Every summer, several species of songbirds arrive in our largest open grasslands to nest. With a tendency to stay out in the open and make themselves heard, bobolinks are a very noticeable example. In June, bobolinks arrive in North American grasslands, having flown some 6,000 miles from the pampas grasslands of Argentina, one of the longest bird migrations in the New World. The males, their plumage resembling a handsome tuxedo, arrive about a week before the duller females. They call out with a loud and slightly comical song, not unlike the friendly babble of Star Wars’ R2-D2. (Want to compare? Listen to the bobolink and then to R2-D2.)

Chicago-region grasslands, particularly those larger than 250 acres, are critically important for bobolinks, which require treeless, grassy expanses to breed. Three Cook County forest preserves have been named Important Bird Areas for grassland-nesting birds: Spring Creek, Bartel Grassland and Paul Douglas. In June, they’re all good places to see bobolinks, as well as other grassland songbirds such as the dickcissel, Henslow’s sparrow, savannah sparrow, Eastern meadowlark and grasshopper sparrow.

The Forest Preserve District partners with groups such as Audubon to restore important grassland habitat in the forest preserves. Learn more about Important Bird Areas.

Photo: Paul Dacko

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Calling all canines! This summer, the Forest Preserve District is opening its newest Off-Leash Dog Area. All dogs and owners can join us for the grand opening of the Bremen Grove Off-Leash Dog Area on Saturday, June 22, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at 16061 Oak Park Avenue in Tinley Park. Try the dog park out for free and meet some local shelters and community groups that support our four-legged friends. (Those with a permit can already use Bremen Grove.)

Bremen Grove is the second of the District’s two Off-Leash Dog Areas. Beck Lake in Des Plaines is the other. These special areas are designed to provide an open, safe space for dogs to explore and socialize with other canines. To use Beck Lake or Bremen Grove Off-Leash Dog Areas, visitors must obtain a permit. Applications will be available at the Bremen Grove Off-Leash Dog Area grand opening and also on our website. We’re taking $15 off the annual fee for dog owners who buy a permit onsite that day. Those purchasing a permit must have their application ready to go.

Designated Off-Leash Dog Areas are the only places in the Forest Preserve District of Cook County where dogs are permitted without a leash. In most other Cook County preserves, dogs are welcome but must remain leashed. This prevents dogs from disturbing wildlife in their natural habitat, especially during critical activities such as feeding, mating and nesting. Having your dog on a leash also protects your pet from unwanted encounters with wildlife, other dogs and other forest preserve visitors.

Dogs are not permitted in state-dedicated Nature Preserves within the Forest Preserve District or on nature center grounds.

For more information on permits, fees and directions please visit our website or call (708) 771-1070.

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We asked a handful of staff at the Forest Preserve District’s General Headquarters in River Forest what natural experience they most look forward to each summer in the forest preserves. Here’s what they said:

I’m looking forward to mountain biking this summer! Winter and spring are too wet, so I yearn for the summer and DRY trails. I love mountain biking the rugged natural-surface trails in Palos because it makes me feel like a tough girl, and it’s way more fun than a roller coaster.

–Mary Lynn Griffin, Graphic Designer

I look forward to the nighthawks – I always think of them as the birds of summer evenings.  I love their distinctive calls and graceful swoops through the twilight.

–Michelle Uting, Grants Administrator

I look forward to being overwhelmed by the productivity of our prairies. It starts off modestly enough, but if you turn your back for just a few weeks, life bursts out in astonishing volume. I like to find a quiet moment in the middle of the August prairie, far from anything else, where the air is hot and still and almost presses down on you, the sun beats down and the cicadas’ loud rattling swells and falls. The tall grasses and wildflowers crowd the paths, laden with rich gold and purple flowers and satisfied butterflies. Industrious insects and spiders hop, crawl and spin, doing their own thing all around me. A dragonfly buzzes past my head and is lost in the distance. To me, that’s summer in the preserves.

–Don Parker, Communications Specialist

Each summer I look forward to getting close to wildlife while paddling my kayak on the river. I like watching herons and egrets hunt for food along the banks, turtles basking on logs in the sun, and muskrats and beavers swimming in the water.

