Good Natured in St. Charles: Life in the woods a new chapter for nature writer

Well, here we are, folks, the second part of this long goodbye and the very last installment of this column we call Good Natured.

Last week, we took a look back at some of the most notable nature events that occurred in Kane County during the past 25 years – a time span that not-so-coincidentally matches the duration of my career in the field of nature education. What I’d like to do today is take a look forward to what the future likely holds – not only for me, but maybe you, too, if you have the same nature-nerdy interests.

The following is an abbreviated form of a list I’ve been keeping for the past several years; it’s called Things to Do When I Have More Time. Here, in no particular order, are many of those, ah, I was going to say goals, but that sounds awfully ambitious. Let’s call them pursuits:

• Find a belted kingfisher nest. These birds, which can be found along many stretches of the Fox River and its tributaries, take a unique approach to raising their young. They excavate earthen burrows! All About Birds, the website curated by Cornell’s Lab of Ornithology, lists riverbanks but also ditches, road cuts, landfills and sand and gravel pits as potential locations. I can think of several places like these to check out when spring comes.

• Raise stag beetles from egg to adult. Every summer for the last five years, I’ve headed out in late June or early July to places where stag beetles hang out – namely the playgrounds near and around my neighborhood – to watch the mating rituals of Lucanus capreolus (sometimes also referred to as pinching bugs). The wood chips underneath the swings, slides and other equipment provide the perfect breeding grounds for these helpful Coleopterans, whose larvae digest rotting wood, recycling it into valuable soil nutrients. Because larvae take two or more years to develop, I figure this is a hobby that will keep me busy for some time to come.

• See a river otter in St. Charles or close by. We’ve reported on the progress of these aquatic mammals from time to time, and have received reports of sightings in Ferson Creek as well as the Fox River near Tekakwitha Woods Forest Preserve – and even downtown St. Charles! But like the kid who comes late to the party, I’ve so far missed out on all the fun. But with a little more time to devote to the endeavor, I feel confident that Lontra canadensis and I will cross paths one day soon.

• Listen for, and hopefully find, Illinois chorus frogs. Those of you who monitor frogs in northeastern Illinois might be thinking that ol’ Miss Pam’s gone a bit wacky, given that Pseudacris illinoensis is known in only a few counties in west-central and southern Illinois. However, one of those counties, Menard, is where my mom is from, and where the family farm still operates. In laying a map of the frog’s last known range over a map of the farm parcels, I found that there’s some overlap! Are the frogs still there? That remains to be seen. But there’s no harm in looking – er, listening. Illinois chorus frogs spend most of their time underground, so the best chance of finding them lies in listening for the calls of the males during spring breeding. Wish me luck!

• Volunteer for nature. This was the phrase that got me hooked on this field to begin with, the words appearing in a little display ad within The Tree Line, the newsletter of the Forest Preserve District of Kane County. Twenty-five years later, I’ll be able to get back to what drew me in at the start, giving of my time and energy at workdays in our local parks and preserves. It also will involve something about planting natives at home – in a way that doesn’t scare the neighbors – and promoting workdays.

I should add that I had one other aspiration that I was able to complete in July of this year, and that was to buy a cabin Up North. Some of you figured this out earlier this year, when I wrote of spending time in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, finding ghost pipes and a September mourning cloak butterfly.

Not only is the UP a second home to me, but it’s also a place I feel confident will be able to help me fulfill another aspiration: Get snowed in.

Since moving to St. Charles in 1993, I’ve used my cross-country skis exactly twice. In fact, about 10 years ago I noticed the glue that held the soles to my ski boots had dried up, and the rubber soles had cracked. I bought new boots, but they, like the skis, have gone unused. They’re now with a pile of other items – including some new snowshoes – that are ready and waiting to be moved to Casa Otto North.

Good Natured’s weekly run may be coming to an end, but thanks to the efforts of our St. Charles Park District marketing department, the columns will live on, available online at www.stcnature.org/good-natured. Nature’s cycles have a way of repeating, with some variation, year after year. I hope you’ll visit the site as a means of staying in tune with the wonderful natural world that surrounds us.

• Pam Otto wants you all to know this isn’t goodbye, it’s just: “See ya later!”