Fauna of the Fox River Valley

During my 5 weeks at "Ketelsen East" this Fall, I kept my eyes open for wildlife. Out in the woods around the house I often saw signs of 'possums, and skunks, but rarely saw their mostly-nocturnal outlines in the dusk. I saw "Bruce", our resident groundhog, but didn't catch him on film this time, nor the white-tail deer I would occasionally spot bedded down adjacent to the access road to the house.

Probably the stars of the trip were the nesting pair of Sandhill Cranes and their nestlings. I literally spotted them in River Bend Community Park, adjacent to the bike path, where I was able to bike to within 50 feet or so where I took the picture at left with my cell phone. I spotted them on an almost daily basis, both in the park and down the road about 150 yards where I think they stayed the summer. Not always carrying the "big" camera, after spotting them one day I had time to run home (a mile) to get the camera and get back with a telephoto. Of course, once off the bike or out of the car and they suddenly recognized me as a dangerous human and started fleeing, but was able to catch the male at right.


Of course, the image at right is reduced in size to fit the blog 1600 pixel-wide limit. While the plumage is a little drab, shown at full resolution at left, more details in his feathers can be seen and the bicolor feathers stand out nicely!

After spotting the house whose backyard they stayed in, I could find them most any time. At right is their usual stomping grounds between the house and a water lagoon. How cool would it be to have sandhill cranes living in your back yard?! I guess after the novelty wore off, it might be a pain - likely against the law to disturb them and even mowing the yard might be considered harassment... Again, if I was on foot they were quite wary, even when they were 50 yards away as shown here.


To get around their fear of humans, the cure, of course, was to drive up to them in a car! I drove down the street leading to the front of the above house, and the cranes nearly walked up to me! With the 300mm lens, it was quite easy to get the closest view I'll ever likely get of them! At right is the male again, and at right is the male in the background and one of the fledglings in the foreground. In this view you can see the youngster has lost some of the feathers off the top of its head and will likely be replaced by the characteristic red plumage that is on top of the adult heads! These pics were taken a few weeks ago when I was still there - duh! But they didn't seem in any hurry to head southwards. Hopefully the cold weather they've gotten since has motivated them to move further south!


Besides the cranes, Canada Geese were literally everywhere! There is a contingent of them that spends the winters in the Fox Valley and there were thousands lining the streets as seen at left, as well as school yards, local cornfields, really most everywhere there was space for a few hundred to congregate. They have certainly lost their novelty and the little "surprises" they leave behind don't particularly make them popular... Not particularly common, but seen several times were the odd egret and heron, though not as numerous as a half dozen years ago when they were seen most every day fishing along the banks of the river.



About the only other creature seen that I had not before was a garter snake that my friend Jane spotted while we were out walking. I've NEVER seen snakes of any kind on the grounds of the camp, so this one took me by surprise. It was also quite willing to pose for me and besides the still frame at left, I also took a stereo pair at right. Get out the red/blue glasses to see the view in 3D!





And, of course, I can't have just one anaglyph image on the blog - it just ruins the symmetry of its Tao, or something like that, so here is another, though it has nothing to do with the fauna of the area. It is of a little patio table that usually holds an ashtray for Melinda's friends to gather around outside to smoke when they visit. Well, the ashtray is still there, but unseen under the pile of leaves that fell naturally to cover table and chairs. And yes, I did my duty and swept off the sidewalk and table before leaving for Tucson, making sure the majority of the leaves were off the tree before doing so. Again, the red/blue glasses are needed to see the 3D!

It was a nice trip and I'm already looking forward to a return, though now that winter has a grip on the area, I might wait till it is closer to warmer weather. But you never know - I might get a hankerin' for some snow and cold weather!

Around Home At Ketelsen East!

Since our multi-state trip ending last weekend, we've been hanging around the house here in St Charles. Officially we're working on some home-improvement projects, mostly in the kitchen reglazing the windows and tearing apart and repainting the sills. Today was a hot, sticky day, so we mostly relaxed - I took a walk in a local park, with Melinda reading and resting up for her "nurses night out" tonight.

With no astronomy to speak of here, I've converted to sort of a nature observer here in Illinois. Last year, the highlight of the summer was the discovery of the weirder than weird two-spot treehopper, shown at left here. Once seen, they appear quite common, though only on a few plants. Interestingly, I didn't see any this year our first 10 days here until just yesterday, with a few more today, so perhaps their life cycle just has them reaching adulthood now. But what I have seen is shown at right, and if anything, matches the treehopper for weirdness!  A little smaller than the treehoppers, these guys have what looks like cotton fuzz coming out of their rear ends!  I ended up sending some pictures to "Bug Man" Carl Olson back at the University of Arizona and he was similarly confused, forwarding it on to a friend.  The answer is that it is a nymph stage of Acanalonia conica, a planthopper.  I'm seeing changes over time, and will likely blog about it later, but wanted to let you know we're not just sitting watching TV!  And interestingly, once spotted here in St Charles, I also saw them on my friend Beth's spinach plant in Minneapolis!

