It's Boreal, not Boring!

Last week's camping trip took me to a really special biome, the boreal forest. It's a band of temperate forest just a few hours north of here and you can tell you're getting there when you start seeing fewer deciduous trees and more conifers. What's fun about entering a completely different biome is that you start to see different wildlife, too. For example, one encounters more species of warblers, only a few of which nest around my home. The Black-and-white Warbler (Mniotita varia), however, moves farther north in the summer and I normally only see them when they migrate through in spring and fall.



Around where I live we have mostly White-breasted Nuthatches (Sitta carolinensis) but in the boreal forest one sees more Red-breasted Nuthatches (S. canadensis) as well.



More boreal beauty to come!

Wildlife

Now that I'm back home from a week camping in the northwoods I really miss being outside all the time. Maybe some pics will come later, but for now here is a list of the cool mammals and birds I encountered:

Red Squirrel
River Otter
Flying Squirrel
White-tailed Deer
Black Bear
Coyote
Black Squirrel
Chipmunk

Olive-sided Flycatcher
Black-capped Chickadee
Cedar Waxwing
American Robin
White-throated Sparrow
Bald Eagle
Common Tern
Common Loon
Ring-billed Gull
Red-breasted Merganser
Gray Catbird
American Goldfinch
American Crow
Blue Jay
American Redstart
Downy Woodpecker
American Kestrel
Northern Flicker
Chestnut-sided Warbler
Ruby-throated Hummingbird
Canada Warbler
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
Norther Harrier
Mourning Dove
Red-winged Blackbird
Indigo Bunting
Merlin
Least Sandpiper
American Woodcock
Red-eyed Vireo
Barred Owl (Heard)
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Pine Warbler
Wild Turkey
Hermit Thrush
Eastern Wood Peewee
Veery
Barn Swallow
Osprey
Eastern Kingbird
Canada Goose
Connecticut Warbler
Great Blue Heron
Marsh Wren
Black-and-white Warbler
Brown Thrasher
Double-crested Cormorant
Song Sparrow
Hairy Woodpecker
Common Raven
White-winged Crossbill (Unsure)
Red-breasted Nuthatch
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Golden-winged Warbler
Chipping Sparrow
Common Yellowthroat

Equatorial Pilgrimage

On New Year's Day I set out on a little trip that was part vacation, part pilgrimage. My co-conspirator and I enlisted various modes of transportation that eventually got us to a remote archipelago in the Pacific, the Galápagos Islands. The thought in the back of my mind at the time was that on returning I could blog about each day of the trip as a post-dated travelogue. I've since revised my plans.

The pilgrimage part of the trip was to honor the memory of one of my personal heroes, Charles Darwin. For several years I've read multiple works by and about him and have come to recognize and respect him as one of the greatest scientific minds in the field of biology. In addition, I came to know him as a warm, thoughtful and humble man who cultivated lasting friendships, even with some of those who disagreed with his views, and who loved his family deeply.

While he actually spent more time on the mainland of South America where he began the investigations that eventually led to his ground-breaking theory, the Galápagos are more often associated with Darwin in the popular imagination. So it was that I was persuaded to get out of town for a change and found myself kayaking into the bay at Cerro Tejeritas on Isla San Cristóbal which was called Chatham Island at the time. Here is where The Beagle first landed in the Galápagos. I felt both excited and moved to be there. He wrote in "The Voyage of the Beagle":

"Nothing could be less inviting than the first appearance. A broken field of black basaltic lava, thrown into the most rugged waves, and crossed by great fissures, is everywhere covered by stunted, sun-burnt brushwood, which shows little signs of life."

But life he did find including the mockingbirds that played such a role in his discovery of natural selection and the multiple species of endemic finches that now bear his name. I've now undertaken the project of trying to put names on the ones we photographed. It isn't easy. But I get much pleasure from sorting through the hundreds of images, reliving the moments, admiring the wildlife that was so abundant and unafraid. I've got to go back, and this time with a better field guide. Just for fun I've listed all the bird species I saw in the islands and the mainland cloud forest below. The Darwin Finch identifications are tentative.