–Cathy Geraghty, Director of Strategic Initiatives

Turtle photo by Paul Dacko.

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The Resource Ecology Division of the Forest Preserve District of Cook County has a lot of ground to cover—literally. Chief Ecologist Chip O’Leary oversees four other ecologists, each of whom oversees roughly a quarter of the District’s almost 69,000 acres, more than 80 percent of which are natural lands. The ecologists provide professional support and guidance to District staff and volunteer stewards, conduct research, develop habitat management plans and evaluate the impact that proposed projects (such as a new campsite or pavilion) could have on ecosystems in the forest preserves.

We asked Northwest Region ecologist Deborah Antlitz to share a typical day. Her region includes places such as the Spring Creek watershed, Poplar Creek watershed, Bluff Spring Fen, Deer Grove and the northern stretch of the Des Plaines River. This day starts off not with flower pollination, as one might expect, but with cross-pollinating ideas with colleagues in the big city:

My day begins with an early morning commute downtown to the US Environmental Protection Agency in Chicago, for a meeting of the Chicago Wilderness Natural Resources Management Team. Gathered together are experts in science and land management from around the region, including the US Fish & Wildlife Service, the Environmental Protection Agency, Morton Arboretum, Illinois Department of Natural Resources, Chicago Botanic Garden, Audubon, Illinois Nature Preserves Commission, local volunteer and community groups, and ecologists and managers from other counties such as Lake, McHenry, DuPage, Will, Kane, and neighboring states Indiana and Wisconsin. We discuss the latest developments and discoveries that may affect us all, including the Green Infrastructure Vision, an initiative that works to connect open spaces across northeast Illinois and the southern Great Lakes. Although the concept of “green infrastructure” is relatively new, I think about how in many ways the Forest Preserve District of Cook County has actually been participating in this project for a century.

For the afternoon, it’s out to the field, to the beautiful McMahon Fen in the Palos area, home to the federally endangered Hine’s Emerald Dragonfly and known for its diversity of butterflies. The District partners with the US Army Corps of Engineers, Openlands, the Butterfly Monitoring Network, US Fish & Wildlife Service, and Palos volunteers in restoring more than 100 acres of formerly brushed-over land back to healthy, rare fen, prairie and savanna habitat. We are here to evaluate the District’s use at this site of prescribed burns, which it regularly uses as a management tool in fire-adapted habitats across the county. Doug Taron from the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum meets me, along with Linda Masters from Openlands. We walk the site, and Doug points out the impressive abundance of silver-spotted checkerspots on the site. He points out other rare species as well, some last observed at the turn of the 20^th century.

Fire is a vital element in the health and recovery of this grass- and sedge-dominated wetland, prairie and savanna complex. It will keep the invasive brush from coming back and clear the dead thatch so that fresh grass and wildflowers can thrive in the sunlight. But fire can also burn insects that wait out the winter in that thatch, and here we have some rare butterflies whose larvae require extra caution. We discuss the need to create burn refugia, areas that remain unburned to provide a safe haven for butterflies that overwinter in the flammable thatch. Later I will coordinate with the site steward Joe Neumann, who knows all the locations of uncommon plants on which some of these butterflies depend. We work together to develop a refuge that protects portions of the host plants and overwintering areas.

Later that afternoon I pay a visit to some fixed monitoring stations at Crabtree Nature Center in Barrington Hills. Here in the woodlands 20 years ago I set stakes around several plots on the ground. Within these small areas I counted and tracked the flowering health of a couple hundred wildflowers. Over the years I watched as buckthorn, an invasive European shrub, slowly encroached on these areas, causing the wildflowers to cease to bloom in the thickening shade. Eventually they failed to emerge and have been languishing for the past decade.

But this past winter, with the District bringing additional resources to habitat restoration, contractors at long last removed all the buckthorn. The woods are beautifully open now. No more a wall of buckthorn, I can see the gentle rolling topography of the glacial hills, the slope of the wetland basin beyond, the rise of the more level prairie across the little pond and marsh. For the first time in a long time, the ground is green with wildflowers again. I carefully walk amongst the lush foliage, part the vegetation and locate the telltale stakes of my established plots. Some spots have succumbed to the long buckthorn siege, but a good number of my old wildflower friends are there, stretching their new and hopeful leaves toward the renewed sunlight, free at last. In time they will recover, grow and thrive, put out blooms and establish seeds of their own that the ants will gather and scatter across the wooded hillsides. In coming years, these springtime woods will sport the demure white blooms of trout lily, the rich burgundy of trillium, the feathery flair of the starry Solomon’s seal and the pink radiance of wild geranium.