Also, big news our resident groundhog Bruce has been spotted, first grazing across the yard, then today peeking our from beneath our storage shed.  We had seen the recent digging, but not seen him there until he was spotted looking out.  While it is unlikely this is the same groundhog over the years we call Bruce, it is nice to have the tradition continued with this version.  I've blogged many times about him, but the camp aggressively tried to trap him, and a body was spotted years ago, but this Bruce is still very much active!

And finally tonight, Melinda is out with a group of her former nursing buddies.  They meet, sometimes by the dozens, at a local restaurant to get together and relive memories and make new ones.  So since I'm home alone (I've been invited, but choose not to attend the typically 5-hour dinners) this morning while out getting my morning paper picked up a few ears of some good-looking sweet corn, and got a jalapeno bagel to act as a bun for my brat-burger.  Finished off with cheese, onions and fresh jalapenos, all I needed was an iced glass with an ale to make it a feast - it was great!

Our Flower-Yard!

We've been having a blast at "Ketelsen East" in St Charles, IL!  Experiencing another Spring after the all-too brief appearances in Tucson and our visit to the Carolinas last month has been very restful.  Add to that many opportunities to visit friends and family makes this loads better than our trip in February when we were both sick with the flu... We even saw our groundhog neighbor (living under the building next door), who we've called "Bruce", though I think this version is likely an offspring.  Didn't get a picture of him though - he is pretty shy.  At left is a photo of the house lit up in the evening to make it look homey...

So we've been enjoying the cool weather and the first arrival of Spring.  Last year, it hit hard and a lot earlier, so was a joy to see all the blossoms and flowers in this year's edition.  The Fox River was flooding just a few weeks ago too, so the mowers haven't been over the yards here, so we've been enjoying the "yard-flowers" too.  We wouldn't dare call them weeds!  Besides the ever-present dandelions, we've got several colors of violets, and two types of Trillium too (white and red)!  We've even got tulips that have broken free of the flower beds, and are starting to come up willy-nilly!  Shown at left here is towards the north and other structures, where they mow a lot.  Just dandelions and violets in that direction, but to the south of the house is more of a jungle of other flowering plants, including big patches of Trillium, as shown at right.

Now the Trillium we have in our yard is a less-common recurved red trillium.  It is a pretty plant, but not showy like many other flowers because the petals curve inwards and hide the flower.  It is also hard to make look very impressive - the only way is to get down in the dirt and shoot it at its own level.  Then you can peek into it.  I'm working on some 3D shots of it too, so look for that coming up.  The White variety (Trillium grandiflorum) is showier, different but definitely related and shown at right.

And even the dandelions are spectacular when looked at closely!  A year or two back I took a macro shot of one that still serves as my wallpaper on my laptop, though didn't make it into a blog post.  Here is a triple-header on the left, each at slightly different ages, so show a slightly different general appearance.  Interestingly, our second day here was a cool one - it never got over 50, and NONE of the dandelions that were open the previous day made an appearance!  After all taking a day off, it warmed up a little and they all returned...  Even after going to seed, the macro lens reveals a wealth of details that are generally little-noticed.  While the seeds are wind-dispersed, the seeds themselves also have little thorns on them that would likely also stick to clothing for transport as well...

So I was shooting the tulips scattered in our yard...  Mostly they are near flower beds, but they seem to be migrating out towards the open yard...  I suspect that the later in the Spring that our "yard" is mowed, the more likely they'll keep on moving towards the exit!  So how do you shoot a tulip in a new way?  How 'bought straight down with a macro lens?  Looks pretty cool, even with the white tulip with subtle color variations...

So a day or two later, after the above shot came
out, I was shooting another the same way - straight down, stopped down considerably so that a good portion of the flower would be in focus with the larger depth-of-field.  This one was a yellow tulip with red highlights - beautiful colors...  But wait, what is that little green particle hiding among the flower parts near the center - aphids!  In fact, if you look closely at the white one above, you can spot one of the little buggers there too.  On this yellow one, I went in for an oblique closeup for more details.  You can see little legs, perhaps some eye dots - perhaps a probiscus with which they suck plant juice.  Will have to keep an eye out for more of these little microscopic critters...

Glassy Unveil

A few months ago, I posted about a weekend work day at the Mirror Lab which coincided with the casting of a second mirror for the Giant Magellan Telescope.  The first segment for the telescope is nearing completion in our polishing lab and our casting crew can certainly cast them a lot faster than we can polish them!  The casting schedule lasts about 3 months from start to finish, so the casting oven was opened about 10 days ago, and the crew has been working hard disassembling hardware from around our new pride and joy.

