Bird Bonanza in 1908

Among farms and in surrounding semi-wild lands, Frank Baker studied the mollusks. But, as chief curator of the Chicago Academy of Sciences, he sought to “take an ecological approach.” He tried something new as a scientist – recording not just the mollusks, but also their associated plants, insects, reptiles, amphibians, and birds.  His principal colleague seems to have been Frank Woodruff, who did the birds and took most of the habitat photos.

Woodruff had published “Birds of the Chicago Area” one year earlier. In it he had written:

“As our territory becomes more thickly populated each year, the struggle for existence among our wild birds to remain and breed in their old haunts is really pitiful.”

Baker's and Woodruff’s attempt at an "ecological approach" stands today as an unrivaled ecological snapshot of Northern Illinois woodlands and wetlands. Back then, sadly, it didn’t seem to have made much of an impact. It was too far ahead of its time. “Ecology” was a newly coined word for a discipline in its infancy. Explaining why he was wrestling with questions of holistic habitat, Baker expressed the belief that his paper “may be one of the first attempts to apply the ecological method” and cited Henry Chandler Cowles' 1901 book. Yet, Cowles book was limited to plants' relationships with each other and with soils and landforms. Baker reached higher.  

During his life Baker published nearly 400 books and papers, mostly with titles like “The Lymnaeidae of North and Middle America, recent and fossil.” Sadly, neither he (nor anyone else?) soon wrestled again with so ambitious an approach to ecosystem monitoring. But Baker’s team left us a treasure.

Baker’s paper summarized the biota at 35 “stations.” (The map recorded 36, but that last station, the west fork of the North Branch of the Chicago River just south of the village of Northbrook was dismissed with this macabre note: “It is used for sewage purposes, and is, therefore, a difficult stream to study.” (It may be worth noting that photos show scientist Baker wearing a white shirt and tie in the field.)

Baker's map shows Dundee Road with the Great Skokie Marsh on both sides.
Today, to the north, the marsh has been replaced by Chicago Botanic Garden. To the south is "Skokie Lagoons."

Station 2 on Baker’s map was in marsh, where Woodruff’s list of nesting birds is an eye-opener (see below).

To knowledgeable birders today, the above list is nearly beyond belief. Many of these species no longer nest in the Chicago region at all. Today four of them are on the Illinois Endangered list: Northern Harrier, American Bittern, Florida Gallinule, and King Rail.

Harriers once hunted for voles over every tallgrass marsh and prairie. Today they rarely
find enough habitat to nest anywhere in Illinois. Photo by Jerry Goldner. 

In 1907 (according to Woodruff) “a common summer resident” - the Gallinule today
is a rare treat for photographer Lisa Culp Musgrave, who found this one.

The precious and beautiful little Leconte’s Sparrow no longer nests any closer
to Chicago than northern Wisconsin. Photo by Jaculin Bowman

And did Woodruff really find all those nest sites? It seems so, as he points out that he did not find nest sites for two of the species. Perhaps in some cases he saw parents carrying food and acting agitated, strong indications that their nest with chicks is nearby.

Many species back then showed an abundance that seems mythic today. For example, reporting on the prairie chicken, Woodruff writes:

“In many places the farmers are in the habit of collecting their eggs by the pailful to use for culinary purposes. Such a drain as this, with the annual slaughter by sportsmen, and the restriction of their breeding grounds by cultivation, is gradually lessening their numbers except in the remote prairie districts.” 

Gathering eggs of wild birds by the pailful? Woodruff’s book lists American bittern, King Rail, Yellow Rail, and Florida Gallinule as “common summer residents.” Maybe Woodruff was very good at finding nests. Maybe “common” then was on a whole different scale from what that word means now.   

On September 5, 1908, Frank Woodruff snapped this photo of “Stations 3 to 5” -

Earlier that year, at this station, Woodruff had recorded red-headed woodpecker and nesting shrubland birds including yellow warbler, indigo bunting, and brown thrasher. Surprisingly, to me at least, he also found nesting wood thrush, a bird more typical of larger, deeper woodlands. Perhaps, when there were so many birds, they overflowed into more types of habitats than they do today.

In fact, in many of the areas Woodruff surveyed, the birds he recorded would not today be likely found nesting near each other. Is it possible that a quality habitat has more niches for (and diversity of) birds? Bird conservationists today recognize certain areas as especially important. Often we’re not sure just why one area is so much better. We just know that’s where the birds are.

Bless their hearts, Baker and Woodruff really tried to study habitats and give us both photographs and detailed drawings. For example, Station 7. The photo below shows a “large marshy pond” in an unprepossessing corner of a farm, with “forest” in the background.

The pond is thick with tall dense vegetation. The photo gives me a lot of information, but plant species detail is limited.

