Shhhhh. There’s the animal. Let’s stay quiet and watch — don’t spook it, now. Observe how it approaches the source of food. Note its agility as it moves in. Stand very still and — yes!
The squirrel got to the bird feeder once again.
Sigh. So is the best we can expect as far as local wildlife?
Hardly. In fact, the Chicago area has enough wild animals that wildlife biologist Chris Anchor at the Forest Preserve District of Cook County is usually tracking the movements of 8 to 12 species by radio transmitter.
“Coyotes are everywhere,” he said. (Indeed, I once saw one sitting in a soccer goal in River Forest.) So, pretty much, are beaver, red fox, mink, muskrats and river otters. Less common, but still present, are long-tailed and least weasels.
“It’s just a matter of finding them,” Anchor said.
Is that all?
I set out to find them.
A safari in winter?
Certainly. Without leaves on the trees, it’s easier to see animals. Coyotes are in mating season through March, and therefore active. Beavers are also breeding, through the end of February. And winter offers a major advantage to the animal-seeker — snow.
In snow, you can see tracks.
And almost as soon as I set out on one of the snow-covered trails at the Sand Ridge Nature Center in south suburban South Holland, I did.
My guide was John Elliott, education manager of the Forest Preserve District of Cook County. He has had good luck finding wild animals at Sand Ridge. He once saw a weasel drag a rabbit into the grass to eat it — an intriguing sight for a wildlife watcher, but perhaps a little strong for the two horrified little girls who saw Bugs Bunny find out exactly what was up.
On this day, we saw deer tracks first, with their characteristic two-pronged print. And then others — paw prints with the clear mark of claws at the front of each pad.
It was a coyote’s track, running from the main path into an open area of woods. It went in a straight line, a clear indication that this was a wild animal, not Fido on a walk. A wild animal walks purposefully, Carpenter explained, while a dog stops to sniff everywhere.
It was also in a configuration that looked as if it was made by an animal with two legs, not four. Coyote walk in a “perfect walking” gait, Elliott explained; they put their hind legs into the tracks made by their front legs. Their tracks look as if they were made by a two-legged animal.
We walked the preserve’s trails, where once you started looking for tracks, you saw them everywhere. And they were right along the main trails.
To see tracks, “people think you have to go hacking into the brush, but animals walk on tracks right next to the trails,” said Carpenter. Apparently, they like the ease of an open path as much as humans do.
We saw rabbit tracks, mouse tracks, squirrel tracks. We saw where a mouse had burrowed into the snow, and where a squirrel had stopped to dig for food. It was like trying to follow a story.
But it was a story whose protagonists were invisible. The animals’ actions were in their tracks; but the animals themselves were gone.
So the next stop on the safari was about as close as you can get to a guaranteed animal sighting without going to the zoo — Fermilab.
“This is pretty much the ideal habitat for coyotes,” said Rod Walton, an ecologist at the 6,800-acre site near Batavia. “It’s a large, open grassland.”
We were in a Fermilab truck at dusk, Walton at the wheel, searching for coyotes. Walton was confident; there are about 25 living on the site. At a meeting earlier that day, he had looked out the window and seen three.
The road went between two snow-covered earth berms. Underneath them, Walton explained, were the passages where beams of protons used to be shunted by the Fermilab particle accelerator.
“There’s one now,” Walton remarked.
A proton?
No, a coyote — a slightly mangy-looking female trotting not far from the road. “She may be molting; she’s looking a little ragged,” Walton said.
That was OK; we saw four more as we drove, including one that was hunting. We watched as it jumped into the air, pounced down on the snow, shoved its nose underneath and came up with a rodent snack that it proceeded to eat.
This was the safari easy life, driving in comfort and pulling off to the side of the road when we spotted an animal. It was like being at Yellowstone, if Yellowstone were ironed flat and moved to Batavia.
And of course you are guaranteed to see bison here, because Fermilab keeps a small herd. As we drove up to their pen, Walton could barely contain his disdain for the domesticated beasts, which are provided with feed and barns.
