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| Prothonotary Warbler |
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| OMG, it's so CUUUUTE!!!!! |
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| American Winter Ant. Interestingly, this ant prefers freezing-cool temperatures, so I caught it and the end of its foraging activity for the season. This ant species likely had high activity this year, as it stayed mostly in the 50's Fahrenheit well into May. |
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| Maple Bladdergall Mite. |
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| Various species of Insect, mite, and fungal parasites trick their plant hosts into sending nutrients to them, resulting in odd growths. |
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| While normally not very harmful, this (or possibly these) sapling/s may die or be severely injured do to the abundance of the galls |
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| That's a lot of weird red nodules! |
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| Painted Turtles |
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| Canada Goose (blurry), Spiny Softshell (giant, melted plastic bag-like turtle), and unidentified, very yellow turtle. |
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| Canada Goose |
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| Young Eastern Gray Squirrel with a very orangey tail and orangey wristband-like patches |
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| Sneak attack!!! |
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| Sucking the... something out of exposed heartwood. My family and I see this behavior occasionally, but often it's squirrels sucking stuff out of cracks in the roads in large, heavily wooded parks |
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| Ohio Buckeye (Horse Chestnut) sapling. Despite only being 4-5 feet tall, it's flowering. This phenomenon is fairly rare. Supposedly, they only start flowering when they reach 8-10 years of age. Due to the not-so-ideal soil of Chicago but fairly healthy prairie, recent controlled burn, and 8-year history of native plant growth in the park, it's hard to say how much the tree would grow based on soil health. There are also many other things that could effect the plant's growth, and many things that could have caused the early flowering. Either way, it is quite interesting |
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