So Baker provides a remarkable sketch of the vegetation of Station 7 in six concentric “zones.” (See below.)

In the middle zone is cat-tail (Typha) and a few willows (Salix.) The next zone out is blue-flag iris mixed with arrowhead (Sagittaria). Then comes a ring of shrubs: hawthorn (Crataegus), crabapple (Pyrus), and viburnum. Last comes the forest, surrounding the pond, predominantly oaks (Quercus) joined by hickory (Carya), hop hornbeam (Ostrya), and aspen (Populus).

Baker identifies additional plant species, many insects, a crayfish, and thirteen species of mollusks (all snails?) in the various zones. Who today knows the snails? Are any of these species of conservation concern? Do they still crawl in our forest preserves?

Yet we have to admit the same problem Baker and Woodruff had. How do we best monitor, understand and manage all that complexity of nature? Though dedicated Somme sub-groups are paying special attention to rare plants, shrubs, trees, sedges, birds, dragonflies, and butterflies – no one does the snails. Illinois conservationists initially focused on plants. As we improved our understandings of bird and butterfly needs, conservation actions changed for the better.

Woodruff photographs some stations without recording the birds. None there? Too much to do? Perhaps Woodruff helped Baker a bit and then ran off to the big marsh to find more birds’ nests – or to the rich Station 28 (see: http://woodsandprairie.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-unexpected-discovery-of-somme-woods.html) – the only area where he claims to have identified the “summer resident birds.” A few people can’t give maximum focus to all biota at every site.

Not considered a woods bird today, Woodruff found the Yellow-breasted Chat summering
in the rich woodland at Station 28. This chat wouldn’t have been caught dead
at Station 32 (see below). Photo by Jerry Goldner.

Plant identification in Baker’s study is credited to Henry Chandler Cowles and Miss Carrie A Reynolds of Lakeview High School. Various others are thanked for help identifying beetles found with snails under dead bark, aquatic insects, and crayfishes. No one gets credit for reptiles and amphibians, sadly, and attention to them was minimal. No one did the spiders, or bees, or mammals. 

Surprisingly, for a mollusk study titled “Ecology of the Skokie Marsh Area,” only one station was in the actual marsh. Baker instead spent most of his time on woodland ponds and streams. By far the richest of these (at least so far as plants, birds, and mollusks were concerned) was Station 28 (see link above). An interesting comparison with the rich woodland photo there can be made with the sorry state of Station 32 (below).

Station 32 had few birds, few mollusks, and few herbaceous plants or shrubs. Baker points out the lack of vegetation in the pond itself, but equally striking is the higher ground, which seems to have little but dead leaves. What happened here? Perhaps it was exploited to death. Grazing by cows? Sheep? Pigs? Stumps show that the larger trees were cut. With more light, you’d think there’d be more vegetation. But all those hungry mouths kept it eaten down?

This post ends with Station 34, which, of all amazements, turned out to be right behind my house, in Somme Woods South.

At Station 34, Baker found six mollusk and three beetle species. Woodruff found nesting bobolinks and meadowlarks. Certainly today, such a little scrap of grassland would not be honored with them. In the scattered trees he found nesting field sparrows and brown thrashers. Station 34 today is a forest preserve – without a square foot of grassland. I remember a little patch still there, decades ago. Today you can easily identify the former grassland; it’s dense buckthorn – with no old oaks. No birds of conservation significance nest in this preserve. I haven’t checked for snails, but …

We have lost a lot of nature – and saved a lot – since the days of Baker and Woodruff. A great many dedicated conservationists do as much as we can – given the resources, people power, and political will. Decades ago, a globally significant professional and volunteer constituency rose up, chipped in, and inspired vastly increased resources for local conservation. (See, for example:  http://woodsandprairie.blogspot.com/2015/03/stewards-of-nature-early-years-of.html) 

Our predecessors inspire us still. If you're not yet involved, join in?

References

Baker, Frank Collins, “The Ecology of the Skokie Marsh Area, with Special Reference to the Mollusca.” Bulletin of the Illinois State Laboratory of Natural History, Urbana, Illinois, U.S.A. Vo. VIII. 1910

On line at: https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle /2142/55226/Bulletin8%284%29.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y

Cowles, H. C.  1901. The Plant Societies of Chicago and Vicinity. The Bulletin of the Geographic Society of Chicago, No. 2.

Woodruff, Frank. Birds of the Chicago Area. 1907.

On line at:Bird bonanza https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=75waAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA18

Bonus photo:

An American bittern in a tree is an uncomfortable bittern. They stand - three feet tall - in grassy marshes with their bills pointing straight up - invisible. American bitterns make one of the most spectacular mating calls of any bird. When we restore marshes big enough and good enough for American bitterns, we’ll have really done something. Photo by Jerry Goldner.