I and my fellow ecologists know we’re on a long trek in the effort to protecting and restoring our natural areas. Today is a single step, but an important one, on the road toward brighter days for our local ecosystems.

Learn more about the Forest Preserve District’s conservation efforts.

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Nita Marchant gets animated when she describes the first Wild Indigo outing, at Bartel Grassland in Matteson: “We had almost 70 people—youth and adults. We really connected with the earth by walking through the wetlands, looking at habitat, learning to ID different species. It was like watching a movie with the children—their eyes were wide open, like going to a place they’ve never been before, a wonderland. They were in awe, and they were having fun, too.”

Marchant is one of three outreach fellows guiding the work of Wild Indigo Nature Explorations, a new group that launched in March to promote “healthy bodies, healthy communities and a healthy planet through free outdoor field trips and activities” across the Calumet region in southeast Cook County.

Wild Indigo’s ambitious and rather poetic goals embrace both natural and cultural realms:

• Showcase local nature as a friendly, accessible place
• Build healthy bodies and healthy natural habitats
• Celebrate the miracle of creation
• Discover beautiful wild places on Chicago’s south side
• Appreciate natural treasures close to home
• Promote stewardship

“The driving force behind the concept begins with the forest preserves that are in the community itself,” says Marchant. “If you connect with the forests and get outdoors, you’ll be able to experience healthy activities. It’s about getting away from the city, the television, the internet and texting and recreating a sense of family and community. We’re taking care of the community, starting with the forests.”

That outreach to urban communities, and especially communities of color, is at the center of Wild Indigo’s mission. “Historically, communities of color have not been engaged in outdoor conservation and stewardship work,” says Marchant. “Now we’re asking the community to help mold and shape the activities that would be interesting to them.”

Wild Indigo is connecting with women’s groups, men’s groups, youth groups, community and church organizations— people who are already engaged in indoor activities but that might welcome the opportunity to step outdoors. “Right now we’re reaching out to veterans to create an experience that would be of special interest to them,” says Marchant.

The Wild Indigo Indoor Kick-off Event officially launched the group in March. Located in the historic Bronzeville Black Metropolis community, it was designed as an information session for the community and included conservation exhibitors such as Audubon, the Forest Preserve District of Cook County, Eden Place, Illinois Department of Natural Resources, Calumet Stewardship Initiative, Greencorps and Fishin’ Buddies. The event at Bartel Grassland followed, featuring nature walks and birdwatching with noted safari birder guide Paul Gitau. Wild Indigo also has visited the historic recreated cabins at Sand Ridge Nature Center “to discuss [African-American first resident of Chicago] Jean Baptiste DuSable, and what he experienced,” and participated in the Nature Block Party at Eggers Woods this May as the official bird walk safari guide.

On the calendar for this summer is the Beaubien Woods Celebration (June 8); Nature Explorations at Powderhorn Lake, which will include fishing, archery, kites and a butterfly treasure hunt (July 20); and Nature Explorations at Eggers Woods, which will include fishing, archery, a nature walk and bike rides (August 17).

Generously funded by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Wild Indigo is the result of a partnership between the Forest Preserve District of Cook County, Audubon Chicago Region and Eden Place Nature Center to connect residents to habitat restoration work going on in Calumet preserves. The program will continue officially for two years, but the goal is for it to benefit the community long after that. “We want to establish anchors in the community that will continue to promote healthy outdoor living and stewardship of the forest preserves,” Marchant says. “When we’re out there on a tour or doing restoration work, hopefully that same energy will flow back into the home and the community at large. We’re really working on things that make life more meaningful and rich.”

To learn more about Wild Indigo events, sign up for their newsletter, volunteer or find them at the Beaubien Woods Celebration on June 8, visit their web page or like them on Facebook.

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