Trail Marker Winter #1
The start of your journey will take you through restored tallgrass prairies, which once covered millions of acres in northern Illinois. While the grasses and flowers appear dead, their deep roots live underground and will resume growth in spring. The dried grasses lie like a thick blanket over the land, providing shelter to many insects and other creatures. A snowfall adds insulation to this sheltering blanket. Hidden from our eyes, an intricate network of grass-lined highways provide safe passage for meadow voles. These are small mouse-like rodents that remain active during winter, eating the seeds and shoots of plants. Occasionally, one can see their tiny tracks charting a course on top of the snow before they quickly disppear into the hidden world below.Click on the images below to learn more about meadow voles.
Trail Marker Winter #2
The prairie landscape was dotted with oak-hickory woodlands and savannas prior to settlement in the 1800s. These woodlands helped to block the harsh winter winds for both man and beast. Deer, elk and other animals sought shelter in the woodlands during winter storms. Native Americans and the first European settlers built their homes and villages in the groves as well. Although this woodland is quite small, it provides enough shelter to attract wildlife. Look for the tracks of deer and other animals along the trail here. If you look carefully, you may also find the droppings of deer or rabbits - called scat. Small clusters of rounded pellets are characteristic of these herbivores.Click on the images of deer and rabbit tracks and scat to learn more.
Trail Marker Winter #3
Conifers, or cone-bearing trees – pines, spruces, firs, and cedars – were not common in northern Illinois. Over the past 150 years, people have planted many conifers, also called evergreens since they retain their green needles throughout the year. The dense branches of the Norway spruces visible here provide sheltered perches for many birds. These trees were planted in the 1940s, when few trees of any kind grew in Schaumburg’s rural landscape. Conifers have needles rather than leaves that are covered with a thick, waxy coat that are resistant to drying. The sap of these trees is also thick and sticky and resists freezing during winter. These characteristics allow them to retain their green needles during winter's cold.Click on the picftures below to learn about the differences between spruce, pine and cedar trees.
Trail Marker Winter #4
The shallow pond at Spring Valley is home to many aquatic plants and animals. Fish, frogs, turtles, muskrat, mink, and beaver all live in and around the pond. During winter, life slows to a crawl in the icy waters with many creatures going into a winter sleep within the pond’s muddy bottom. Beavers remain active, though, surviving on twigs and shoots gathered during autumn. You may have already spotted trees that were gnawed down by the beavers on your walk. Their impressive lodge is visible across the pond. This mound-like structure, built with cut branches and mud, provides a sheltered den above the water's surface where the beavers can rest and feed. The roots of aquatic plants and green twigs cut from felled trees are stockpiled along the pond bottom near the lodge.
Trail Marker Winter #5
When trees drop their leaves in autumn, the resulting leaf litter covers the ground like a blanket. Just as in the prairie, this insulating blanket shelters all sorts of insects and small mammals from winter’s cold and snow. If you poke around in the leaf litter, you will find that underneath this autumn’s leaves are older, partially decomposed leaves. Nature recycles all of this to return nutrients to the soil. The invisible threads of fungi form a network in the soil and help with the breakdown of leaves. During winter, this 'soil factory' is largely shut down waiting for the warmth of spring to start up again.
Trail Marker Winter #6
Look carefully at the low shrubs and small trees in the forest here. See if you can find signs of browsing, where rabbits or deer have bitten off the ends of twigs. During winter, when green leaves and shoots are mostly absent or covered in snow, herbivores must resort to eating the buds and inner bark of woody plants. This may not seem like much to eat, but it is sufficient to get these animals through the winter. Winter is a challenging 'lean time' for most wildlife, when only the strongest and healthiest are able to survive.Click on the pictures below to help you distinguish between deer and rabbit browse.
Trail Marker Winter #7
Why do some trees lose their leaves and some, like evergreens, don’t? Shedding leaves during the fall and winter months is a protection from drought. During winter, water is not available for use by plants since it is usually frozen. The needles of evergreen trees are protected from drying by a thick waxy skin. Look closely at the ends of twigs that have lost their leaves, and you will see the buds. Wrapped in hard protective scales, buds contain the makings of next year’s leaves. Each type of tree or shrub has distinctive buds that help to identify them in winter. As mentioned earlier, the buds also contain nutrients that are important sources of food for wildlife during winter. Once a tree has grown taller than a deer, most of its buds are protected from browsing.
Trail Marker Winter #8
The short trail to your left leads to a deck overlooking a cattail marsh. Expansive wetlands, rich in cattails and other marsh plants, lined the banks of many Illinois prairie rivers and ponds prior to settlement of the state. Cattails always grow in soils saturated with water, sometimes growing within shallow water, as they do here. They are a favorite food of muskrats, a rodent that builds mounded homes in cattail marshes. See if you can find a muskrat home in this marsh. Click on the image below to learn more about muskrats.This stop concludes your exploration of Illinois habitats. Follow the return trail to the Nature Center from here.
