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I was out early on New Year’s Day, in a patch of woods along
the Salt Fork River in Vermilion County, and within an hour of sunrise I’d
already seen my first bird of prey for the year, a bald eagle. That got me
thinking about the many wildlife firsts I experienced last year.
You may remember that my wife Karen and I found a pair of whooping cranes at the Middle Fork Forest Preserve in early November, a first for both of us. It was also in November
that we had our first experience of chasing a red fox from the back yard. Normally I’d sneak out to photograph such a
visitor, not scare it away--but this one was trying to carry off one of our
hens. (She lost some feathers in the attack, but nothing worse.)
The hens themselves, which we got as chicks in April, are
firsts for us, made possible by the work of Karen and others, who convinced the
Champaign City Council to revise the ordinance prohibiting hens.
In June our family camped for a week at Rocky Mountain
National Park in Colorado. It was our second time for that, but there were a
couple of general firsts involved. We all saw a badger for the first time ever.
It scuttled across the road in front of us and up a nearby slope as we drove at
dusk one evening. We also had a first in our campsite one afternoon; a young
bull moose walked through, right next to the tent where my wife and daughter
were resting.
[Photos by author: moose in the Rockies; leafcutter ant; yellow eyelash viper; pale-billed woodpecker.]
On one of our hikes in the Rockies I added a couple of birds
to my life list: a rock wren that was singing from a dead pine up near the tree
line, and a MacGillivray’s warbler that sang from a thicket along a stream in a
valley.
In March I travelled to Costa Rica with a U of I field
course led by a colleague in the School of Earth, Society, and Environment. As co-leader of the trip, it was my job to
help ensure that students gained everything they could from the experience. How
better to do that than by paying attention to the wildlife that surrounded us
and helping others to see it?
Because most of us had never been to Central America before,
my complete list of firsts from Costa Rica is probably longer than you would
care to hear. But the condensed version begins on the forest floor with
leafcutter ants. I’ve always found them fascinating in zoos and on screen, but
enjoyed even more seeing their single-file parade across our path.
In the trees we saw monkeys—mantled howler monkeys, whose
otherworldly calls could be heard miles away through the forest, and
white-faced capuchins, which hung around looking for handouts and would steal
food given half a chance. There were
new-to-me reptiles in the trees, too—green iguanas as still as statues, and eyelash
vipers so vivid a yellow they looked like ornaments rather than part of the
natural scene.
Of the 900-plus bird species that occur in Costa Rica, I’ll
say only that we saw enough for one trip, but too few for a lifetime. Fortunately,
it’s my job to lead another class in Costa Rica this March, so I’m confident
2015 will include some interesting firsts of its own.
