Mary Rasmussen lives in Chicago, but has photographed plenty of wildlife. Her photos are below, with her captions and IDs indented. You can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
My Backyard on the Chicago River
My little yard in a lively neighborhood of Chicago backs up to a branch of the Chicago River. This is not the coveted motor-navigable part of the river. This part of the river is channelized, often clogged with debris, and across the river are canyons of apartment buildings. As a kid we rode our bikes to the river but were warned to stay out of it. It was considered pretty much an open sewer. That is changing.
From GROK: “Fish species that vanished from the river—like largemouth bass, bluegill, and even otters—have returned, with biodiversity surveys noting over 70 species now present, up from just a handful decades ago. The river’s still not pristine (urban runoff and legacy pollutants like PCBs linger), but it’s clean enough that people kayak, fish, and even swim in it—things unthinkable a generation ago.
So, yeah, it’s gotten a lot cleaner—less a sewer, more a living river. Still a work in progress, though.”
It is a hopeful sign of spring when the shopping carts are thawing from the ice.
Coyotes (Canis latrans) are pretty common here and they can make some real racket howling. This fellow is checking for spilled birdseed.
When there are no birds at the feeders and the yard is quiet I check for hawks. Cooper’s hawks (Astur cooperii) are frequent visitors. Sometimes they perch on the backs of our lawn chairs.
Lots of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) too. I saw this young deer a little after dawn eating my violets. They can easily leap over the chain link fences and go from yard to yard:
Eastern cottontail rabbits (Sylvilagus floridanus) eat almost everything. It’s good they’re so cute.
There is a family of raccoons (Procyon lotor) that lives in a hollow branch of a Cottonwood tree along the river. The branch overhangs our yard and makes for lots of entertainment.
It was over 90 degrees on this day and there were at least 3 or 4 raccoons in that branch. It must have been stifling:
American Crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos) are often in the trees or on the power lines in the backyard. One day they were making such a fuss I went out to see what was happening. It was fledging season and I thought they could be upset about a neighbor’s cat moving through the yard:
The animal was moving so slowly through the grass that I went inside, grabbed my camera, and realized that it was not a cat. It went under the fence, turned around and stared at me. Not afraid. I checked the photo and realized it’s an American mink! (Neogale vison) They are making a comeback along the river. I’ve seen them twice in my yard since then:
This female wood duck (Aix sponsa)came last year to check for spilled seed under the feeders. I hope to see her and her mate this year:
Per Grok: “Urban wildlife diversity often surpasses that of farmland because cities, despite their challenges, are heterogeneous landscapes. They offer a mosaic of habitats—gardens, vacant lots, forest fragments, and even business parks—that can support a range of species, from songbirds to small mammals like foxes. Research from the last decade shows that urban areas can have higher or comparable mammal diversity to wild spaces, especially when green spaces are preserved.”
For fun I also asked Grok (X’s A.I. app) to create an image of my spirit animal. Grok checks the internet and creates an animal based on what it finds or information that I give it about myself. This is what it gave me. I’m not sure about the hat, but an owl is better than I expected. This was done with Grok 2. Grok 3 seems to generate less personal images:
I use a Nikon D500 camera with a NIKKOR 200-500mm lens.
