Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum and Lincoln Park Zoo

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The headquarters and registration for the Urban Birding Festival in Chicago was at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum. We were in and out of the building during all three days of the festival. They have a small butterfly house with some exotics…some natives.

I managed to make a short video of a butterfly feeding.

There were lots of activities for young children. It was fun watching them explore. A fiber mural appealed to me too.

We signed up for a walk at Lincoln Park Zoo – birds and botany – skewed toward botany.

The two birds that I photographed were in a wilder area of the zoo…where wild birds sometimes drop in…sometimes decide to stay. The wood duck was relatively close and preening. The green heron was further way and harder to see through the vegetation. On the underside of a bridge were some barn swallow nests; the birds had already left for the season.

There were turtles out and about – including a soft shelled one.

The plantings in the main part of the zoo are a mix of formal landscaping plants (non-natives) with some natives like coneflowers and turtlehead and sunflowers mixed in.

The zoo has a very old elm that is treated to keep it from succumbing to Dutch Elm Disease. They have started planting elms resistant to the disease.

The walk around South Pond is landscaped with all natives….as close as the horticulturalist can to get prairie…with a few woody plants mixed in on the outer edges. I was surprised at how many plants I recognized! There were lots of yellows and seed pods this time of year!

We made the mistake of using Google Maps to show us the shortest route back to our car; it had exits from the zoo that didn’t exist! We circled back to find an exit….had a much longer walk than we would have had without technology!

Ten Little Celebrations – September 2023

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Welcoming cooler temperatures…the beginning of fall. Lots to celebrate!

Shaw Nature Reserve. A first visit…a short hike. Celebrating the place and an early fall day with my daughter.

Pawpaw. Celebrating a new fruit…and its native to North America. I planted the seeds; maybe they’ll come up next spring/summer and I’ll have pawpaws from my yard in 5-7 years.

Wood Duck in an Egret picture. I was taking a picture of an egret catching a fish but celebrated the wood duck in the background when I looked at the image on a big monitor!

Pineapple Whip. Celebrating a birthday with a unique-to-Springfield MO treat!

New addition for my travel computer. Celebrating a new mouse, mini-keyboard, and portable monitor to travel with my laptop. It will make packing easier and using my laptop more comfortable for my week in Texas every month.

Yellow/orange Watermelon. Cutting the watermelon, we got from our CSA revealed something different than the usual red! I celebrated a great watermelon and the memory of the yellow watermelon that my paternal grandparents grew (along with red ones) during my childhood.

Green Heron at the Neighborhood Pond. Surprise! The bird was hiding in plain sight, but I didn’t see it until it flew…and celebrated that I was able to photograph it in the place where it landed. Green herons are one of my favorite birds to watch because they can change their shape (extending or contracting their neck) so quickly.

Beautyberry. Buying a beautyberry for my yard had been on my list for a bit….I celebrated that I found one at the Shaw Nature Reserve’s Wildflower Festival.

Vaccinations. My husband and I celebrated that we could easily schedule getting both the updated flu and COVID-19 vaccinations…increasing our confidence of staying well as we travel more this fall.

5 Native Plants. I celebrated when I got the 5 new native plants in the ground…and they seem to be doing well in my yard.

Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge – August 2023 (2)

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Continuing the early morning at Hagerman….

Sometimes the birds move about in a kind of ballet on the roost pond before they fly away to spend their day elsewhere. In this instance – the dance includes two great blue herons in the middle and three great egrets a little to the right. Other birds on the pond are either oblivious or looking on.

I took pictures of a heron catching a fish and realized, when I looked at the pictures on my large monitor at home, that there were wood ducks in the background!

There aren’t as many plants in bloom right now…I fixated on one type I saw as I headed back to the visitor center area.

A pair of Dickcissels flew into the top of some vegetation near the road. I enjoyed taking portraits of them.

I took some portraits of a great blue heron and great egret backlit in the morning sun that hav a very different look than the roost pond. The water has a metallic look…the birds almost silhouettes. They were the finale to this Hagerman visit.

St. Louis Zoo

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After our visit to the Jewel Box, we spent the rest of the day at the St. Louis Zoo. We parked in the south parking lot and noticed the animal sculptures as we made our way to the bridge that leads to the zoo entrance.

The giant tortoises were out and the smallest one was moving about. I noticed one of the larger ones had a hole in its shell; was this tortoise shot at some point in its long life?

The Reptile House was one of our early stops beginning a big loop around the zoo (starting up hill first). The lizard peeking out of a tree in its habitat was one of my favorites.

At one of our first breaks, there were large catalpa trees with the long seed pods still green. It was good to see healthy catalpa trees again; my maternal grandparents had catalpas around their home and business in the 1960s --- seeing the trees triggered fond memories.

The Flight Cage is the oldest part of the zoo; it was built for the 1904 World’s Fair. There were quite a few birds in the large mesh-enclosed area.

One of my favorites was a wood duck. Was the eye injured or is that just the way a wood duck eye looks when it is closed/half open?

Leaving the flight cage – there are mosaics of natural areas.

Cranes were in habitats with other animals. I enjoyed getting different views of the one bird as it was feeding.

In the big apes area, my camera’s zoom managed to get a gorilla in the back of the habitat…looking serious and scratching his brow.

Flamingos and other water birds enjoy lakes with islands at the zoo…visible but able to get further away from noisy crowds. The pelicans are rescued birds (i.e. are birds that have a significant enough injury that they couldn’t survive in the wild).

I enjoyed the ways the zoo uses nature themes in their structures….and that they have solar panels too!

There is a carousel. It looked to be well-maintained but not busy when we were there (hence the pictures).

Of course – there is also ‘wildlife’ in the zoo that just finds the zoo a good place to be!

We enjoyed the people watching as much as the animals at the zoo. Some children obviously were locals familiar with the zoo and enthusiastically making their way to their favorite exhibits…couples with babies in strollers (with visions of the time their child would be old enough to make requests)…families clearly on vacation…older people – sometimes with grandchildren, sometimes as couples or small groups using the zoo as an interesting (and safe) place to walk.

It was a hot day and by about 3 PM we were ready for a cool down. We retreated to our hotel for a few hours before walking to a Lebanese restaurant for an early dinner. It was a day well spent.