Gulls flock at the bluffs of Fults Hill Prairie Nature Preserve. Tom Rollins, Thomas Rollins Photography.

Cape Monroe (County), on the southwest coast of Illinois, is a renowned haven for wildlife. The reasons are simple: location and habitats. A bird’s-eye-view of the landscape helps to explain our county’s attraction for wildlife.

The Mississippi River flyway, and associated riparian wildlife corridor, is the longest migration route in the Western Hemisphere, running from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian Arctic. Twice each year, 3½ billion birds, representing almost 300 species, use the flyway to move between breeding and wintering grounds.

Monroe County’s cape-like jut to the west, and the river’s long, circuitous route around the cape, bring scores of migratory birds over our wide, often wet, floodplain and wider-still forested bluffs and uplands. And when they get here, they like what they see: superb habitats, offering a wide array of in-route stopover sustenance or a welcome doormat to stay and start a family. But a bird-brained viewpoint doesn’t tell the whole story.

Our bluff lands and bottomlands are inextricably linked, both

A Great-blue Heron at Cape Monroe wetlands. Tom Rollins, Thomas Rollins Photography.

physically and ecologically. The imposing, unglaciated uplands have held their ground over geologic time in defining the limits of the floodplain. We call the bottoms a floodplain because it is a plain that floods; and try as the Corps of Engineers and Levee Districts may, as soon as it rains some, the bottoms have wetlands all over again, as spring-fed creeks, emanating from the bluffs, historically continue to send water to the bottoms, even as old man river tries to ship water to the bluffs.

The bluffline’s north-south orientation is also an important factor in linking bluffs and bottoms. Prevailing westerly winds, streaming unobstructed over the floodplain, are orographically forced to rise over the bluffs creating updrafts and cascading vortices of wind deep into the uplands. In fact, the bluffs rich mantel of loess soil deposits came from wind driven, pulverized rock dust from the bottoms during Illinois’ last glacial epoch.

Ring-billed Gull. Tom Rollins, Thomas Rollins Photography.

Where bluff meets bottom, literally along Bluff Road, there is an important intersection of differing habitats called an ecotone, which ecologically links wetlands, cliff face, and forest.  Wildlife, particularly amphibians and reptiles, breeds in summer in the wetlands and retreat to dens and hibernacula in the bluffs in winter. Similarly, many birds and other wildlife feed at wetlands by day, and take shelter in the bluffs at night. An ecotone offers critters the advantage of distinctively different habitats in close proximity.

Conner Lake, along Bluff Road near the county line and Rocher, Kidd Lake Marsh, along Bluff Road just south of Fults, and Pinkel’s Woods, a couple miles south of Valmeyer on Bluff Road, all are excellent examples of ecotones and the interface of wetland and upland habitats.

Taken together, our county’s expansive and diverse habitats support an amazing panoply of wildlife, one of the richest listings of resident and migratory species in the state. Our corridor sustains 1,000 plant species, of which five hill prairie species are found nowhere else in Illinois. Three hundred species of birds can be found in the corridor.

Sixty-three species of reptiles and amphibians live here, including four species occurring only in our county and no other place in the state.  And 45 species of mammals call the corridor home, including a flourishing population of bobcats.

And, though unknown by most local folks, our bluffland-bottomland corridor enjoys a regional, bi-state reputation for being a rare bird hotspot, with many unusual, vagrant species dropping in for a visit. In the last few years our corridor has hosted black-bellied whistling ducks, a mottled duck, wood storks, a brown pelican, tricolored herons, a swallow-tailed kite, a Swainson’s hawk, whooping cranes, a burrowing owl, and, most recently, a snowy owl, which is hanging around the eastern fringes of the corridor, near Red Bud.

Immature Bald Eagles. Tom Rollins, Thomas Rollins Photography.

Even this drab, dead-winter February is festooned with active and interesting wildlife in the corridor. Bald eagles are congregating again this winter, with the largest convocation, near Harrisonville, numbering 150 birds or so. The eagles aren’t long-distance migrants, however, as they all grew up within 20 or so miles of here, just up or down the river.

In winter, the eagles gather to re-establish social hierarchies, and the five and six year olds select life-long mates. The Harrisonville conclave, smack dab in the middle of the floodplain, is a perfect location. Nearby wetlands and the river provide ample food, but proximity to the bluffs is the key factor.

Eagles court by performing dramatic aerial acrobatics, including steep headfirst dives, with courting pairs locking talons in their descent and sky-tumbling together one over the other. Not surprising, the eagles conduct their courtship flights over the bluffline, taking full advantage of the persistent updrafts and eddies.

Ring-billed, herring and Bonaparte’s gulls have again moved into our area for winter, drifting south along the flyway when frigid temperatures overtook their colonial breeding and hunting grounds around the Great Lakes. Foregoing their typical fish diets, the gulls are perfectly willing to sample mollusks and grubs from prepared farm fields, leaving behind only gull poop in payment for their meals and visit.

This month’s ring-billed gull concentration at Kidd Lake has been historic. With the warm winter and open water, nearly 1,000 gulls have been observed, riding the updrafts before the cliff face and squawking their pleasure like a day at the beach.