• Magnificent Frigatebird
  
• Cactus Ground Finch
  
• Blue-footed Boobie
  
• Brown Pelican
  
• Elliot's Storm Petrel
  
• Medium Ground Finch
  
• Whimbrel
  
• Ruddy Turnstone
  
• Yellow Warbler
  
• Great Blue Heron
  
• Lava Gull
  
• Chatham Mockingbird
  
• Masked Boobie
  
• Red-billed Tropicbird
  
• Gálpagos Shearwater
  
• Smooth-billed Ani
  
• Gálapagos Flycatcher
  
• Black-necked Stilt
  
• White-cheeked Pintail Duck
  
• Mangrove Finch
  
• Semipalmated Plover
  
• Greater Flamingo
  
• Purple Gallinule
  
• Common Moorhen
  
• Cattle Egret
  
• Gálapagos Hawk
  
• Gálapagos Martin
  
• Vermillion Flycatcher
  
• Brown Noddy
  
• Warbler Finch
  
• Gálapagos Penguin
  
• Gálapagos Mockingbird
  
• Striated Heron
  
• Large Tree Finch
  
• Booted Rackettail
  
• Slate-throated Whitestart
  
• Blue-winged Mountain Tanager
  
• Yellow-bellied Chat Tyrant
  
• Collared Inca
  
• Turquoise Jay
  
• White-tailled Tyrannulet
  
• Blackburnian Warbler
  
• Rufous-collared Sparrow
  
• Grey-breasted Wood-Wren
  
• Black-and-white Becard
  
• Russet-crowned Warbler
  
• Violet-tailed Sylph
  
• Swainson's Thrush
  
• Brown-capped Vireo
  
• Masked Trogon
  
• Southern Yellow or Golden-bellied Grosbeak
  
• Azara's Spinetail
  
• Green-and-black Fruiteater
  
• Plain-tailed Wren
  
• Sickle-winged Guan
  
• Buff-tailed Coronet
  
• Toucan Barbet
  
• Plate-billed Mountain Toucan
  
• Beryl-spangled Tanager
  
• Speckled Hummingbird
  
• Fawn-breasted Brilliant
  
• Masked Flower-piercer
  
• Tyrannine Woodcreeper
  
• Cinnamon Flycatcher
  
• Grass-green Tanager
  
• Gorgeted Sun Angel
  
• Chestnut-capped Brush-Finch
  
• White-tipped Dove
  
• Giant Cowbird
  
• White-throated Quail-Dove
  
• Montane Woodcreeper
  
• Common Potoo
  
• Streaked Tuftedcheek
  
• Dusky Bush-Tanager
  
• Golden Tanager
  
• Capped Conebill
  
• Glossy Black Thrush
  
• Rufous-tailed Hummingbird
  
• Andean Emerald
  
• Green-crowned Wood Nymph
  
• Green-crowned Brilliant
  
• Brown Violetear
  
• White-whiskered Hermit
  
• White-necked Jacobin
  
• Purple-throated Woodstar
  
• Thick-billed Euphonia
  
• Lemon-rumped or Flame-rumped Tanager
  

The Lily Pond and Conservatory

In the 1930s Alfred Caldwell designed a garden in Chicago dominated by a large central lagoon. It is called The Lily Pond and yesterday I had the pleasure of visiting it with friends. Extensive use of limestone shelf rock is meant to evoke a prairie river cutting through bedrock. A council ring, that icon of the Prairie school of landscape architecture, sits atop a small knoll giving views of the lagoon. The garden was a great success when it first opened but over the years bad redesigns and general neglect nearly destroyed Caldwell's vision. In 2000 an extensive restoration and reconstruction was begun. Now restored nearly to its original beauty--obligatory changes were made to accommodate ADA--the garden is a tranquil and apparently little known gem adjacent to the Lincoln Park Zoo.



We also made a visit to the conservatory in the park. I love conservatories. I still sometimes dream of having a nice stone house topped, at least in part, by a classical glass and metal conservatory where I can sit in the winter with my exotic plants and a good book.



A lovely statue in the pond of the Palm House



In the Fern House



A mass of some sort of maidenhair fern in the Fern House



In one of the houses a grapefruit tree and this sour orange were heavily laden with fruit



A beautiful pink Datura for my friend Wildetype--There was an even larger golden one nearby but the lighting was not good



Oh look! Wildetype has shown up to see the Datura. No, my mistake--it's a creepy geisha mannequin in the Show House.

A Kitchen Away From Home

I don't know if this is normal, but when I travel I almost look forward to cooking in a new place as much as I do seeing the sights. As far back as 1996--sadly the last time I've traveled internationally; Toronto hardly counts--I was excited that one of the places we stayed in Provence had a rudimentary kitchen. We didn't delve to deeply into cuisine on that particular trip, but I do remember a farmer's market that I would love to return to.

On one camping trip two years ago the highlight was making a lovely burgundy beef in the dutch oven. It took hours, but what a wonderful, relaxing time sitting under the trees listening to the birds, reading a good book and watching a placid lake while I tended the coals and rotated the pot and cover. Only a couple weeks after that my co-conspirator and I were at a cooking class with Marcel Biró learning a bit of rustic Italian cookery.

And then there were a couple of memorable trips to New York where I had as much fun cooking for the parties our hosts threw as I did touring the museums. I love grocery shopping in The Village.

Now when we've visited coastal Oregon several times I've been grateful to have accommodations that feature a full kitchen. It's an added bonus that it overlooks the Pacific Ocean and some scenic offshore rocks. Each time we go we count the days we'll be there, list the various local seafoods we want to taste, and plan our shopping and cooking accordingly.

What would be my dream vacation? I have enough interests that I could stay entertained by a variety of things pretty much anywhere but Kansas. But if it came down to it that the only choice was to spend a week holed up in cozy accommodations with a well stocked pantry and some interesting recipes, I could have a pretty good time.