She waited in the predawn quiet.
Bobolinks, she was certain, were nesting in the field.
No wind ruffled the grain. No sound pierced the silence. Binoculars poised, birder Sheryl DeVore stood motionless between the blacktop road and the fence. She focused on the habitat.
It was about 4:30 a.m. Birders and birds start their days early. That`s when nesting birds awake to sing, feed their young and build nests. That`s the best time to log them.
Shortly after arriving at the rural Grayslake location, DeVore sustained an attack by sentinel red-winged blackbirds. She held her ground. She waited. When all was quiet again and the first fingers of dawn appeared, kaboom!
The sound of fireworks bit into the stillness. It wasn`t the Fourth of July. It was the gun-toting local farmer firing a warning shot near her, a supposed trespasser up to some foul play. No bobolink sighting that day.
For two years, DeVore, 35, of Libertyville had patrolled her assigned block of field, meadow and wetland. She was logging breeding birds for a statewide study sponsored by the Illinois Department of Conservation in Springfield.
To qualify as a breeding bird, the bird must be observed in the nest or leaving or entering it. To qualify as a volunteer breeding-bird counter, the observer must have the vigilance of a red-winged blackbird, the cunning of a magpie and the endurance of a snowy owl.
Determined to catch sight of a nesting bobolink, DeVore later returned to her post but only after placing explanatory letters in the mailboxes up and down the road. Her determination paid off. As she scanned the field-whoosh!-a bobolink popped up out of its nest and was counted.
Bells rang. Whistles blew. But only DeVore heard them. A sighting is like Christmas to a birder.
The state breeding-bird study is just one of DeVore`s nature-related projects. She`s an active volunteer at Ryerson Conservation Area in Deerfield and an avid member of the Evanston North Shore Bird Club. She writes nature articles for national magazines and local newspapers. While finding peace in nature, DeVore hopes to bring fragmented, threatened pieces of nature before the public to encourage a wholesome respect for the environment.
Armed with binoculars, a well-thumbed bird book and warm boots on a nippy day, DeVore has stalked Lake County Forest Preserves from extreme northeastern Spring Bluff Forest Preserve to north-central McDonald Woods to southern Ryerson Conservation Area.
She has prowled for owls, verified veeries and watched for warblers. Through her back-porch telescope, she has seen distant migrating birds fly past a full moon. At White Fish Point Bird Observatory in Upper Michigan, she has observed long-eared owls migrating at dusk. At the Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel Island, Fla., she has logged nesting wood storks.
”There are from 700 to 800 species of birds to see in North America,”
she said. ”I`ve seen only 300 species so far.”
Ryerson Woods first triggered DeVore`s interest in birding. About six years ago she visited Ryerson on a field trip for a class she was taking at the College of Lake County in Grayslake. Though a lifetime resident of Lake County, she had never been to Ryerson. After trekking through the woods, her interest sparked into a flame when she saw the volunteers-wanted sign.
DeVore signed up as quickly as a black-capped chickadee flits off with a seed. At first she staffed the desk in the information center. Later she started leading bird walks and maple syrup demonstrations. For three years now she has been on the board of directors of the Friends of Ryerson, a citizen-support group for the nature center.
Ryerson is a 550-acre preserve along the Des Plaines River. Much of it is unchanged since pioneer days. The visitors center was the summer home of Chicago steel magnate Edward Ryerson, who helped start the Lake County Forest Preserve District.
Andy Kimmel is supervisor of environmental education for the Forest Preserve District of Lake County and director of Ryerson Conservation Area. He also is a fan of DeVore`s. ”Sheryl is a great writer, an avid bird watcher and a good friend of Ryerson Woods,” he said. ”Her enthusiasm is infectious. When she`s leading a group, they pick up her excitement.”
Each spring the Friends of Ryerson sponsors the Smith Symposium, a series of lectures and workshops focusing on an aspect of nature and wildlife. The 1991 symposium featured owls, the April 1992 program will focus on bats. DeVore handles publicity for the annual weekend event.
”Ryerson is unique among the Forest Preserve holdings,” DeVore said.
”It`s a relic of nature that`s protected by the state. It`s a good forest with layerings that birds need.”
On bird walks, DeVore usually can point out the red-eyed vireo that nests high in the leafy canopy of the trees, the secretive veery that nests in the lower parts of the forest canopy and the ovenbird that builds its dome-shaped nest on the ground.