The first job in exposing the new mirror is the removal of the top and sides of the oven and stowing them out of the way.  That done, this last Thursday I caught them removing the inconel bands which wrap around the mold during the casting progress.  Yesterday they removed the hard refractory tub walls and scraped away the soft machined refractories to expose the outer edges of the glass blank.  So you can see if you blink, you can easily miss a step as the crew hustles to expose their handiwork. 

At left, staffers Bruce and Tom get a close look at the surface of the mirror.  You can see the hexagonal structure of the casting - here the glass entombs the mold hexagons, but soon the mold material will be removed to only leave lightweighting hollows in the mirror blank.  In the right photo you can see the mold cores go through the full thickness of the mirror leaving an inch thick layer of glass at the bottom and a couple inches of glass on top for the mirror surface.  You can also see the 36 meter radius of curvature on the top caused by the 4 rpm rotation of the oven while the glass was molten.  In the coming months a lifting fixture will be fastened to the face of the blank and it will be moved to the cleanout stand where the mold will be removed leaving a hollow structure leaving a "light weight" mirror that weighs a little under 20 tons.  Then we'll get it, likely about the start of next year to start the task of fabricating it into a fine jewel of a telescope mirror.  Stay tuned for updates!

Bruce?!

Yes, the computer is back from the shop, backup files successfully loaded, and I'm slowly getting software reinstalled.  So mostly things are back in operation, though I still don't understand why it was necessary to reformat the disk...  Oh well, I'm glad things are back to "normal".

Years ago we had a groundhog that lived under the building adjacent to our place in Illinois.  We affectionately called him Bruce, and posted about him several times.  One of the groundhogs died, and another that took his place was the subject of a capture attempt.  In any case, we've been over a year since we've seen a groundhog near the place.

Well this last trip, Melinda caught a glimpse of him near his old haunt.  The next morning, we caught a blur of motion out the door, and sure enough, some version of Bruce slowly emerged from under our storage shed, turned and kissed a little angel statue we've got, and seemingly ignored us taking his picture through the glass of our kitchen door from a distance of 20 feet or so.  While we know that they can do some damage to structures, thus the attempt to capture the one in the camp, we'd love it if he took up residence under our shed.  It is always fun to have a friendly face around the place!

Bruce(?) Lives!

We often see and blog about Bruce - our resident groundhog living under the building next to us. It was always fun to see a friendly face, though we never fed or approached other than to take a photo. Though we feared for his demise - Maj had seen a dead groundhog on the lane here over the winter, and our last trip there was an intense effort at the camp to trap yet another groundhog that had taken up residence in his burrow. A pic I took indicated the "new one" was different, and it seemed smaller with much better eyesight than "old Bruce (shown at left). Whether it was a mate or offspring, we didn't know...





So with the trapping effort (to relocate, so far as we knew), I hadn't seen him this trip, nor have I even been looking for him. So it was a shock this morning, when on a trip to the car, I saw a blur of brown running back to the burrow. It appears to be the "new Bruce" ! He doesn't look in the best of shape, with uneven fur, but it was a nice surprise to see a familiar shape, if not face in the yard.

Whirlwind Recap!

We've been here for nearly a week and it is time to go back to Tucson already! Time has flown by and not enough chances to blog, so here is a quick summary of some of our weekend activities.

Whenever here in St Charles, we're on the lookout for Bruce, our resident groundhog. We figured with the snow cover that we'd be unlikely to see him, but he has been out nearly every day! While considered a pest on the grounds here at the camp, we look forward to spotting him, and are encouraged by his digging under our shed outside, where we hope he'll take up residence.

Saturday, after nearly a full day's work on our hallway, the Johnson girls led a group of 10 to Rookies for the All-you-can-eat crab legs. It was quite the scene of devastation, with shellfish and butter everywhere! Not a fan of seafood, I had a steak, but we had some great times visiting with Carolyn, her daughter Anne and her husband Pete, and cousin Lisa and husband Dan. We respected the family's privacy and didn't bring the camera to dinner - pics of you with crab leg in your hair just isn't something you want to see!


On Sunday, our friend Carolyn joined us on our cross-state ride to Iowa to visit the Ketelsen part of the clan. Just over the river near Sabula ("Iowa's Only Island City"), we spotted some bald eagles in the trees, though couldn't stop on the bridge to shoot pictures. Once in Sabula, we pulled off at a boat ramp and shot these of an eagle defending his fish from another adult as well as a juvenile (still dark head). We've been fans of the birds since we attended the "Eagle Festival" the first weekend in January last year near Clinton, where they amass near the open water under the lock-and-dam spillways to fish. They are so majestic in the air and are amazing to watch fishing in the river. At any given moment there were upwards of 60 or more in the trees nearby. With the lack of ice on the river, we were lucky to see the 8 or 10 we spotted this late in the season.


