A Polish TV film crew toured the Wolf Road Prairie last week to to highlight the importance of the prairie ecosystems! Most of the video is in Polish, but the latter portion features an English-language tour of the Franzosenbusch Prairie House with STPS Director Rita McCabe.
Save The Prairie Society’s July Event – Don’t Squash That Bug
July 25th, 1:00pm
Free event @ the Historic Prairie House, 11225 Constitution Drive, Westchester
Speaker: Insect specialist James Rowan
We see insects in our gardens and when we take our walks in the neighborhood. Most of us enjoy seeing the fireflies, the pollinators, and the butterflies. Our July guest speaker hopes to broaden our appreciation of those insects that are unfamiliar to us, even though they play an important role in keeping our ecosystem healthy. The more we know about the natural world the more interesting it is.
Note: The historic Prairie House is air conditioned.
Gardens of the Desert: An Introduction to Illinois Prairies
June 27th, 1:00pm
@ the Historic Prairie House, 11225 Constitution Drive, Westchester
Speaker: Jack Shouba, who worked tirelessly to Save Wolf Road Prairie before the State of Illinois’ IDNR and Cook County Forest Preserves stepped to insure that it would remain prairie.
Slide Presentation: Called “the most beautiful country imaginable” by French explorer Pierre Liette, and “gardens of the desert” by poet William Cullen Bryant, the Illinois prairie is all but gone and the word prairie has lost its meaning. We are still “the prairie state,” but today it is Silicon Prairie, not Silphium prairie. In this program we explore the question of just what is an Illinois prairie and we look at how the relationships of people to the prairie changed over time. We look at prairie plants and their adaptations, prairie animals, and the role of fire. We search for places that still contain scraps of prairie, and consider why we must save these precious remnants. The program includes “Prairie Reverie,” a humorous look at the (mis)use and misspelling of the word prairie.
May Flower Walk
May 13th, 10:00am
@ the Historic Prairie House, 11225 Constitution Drive, Westchester
Celebrate The Merry Month of May
Spring flowers are now blooming at Wolf Road Prairie. Save The Prairie Society would like to share the colorful spring beauty of our native flowers with you.
We will be hosting a Wolf Road Prairie walk both in the Savanna and the Prairie on May 13 @10 am.
Participants can park in one of the three parking bays on the north side of 31st Street just west of Wolf Road.
A great opportunity for all ages to learn the land we live on and connect with the other organisms that call it home and depend on it.
Village Free Press: Westchester Stakeholders Mobilizing To Block Townhome Development Near Prairie Nature Preserve
A group of Westchester residents and stakeholders are pushing back against a developer’s plan to build a luxury townhome community on 15 acres of land adjacent to the roughly 80-acre Wolf Road Prairie Nature Preserve and the 43-acre Hickory Lane buffer lands — an area known worldwide for its biodiversity and soil composition.
Wyatt Widmer, a board director of the Save the Prairie Society — a nonprofit chartered in 1975 that’s dedicated to protecting the rare black soil prairie in Westchester — said he’s been conducting research on the proposed development’s potential environmental effects.
Earth Day Gardening
April 22nd, 1:00pm to 3:00pm
@ the Historic Prairie House, 11225 Constitution Drive, Westchester
Celebrate Earth Day with us!
Our prairie garden needs tending and the more hands the better. We will be sprucing up the garden on April 22 from 1 pm to 3 pm. Whether you stay an hour or
all 3 hours, your help will be appreciated. Bring gloves if you have them, if not we have extras.
Refreshments will be available.
The Sky Dance of the Male Woodcock
April 1st, 2nd & 3rd, starting 7:00pm
@ the Historic Prairie House, 11225 Constitution Drive, Westchester
Join us on the deck of the Prairie House as we listen for the persistent peenting of the male Woodcock and then watch as he ascends high in the sky, then dramatically returns performing a daring fast downward zig zag spiral and at the last moment, pulls back and lands on the spot where he started. This daring flight is performed in hopes of impressing a potential mate. Wolf Road Prairie is one of the few places in Cook County where this twilight courtship can be seen.
Zoom Safari
Sunday, March 28, 1:00 PM
@Zoom
World Traveler and wildlife photographer, Rick Schoenfield, will guide you into the wilds of Africa and South America. He will be sharing both his adventures and his professional photographs.
Highlighting: Jaguars, Great River Otters, Lions, Cheetahs and Gorillas.
To sign up for this free event, confirm that you plan to attend by sending an email to: wrp.stps@gmail.com with Zoom Safari as your subject.
Your email address is all that is needed to register. You will receive your Zoom Safari log-in information by way of email the day before the event. On the 28th, as 1:00 PM approaches, sign in as instructed and you will enter a virtual waiting room.
Please fill free to forward this information to anyone you think may be interested in attending.
Winter at the Prairie
These photos help us to imagine what it must have been like for early pioneers coping with a major snowstorm, especially for those who lived quite a distance from their nearest neighbors.
Survival required self-reliance, endurance and knowhow.
Photos by Lawrence Godson, President of Save The Prairie Society.
How do our winter birds survive?
North Winds, Freezing Temps
No hats, gloves, nor heated homes.
How do our winter birds survive?
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- In the fall, winter birds add on a layer of fat by increasing their normal intake of food. Some of them also grow more feathers.
- Because birds have a higher metabolism than we do, they also have a higher body temperature. The average is around 105 degrees.
- Their feathers equip them with a very effective form of insulation, and fluffing out their feathers enhances the feathers ability to insulate.
- Birds have an oil gland just above their tail, they use this oil to waterproof their feathers, while adding more insulation.
- Specialized scales cover their legs and feet, minimizing heat loss.
- Their ability to constrict blood flow to their extremities, enables them to control the temperature in their legs and feet, without effecting the temperature of the rest of their body.
- To protect their legs, they will stand on one leg or cover both by crouching down.
- If it is a sunny day, birds take advantage of it by exposing the largest part of their bodies, their backs, to the sun. Then they raise their feathers just enough to expose both skin and feathers, thus allowing them to absorb the sun’s warmth.
- During the night, small birds will sometimes share body heat by crowding together.
So don’t be surprised after an especially cold night, to hear bird chatter in the morning.
Reference: Chicago Audubon Society
With all these survival strategies, birds can still use a helping hand. Feed them and provide water, if you can.