”Once, while I was leading a fall migration walk at Ryerson, a 10-year-old boy and I focused our binoculars on a black-throated blue warbler at the same time,” DeVore said, remembering the scene with amazement. ”The bird doesn`t nest here. It nests up in Wisconsin and Canada. It stunned me that that boy identified it so quickly.”
While leading birders through the woods, DeVore said, she can give lessons on ecosystems, on how the wildflowers, insects, birds, trees, animals all interrelate with one another. ”Watching birds is on the periphery of the whole environmental concept,” she said. To understand more of the complexity and interdependence of nature, she is taking an environmental birding course at College of Lake County. She`s considering a degree in biological sciences to add to her bachelor`s degree in music education and her writing certificate from Northwestern.
As a part-time Pioneer Press staffer, DeVore writes a monthly environment page and a monthly nature-notebook column for several town and suburban papers. In addition, her weekly features on people and happenings in the county are aimed at bringing a sense of connectedness from the area`s rural past to its increasingly suburban present.
DeVore`s free-lance writing has found a place in nature magazines such as Birders` World, Nature of Illinois, Wild Bird Magazine, Country Journal and Harrow Smith Country Life.
”I take my volunteer work as seriously as my paid employment. It`s hard to draw a distinction,” she said. ”Working on the IDOC (Illinois Department of Conservation) breeding study, for example, was really satisfying. I counted up to 90 species of birds with 65 confirmed nestings in the little plot of land I had in Grayslake.”
The statewide breeding bird atlas was begun in 1986 and was completed in August 1991. The first-ever endeavor will be published for public perusal when final statistics are tallied and funds are available.
”The study`s primary purpose is to document the birds that breed in the state,” said David Johnson, Lake County coordinator of the breeding bird atlas and past president of the Evanston North Shore Bird Club. Secondary purposes, he said, are to identify areas of critical habitat, to provide a database for developers and planners and to establish counting methods.
”Sheryl has contributed valuable information to the IDOC study. She`s a real go-getter, an aggressive birder, practically a fanatic,” Johnson said with a laugh. ”She`s given us verified sightings of the black tern and the yellow-headed blackbird, both Illinois endangered species. She`s a dynamite birder and she loves every minute of it.”
Other birds DeVore logged for the atlas are the pied-billed grebe, the grasshopper sparrow and the fledged Cooper`s hawk. She also has spotted sandhill crane, leaf bittern and blue-winged teal.
DeVore can whistle and chirp with the best of them. Because of her good ear and music background, she produces fairly accurate imitations of bird calls. She listens to birds and to tapes of birds and sometimes chimes right in to woodland conversations.
After a four-year stint as music teacher and band leader in Waukegan and Mundelein grade schools, DeVore began her career in journalism. But she still gives private flute and piano lessons and plays the flute with her twin sister, Laurel Kaiser, at various functions. With Kaiser, who is a music teacher at Mundelein High School, she plays flute in the 110-piece North Shore Band. ”I believe any talent people have should be used. If I had the time, I`d learn to play the hammered dulcimer,” she said, head cocked, listening to soft strummings with her inner ear.
Years of backyard birding fill notebooks kept handy in the kitchen.
”Hummingbirds have been more numerous this fall,” she said, leafing through pages of sightings. ”One year scarlet tanagers were all over the place.” DeVore leaves the gardening to husband Karl, an avid horticulturist who is enrolled in a tree-identification class at the College of Lake County. The DeVores have no children, but two cats. At Ryerson he helps out with the butterfly garden.
Karl said he and his wife have tried to develop a natural habitat for birds in their back yard. They mulch, use no chemicals and provide seeds for various types of birds.
”I`m not apt to plow around the county like Sheryl, looking for birds,” Karl said. ”I`m satisfied to sit on the back porch and wait for them to show up. Sheryl does take birding seriously.”
In the winter, DeVore joins in the worldwide Christmas Bird Count and the January Owl Prowl, both sponsored locally by the Evanston North Shore Bird Club.
Helping raise awareness of a stressed environment remains a primary goal of DeVore`s writing and volunteer campaign. ”Saving the environment is like saving our souls in a way,” she said. ”Nature helps us get away from the craziness of the world to find ourselves. Or more simply, nature`s worth saving because it`s aesthetically pleasing and makes us feel good.”
Ryerson Conservation Area, 21950 Riverwoods Rd., Deerfield, Ill. 60015
(708-948-7750). The Evanston North Shore Bird Club meets at 7:30 p.m. the fourth Tuesday of the month at the Evanston Ecology Center, 2024 McCormick Blvd., Evanston, Ill. 60201 (708-459-3989).