As we entered Iowa, we called my Aunt Velma, who we'd had difficulty contacting in advance. We stopped to pay a visit and fortunately, she was available to join us on our trek to visit the rest of Dean's brothers and sisters at a "Pizza Summit" at the DeWitt Pizza Hut. All the Sibs were there, except for sister Sheri, who moved to San Antonio a few years ago. We've got to coordinate our Midwest trips better so we can all meet at once - Sheri and family were back for the holidays, but we didn't make it then... Also attending were my Uncle John and Aunt Judy - they had celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary our last trip back, and just the day before was Judy's birthday, so we were glad they could join us.


Star of the show was 3-year-old Alivia, plus, sitting next to her we got the most pictures of her. But she was a ball of fire and fun to photograph - certainly not afraid of the camera! Between drink deliveries, and rounds of pizza hopping, until long afterwards (we were there for 2.5 hours!) I think everyone got to catch up on every one else's news, and it was just getting dark as we headed back to deliver Velma back to her country home near Sabula. We knew we'd miss the Oscars, so set them up to record, but still saw nearly an hour of the show after arriving home about 10pm. A great weekend and day trip to Iowa.

The last few days have been a blur - it would be great to stay longer, but the jobs in Arizona require a return. Next time we'll be posting from Tucson!

More Flora and Fauna

The weather has been dull lately - threats of rain have persisted for days, and a cold front passed yesterday with gusts to 40 mph (60kph) today - no chance of new images! So I'm culling out some more from my previous excursions to our local forest preserve.


First up is a critter I've not seen before, even though they are supposed to be common throughout North America - the Red-Banded Leafhopper, Graphocephala coccinea. Probably the reason that you have likely not seen it is that it is small, only about .25" (6mm) long and thus easy to miss. Strolling along the prairie path at Tekakwitha, I somehow managed to spot it on the leaf of a Milkweed (I was looking out for Monarch caterpillars, so was paying close attention to the Milkweeds), and it was quite content to pose proudly while I fiddled to get closer and focused accurately. They feed on plant sap and if threatened, can jump long distances with their hind legs. I only spotted this one example, but got lots of images...





I spotted our friendly black squirrel again - this time he ran up a tree acorn in mouth and was content to feed while safely out of my reach. We had spotted him a few times last year, and even posted him about him then with a picture, again, acorn in mouth. I suspect they are territorial, as I've always spotted him (upwards of a half dozen times now) always within 50 yards or so of the same spot - the SE corner of the Tekakwitha Woods adjoining the parking area. They are a melanistic variety of the eastern grey squirrel, and a black squirrel can be born to grey parents, but the black is certainly striking in it's appearance. It is thought they might have an evolutionary advantage on the northern edge of the grey squirrel range because they have increased cold tolerance (emit less heat than greys), and are harder to spot in denser northern forests.


We are starting to get some nice fall colors, lots of yellows and golds from maples, and reds from the Virginia Creeper vines in the woods. But the most striking reds are right at the trailhead off the parking lot at Tekakwitha of the Staghorn Sumac. My local plant guidebook (Kane County Wild Plants & Natural Areas) says the seeds taste like lemonade if you can get to them before the birds, but I've not been brave enough to eat any... At left is the Sumac, at right a Creeper leaf among the usual yellows of early Fall.







Last up is a family infestation of a single Milkweed plant. I knew it was not a Milkweed Beetle, and when I visited the nature center at Tekakwitha, the woman there IDed my pictures as the Large Milkweed Bug, Oncopeltus fasciatus. Only the adults have wings, the nymphs (immature) bugs show the wing growth at various stages. With the identification, my Internet search indicates there are 5 molts of the nymphs from egg hatching to adulthood, and these images show 3 of the stages, from the barely visible wing stubs of the smallest, to the fully developed adults. Milkweed is their primary food source and they are part of a small group of insects that can tolerate the toxic sap of the Milkweed. They concentrate the toxins in their body, and predators well remember the bad taste that results. Their bright colors then teach the predators to avoid similar colors, saving monarch butterflies from similar fates.



And I almost forgot Bruce, our resident groundhog here at Riverwoods. We've seen him almost daily as he feeds for his Winter hibernation, oftentimes looking like a boulder in the yard as he pauses to watch for danger. Ironically, you can get much closer to him in a car than in person, so this is from a drive-by sequence as he sits near his burrow as I pass. He seems healthy and happy, though we've not seen any buddies or babies around either. At one point he made a run for it under our shed, which is fine by us - I know not everyone here at the camp looks at him kindly, so we'd be glad to host him under our shed if that is what it takes for him to be safe... Its always nice to come home to a friendly, if not shy, face!