“They’re way spoiled,” he said.
But we suburban animal spotters are not.
I was ready for the utmost challenge — trying to find an animal in the flesh and fur simply by going to a promising habitat where it has been spotted before.
For me, that would be the Des Plaines River, home to the beaver. With Allison Frederick, environmental communications specialist for the Lake County Forest Preserves, and Paul Klonowski, a volunteer with the preserves, I went to Independence Grove near Libertyville looking for beaver.
I was even more excited about the possibility of seeing a river otter. Klonowski, the site steward for the Des Plaines River, recently saw one just north of Illinois Highway 120. “It was on the side of the river, and then it just dove under the water,” he said.
The morning’s search began with hope. Frederick thought that the relatively warm day, coming after several frigid and blustery ones, might find the beavers active. Also, she said, this was breeding season, and the beaver kits were being pushed out of their parents’ lodges. And we were headed for the area around the promisingly named Beaver Pond.
We parked at Independence Grove’s canoe launch area and walked to the river’s edge. The banks and the trees were snow-covered, but the water was open. We stood quietly and looked. Nothing moved but the water.
From the bridge that heads to the pond, we looked downstream and up. Klonowski pointed out a spot upstream next to a fallen tree along the bank where the snow had been disturbed. “That’s probably where they’re getting in and out of the water,” he said.
They weren’t doing so now.
We walked across the bridge and through 8 inches of fresh snow to the edge of Bull Creek. Along the bank were freshly chewed tree trunks, signs that beavers had been gnawing on the wood.
Bracing himself against a tree, Klonowski leaned out toward the water and pointed down at the edge. It looked like someone had taken a large scoop out of the snow. “It’s a chute,” he said, a snow ramp beavers use to slide into the water.
Nothing was sliding now.
Klonowski pointed out what looked like a snow-covered pile of sticks in the water. The beavers could be living inside there, he said. Frederick spied beaver tracks leading to the snow-covered, silent pond. Klonowski pointed to a spot on the pond’s far shore where snow was mounded a little higher than its surroundings. That, too, could be a lodge.
Beavers were here, all around us. They just weren’t in front of us.
Alas, the only animals we saw were dogs being walked on the other side of the creek. But we did see a downy woodpecker and a long, narrow mound in the snow with a sharp right angle that Frederick thought might indicate a vole tunnel underneath.
We had an invigorating winter walk too. Such is the charm of a suburban safari; even if your attempt to see an animal fails, your nature outing pretty much always succeeds.
Fermilab, Kirk Road and Pine Street, Batavia; 630-840-5588
Sand Ridge Nature Center, 15890 Paxton Ave., South Holland; (708) 868-0606
Independence Grove, 16400 W. Buckley Rd., Libertyville; 847-968-3499
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Tips for trackers
Now that you’ve matched the prints to the critters, here are some tips on tracking them down for yourself:
*Go at dawn or dusk, when animals are most active.
*Go alone or in small numbers.
*Don’t wear strong scent.
*Be very quiet, and be prepared to spend some time. “Patience, patience, patience,” counseled John Elliott of the Forest Preserve District of Cook County. “You can go out there for an hour and not see a thing.”
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Chicagoland safari
Here’s three places Barbara Brotman went to look for wildlife.
1. The Des Plaines River Trail at Independence Grove
“I looked for beavers and river otters. Saw lots of beaver signs, but no beavers. Or otters. Still, it’s clear that both are there. So are minks, which I did not see. However, these are also in every other area waterway.”
2. Fermilab, Batavia
“Saw coyotes. And there are so many that it’s pretty reliable that anyone could.”
3. Sand Ridge Nature Center, South Holland
“I saw tracks of coyote, deer, squirrels and raccoon, but no animals. Nearby, I went to North Creek Meadow Creek and saw opossum and raccoon tracks, again no animals.”
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bbrotman@tribune.com
IN THE WEB EDITION: See video of Barbara Brotman’s safari at chicagotribune.com/wildsafari.
