The Spring Bird Count, which happens every year in early May, is one of my favorite days. I have picked out a census tract for myself in one of the choicest natural areas Cook County has to offer, and on count day, I can cover it slowly and carefully on foot, soaking up the solitude, the peace, and the rich bird life.
But for all their sneering and for all the disreputable weeds on this land, the preserves north of Vollmer Road support as fine a collection of native prairie birds as you can find in Cook County.
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These three species are abundant here, but I am listening for the sounds of rarer creatures. I almost always hear them: the dry, insectlike rattle of the grasshopper sparrow; the hiccuping tsi-lic of the Henslow’s sparrow, the famous “song” that Roger Peterson called “one of the poorest vocal efforts of any bird.”
In my census tract, they have the space. It is a full mile from Central to Ridgeland and only two tree lines break the sweep of open space. By the way, each of those tree lines has its own population of edge birds: redwings, cowbirds, song sparrows, and brown thrashers occupy the trees and about 100 feet of grassland on either side. Walk more than 100 feet from the tree line, and you are once again in the domain of the prairie birds.
The museum was first proposed for a preserve near Barrington, but local opposition killed it. Now it has been revived in the southern suburbs. Two sites are being considered. One between Flossmoor Road and 183rd Street–which is right in the middle of my census tract–and the other along U.S. 45 between 167th and 179th streets.
The opposition, an entirely volunteer operation so far, has taken longer to react, but now the Thorn Creek Audubon Society and the Chicago Audubon Society have begun to fight back. Their principal ammunition is a series of surveys of breeding birds carried on as part of the Illinois Breeding Bird Atlas Project, an enterprise being run by the Illinois Department of Conservation.
And the Forest Preserve District should look beyond the farm proposal and think about how it manages lands like the two sites in question. In the eyes of the Forest Preserve, these properties are on hold. They were mostly farmland when the district bought them. Forest Preserve workers planted grass on them, and they mow the grass from time to time to keep trees and shrubs from invading the land. They have even done some prescribed burning along Flossmoor Road.
