn't really fit this description, since it was growing under Doug fir.

A pileated woodpecker was re-working a snag not too far above eye-level along the Cataract Trail.

As it moved around the snag I was able to get a mellower background.

Short Clips of Pileated Woodpecker At Work

I was placing a couple of trail cams out there for the first time in a while, and it was still early enough in the morning that I caught this fence lizard napping. I wondered if it had spent the night there -- very much out in the open -- in a state of torpor.

Apparently, a male house finch who's yellow instead of red is simply not getting the carotenoids in his diet that would redden his feathers.

The finch was among a small mixed flock of birds, including Western bluebirds, along the Sunset Parkway this morning.

Also in attendance was my first yellow-rumped warbler of the season.

This bluebird clung to a lichen-crusted branch on an otherwise dead plant.

A few pigeons were also feeding nearby, and I especially liked this one's striking feather pattern.

Chilean Rhubarb Leaf

Bushtit, Elk Glen Lake

At first I thought this was another bushtit. I keep forgetting how very small these Townsend's warblers are in person. This one was kind enough to forage within range of my camera for a few minutes.

* * *

Getting Enraptured

 

Rapture On 14th Avenue

I guess some people were disappointed that they missed the rapture last month, but they are in luck since the guy who's calling the shots (no, not God; some guy in South Africa) says the new date is either today or tomorrow. Hooray! According to the news I've heard, people are preparing themselves to float up into the sky. I would just offer a word of caution: be sure to wear your blaze orange vests so duck hunters will know to hold their fire.

Another interesting thing I learned today is that the word "rapture" does not appear in the Bible. Nevertheless, what the rapturists are talking about can be read in Matthew 24:1-51. Two things to note: 1) Jesus says that no one but God knows when it will happen; and 2) there will be many false prophets beforehand. 

Do people listen? No, they do not. And now they are about to be disappointed yet again. Luckily, they can still find rapture right here on planet Earth while keeping their feet firmly planted on the ground.

I like the Merriam-Webster definitions of rapture: 1) an expression or manifestation of ecstasy or passion; 2a) a state or experience of being carried away by overwhelming emotion; and 2b) a mystical experience in which the spirit is exalted to a knowledge of divine things.

Rapture is part of our birthright as human beings. It just needs to be claimed.

The crepuscular rays (or "god-beams") wowed me as soon as I saw them, but they kept getting even better as I continued walking. From crepuscular rays to brocken specters, you gotta love that sun-fog interface.

My favorite princess flower tree. It's my favorite because of the way the profusion of petals decorates the ground and sidewalk beneath the tree.

I was riding past the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival on Sunday when a coyote got caught out in the open and quickly darted into cover. The many festival attendees and copious fencing around the stages likely impacted their usual travel routes and routines.

Pelicans Resting at Seal Rocks

As I was sitting in our back yard garden area I noticed a mouse dart toward a corner of the next-door neighbor's place. Moments later I heard a strange sound like crinkling plastic coming from a different next-door neighbor's place. When I got up to investigate the sound, a red-shouldered hawk flew up with the corner-mouse in its talons and fluttered up into the second neighbor's oak tree. While I watched the hawk (which somehow descended on the mouse without my seeing it happen), I heard the plastic crinkle sound again: a crow was bouncing on a thin oak branch, and the leaves scraping the leaves on another branch made the strange sound.

There wasn't much light left out back when I returned to our garden bench and watched this hummingbird feeding on some of our flowers, so I was surprised to get a decent shot with a 1/125th sec. exposure @ ISO 3200.

* * *

Simply Complex

 

A red-shouldered hawk sounds off on Whiskey Hill.

I finished Nick Lane's book on the chemistry of life and started another book last night called How Life Works by Philip Ball. Naturally, I woke up this morning thinking about the Citric Acid Cycle (a.k.a. Krebs Cycle). 

Thinking, Here I am, lying in bed doing nothing, while all the food and water I've consumed (along with the air I breathe) is being turned into fuel to power the 35 trillion or so cells in my body. And within each of those cells is a fuel-production assembly line running 24/7 that uses an ingenious proton pump to crank out as many as 10 million ATP molecules every second in an active muscle cell.

It's amazing what we take for granted. And indeed it has all been granted to us by the laws of nature (wherever the laws of nature came from). Consciousness itself is just the cherry on top of a universe whose vastness we can't really comprehend, and where on at least one little ball of space junk within that vastness, simple elements created by exploding stars have joined into complex molecules that somehow sparked into life, and it's been off to the races ever since.

Tree ferns existed before dinosaurs evolved from reptilian archosaurs, and now tree ferns in Golden Gate Park provide foraging habitat for birds which evolved from dinosaurs. 

Townsend's Warbler foraging in an oak on Whiskey Hill.

Red-shouldered Rear-view

* * *

A Tern for the Better

 

Elegant Terns at Ocean Beach
(I wonder if that chocolate-brown gull is some kind of dark-morph Western gull.)

There were lots of brown pelicans lounging on the edge of Sutro Baths this morning, something I don't see very often. I was tempted to go down there, but it didn't really seem worth it without Sutro Sam. 

From the overwatch behind the Cliff House I was surprised to see yet another young pelican drifting south across the surf zone. It didn't appear to be injured, but evidently it could not fly. I kept my eye on it, and sure enough it was sucked over the falls by a wave and was eventually pushed in to the beach, almost as if it were body-surfing. Once it was ashore, it proceeded to trundle all the way up to the sea wall before finally turning back toward the ocean. Another onlooker had called the city's Animal Care & Control folks, but I left before they arrived.

The wind wasn't blowing too hard, so I took another ride out through Sunset Dunes and stopped when I heard the calls of a small flock of elegant terns near Pacheco Street. Instead of flying away when someone passed near them, they lifted off and circled back to their original spot, so I figured I'd take a chance and go down there, leaving my ebike up on the sea wall. The terns weren't bothered by my presence, and I was surprised toward the end when they circled through the air and landed even closer to me.

This is either a female or immature western bluebird at Golden Gate Heights Park. I was going to try to photograph a much more blue male nearby, but both birds were frightened away by an offleash dog.

Lounging in the Bison Paddock

Meditative Bison

Brown Pelicans at Sutro Baths

A Pelican's Adventure

I saw rain falling in the distance a few times this morning but didn't actually get rained on until I started to head home at about noon. I pulled a rain jacket out of my saddlebag, but it wasn't particularly cold out, so I left the rain pants in the bag.

The pelican seemed like it couldn't get far enough away from the ocean, but it was stymied by the sea wall. I wondered if it would climb the stairs to the esplanade, but it wasn't feeling sociable toward us humans.

After walking along the sea wall a ways, the pelican began walking back toward the beach.

Elegant Terns & Sanderlings

Terns in Flight

Beach Wrack Denizens

We don't often get a lot of bull kelp washed up on Ocean Beach. I was glad to know there's actually a kelp bed or two offshore (given their plight), although I do wonder if this bunch drifted down from up north somewhere.

Elegant Terns Facing the Wind

Young Elegant Terns

A Birdy Day at the Beach

Flock o' Terns

* * *