January 5, 2010 by
rusticroads
Northern Cardinal
I took this photograph of a male Northern Cardinal at Starved Rock State Park, near Utica, Illinois in early May, 2009. He is in an interesting position, for some reason his left foot is up in the air! These are pretty, and very common, birds here in Illinois. When I lived in New Mexico I was surprised that they had no Cardinals – their range is only in the far south-west, IE “Boot heel” of the state – although they are common in Arizona. I saw a pair of Cardinals at the Gila Lower Box in south-western New Mexico once and was so surprised that I had to look it up in the bird book to make sure that it wasn’t some new and exotic species! Speaking of the Lower Box, that is a great place to go birding – it straddles two different ecosystems and has some 280 different species. I was also quite surprised once at seeing a Great Blue Heron in the Gila River there – it seemed so strange and incongruous to see a water bird in the middle of the desert, river or no river!
December 15, 2009 by
rusticroads
Starved Rock State Park, near Utica, Illinois, is considered by the State Department of Tourism to be one of the “Seven Wonders of Illinois.” This is a wonderful nature area with many sandstone bluffs and canyons along the Illinois River. There was once a French fort near here, one of the first (possibly the first) European outpost in Illinois. Marquette and Joliet passed this way in the 1600′s. The Illinois River is dammed at this point, forming the “Starved Rock Pool.” Detritus from a large portion of the greater Chicago Metropolitan area flows down the Illinois and its tributaries – including the Fox River, which is only blocks away from my home in Batavia. Because of this, the shoreline of the river (or pool) at Starved Rock is lined with an amazing variety of SHIT. Below are a few examples I found over the last year – Barcaloungers, boats, dumpsters, propane grills hanging from the trees! (more…)
December 14, 2009 by
rusticroads
Here is a photograph of a Ladybug and some red berries I took at Starved Rock State Park, near Utica, Illinois, last November 1st. This was about a week after “the day the leaves fell” - wehad wanted to get down there during the height of the fall colors, however every leave in Northern Illinois fell on one day about a week previously. It was still nice, at least we could get better views of the cliffs and canyons. Looking back on this photo I was reminded of climbing peaks in the southwest – New Mexico and Arizona – where for some unknown reason you would occasionally find the entire rocky top of a mountain peak COVERED in Ladybugs even in the middle of winter (at least if it was above freezing). I first encountered this phenomena on Swedish Peak in the Chiricahua Mountains in south eastern Arizona in mid-January 1996 (snow on the ground). My only explanation for this behavior is that maybe they breed up there and then the wind blows them off across the countryside in a random fashion (like pollen). Who knows? Well, there’s not any Ladybugs around here in the winder, peaks or not, so this one may be the last I see for a while!
The Last Ladybug
