Good Natured | Hickory Knolls Discovery Center

Overwintering Butterflies

Butterflies are easy. It’s a statement that naturalists make from time to time, and it refers to the fact that we don’t have to work very hard at all to get people interested in butterflies. Snakes and spiders, on the other hand, are tough, and slime molds are darn near impossible. But butterflies are easy. […]

Grackles

Grackles. They’re a bird you know, even if you don’t know birds. Remember back when you learned about robins and cardinals and blue jays? Grackles were the birds that we all called blackbirds. […]

Departure of the Dark Eyed Juncos

Well, it’s here. Can you feel it? Spring snuck in at 4:37 a.m. on Saturday, March 20, and with it came a host of spring arrivals. The crocuses that battled gamely against last week’s snow now once again are showing their colorful blooms. Daffodils are blossoming, tulips are forming buds and, glory be, the other day I heard a robin sing! […]

Song Sparrows

“Sweet, sweet, sweet…blah blah blah yada yada.” “Sweet, sweet, sweet…blah blah blah yada yada.” “Sweet, sweet, sweet…blah blah blah yada yada.” Sound familiar? No, it’s not the talk of some crazed sugar fiend craving yet another dessert (though I think I did babble something similar around Month 10 of The Quarantine. […]

Maple Tapping

So here we are in March of 2021, marking the one-year anniversary since COVID-19 changed our lives. Over the past 12 months I’d wager many of us dusted off skills we might have forgotten we had. How many times did you try making lemonade out of lemons, or […]

Biofluorescence – Does It Glow?

I would imagine that our recent spate of 40-something degree weather has most of us aglow with the prospect of warmer temperatures and, dare I say it, spring! But you know what else is glowing these days? I’ll give you a hint: It’s nothing new. But as scientific discoveries go, it’s fairly recent. […]

Redhead Ducks

Last week we took a look at the American robin, a bird regarded as a sign of spring but-confoundingly-has been popping up all over northern Illinois all winter long. This week though we’re focusing on a species that maybe, just maybe, provides a little truer […]

Robins — In Winter?!

Okay folks, show of hands. How many of you were raised to believe that robins are the first signs of spring? I know I was. I don’t remember the exact words, or who said them, but I do distinctly recall my five-year-old self looking for robin sas winter’s cold would begin to ebb. I also distinctly remember […]

Red Foxes & Screech Owls – Part 2

So last week we ventured into unfamiliar territory, melding nature references with quotes from William Shakespeare-primarily from his play As You Like It, and the monologue that begins with “All the world’s a stage, […]

Red Foxes & Screech Owls – Part 1

I’ll be the first to admit, I’m not a Shakespeare scholar. In fact, in high school I had but one brush with the Bard (a miserable group project rewriting Romeo and Juliet in urban slang) and I managed to dodge him completely in college. […]

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