If you are a wildlife lover, everyday offers a discovery on the southwest coast of Illinois in Monroe County — where our mountains meet our sea.

Clifftop, a local nonprofit organization, is focused on preserving and protecting area bluff lands.

A version of this article appeared in the February 17 2012 edition of the Monroe County Independent.

© 2012 all content rights reserved, Clifftop NFP.

Tom Rollins, Thomas Rollins Photography

“A wonderful bird is the pelican,

His bill will hold more than his belican.

He can take in his beak

Food enough for a week.

But I’m damned if I see how the helican.”

Dixon Lanier Merritt

A postcard sent by a Florida-vacationing reader inspired Merritt, then an editor at Nashville’s daily paper The Tennessean, to pen his limerick in 1910.  Merritt, who became a founding member of the Tennessee Ornithological Society, could only express his comic bemusement due to a picture and not through actual observation of pelicans that, at the turn of the 20^th century, were barely surviving.

Merritt might more accurately have wondered how “the helican” pelicans would continue to exist, for both brown and white pelican populations had been nearly eliminated.  At a breeding colony in North Dakota the numbers of breeding pairs plummeted from 500 pairs to 50 just between 1905 and 1908.  The very first National Wildlife Refuge, Pelican Island, Florida, was set aside as a breeding area for birds in 1903; the near loss of pelican colonies in the inland areas moved President Theodore Roosevelt to create a national wildlife refuge at Chase Lake, North Dakota in 1908.

Tom Rollins, Thomas Rollins Photography

White pelican numbers have rebounded to about 180,000 in North America.  And, a trip to our American Bottoms in Monroe County is becoming increasingly like a visit to the beach, with larger numbers of shorebird visitors and, most of all, dramatic   numbers of American White Pelicans (Pelcanus erythrorhynchos) over the last five years. Large rafts of pelicans often can be found during fall and spring, and, during the rest of the year in small flocks or single individuals, at Moredock, Kidd and Conner Lakes.

There are eight species of pelicans in the world. All are very social, gathering in large flocks; all are colonial breeders, establishing large communal rookeries. Most pelicans are long-lived, many with life spans of 15-20 years. White and Brown Pelicans are native to North America, but you will have to visit our coastlines to see brown pelicans, which rarely venture inland.

The American White Pelican is a very large bird and easily recognized. Typical adults are 5 feet long, with a 9-foot wingspan and weigh about 20 pounds. Their bills and the attached large pouch are the easy giveaway for identification. The long, normally yellowish bill turns a deep orange-pink and sports a fibrous two-inch long knob about two-thirds down the bill during breeding season.  The gular pouch, essentially a self-contained grocery bag, is used for catching and straining food.  Adult white pelicans have pronounced black feathering along both the upper and lower trailing edge of their wings.

Tom Rollins, Thomas Rollins Photography

White pelicans are among the most graceful soaring birds of our skies.  During migratory flights, they will travel in extended “V” formations but at other times often ride within thermals, rising higher and higher in upward spirals of nearly effortless motion.  During such circular ascents, the entire flock often appears then disappears only to again become visible as sunlight reflects and refracts in a twinkling manner on their shining whiteness.  Each individual bird conforms to the turning and wheeling of the entire flock with a natural precision that choreographers of human dancers can only envy.

But watching a pelican land in the water evokes no images of grace or, even, apparent planning, for then the pelican seems to be clumsily courting a crash landing.

Writer Jack Turner explained in a 1996 essay, “But every time they land on the river, it looks like a disaster.  They drop the backs of their huge wings, throw out their feet like wheels, and land with a controlled crash – like a 747.  Every time, they almost nose over; every time, they just make it.  Then, to regain their composure, they tuck their bills into their chests with that snotty, satisfied-English-butler look and casually paddle off…..”

Tom Rollins, Thomas Rollins Photography

Once in the water, white pelicans feed in groups and simply swim along scooping up foodstuffs in their large bills. The groups often will work together, beating the water with their wings to drive and corral small fish toward other group members. Pelican diet consists of rough fish, crayfish and salamanders.  While brown pelicans engage in spectacular aerial dives to catch fish deep in water, white pelicans sieve and scoop, using their flexible mouth pouches as dip nets in shallow waters of only three to five foot depths.

White pelicans normally winter along our coastlines, and migrate inland for breeding. They breed only after they are 4-5 years old, but non-breeding sub-adults accompany the flocks in their northern migration and will often lounge and hang around in smaller flocks often hundreds of miles from historical breeding locations. Twenty-seven colonial breeding sites in 11 north central great plains states and four Canadian provinces have traditionally constituted all the rookeries in North America.

Tom Rollins, Thomas Rollins Photography

White pelicans mate only once a year and remain paired for that breeding season. Adults usually arrive at colonial rookeries in April. Male courtship displays include strutting, bowing, and pointing their bills straight up in the air. Once bonded, both male and female construct a nest on the ground using sticks, grasses and reeds for construction materials. Each nest is about a foot high and 2-3 feet wide.

Normally two, chalky-white eggs, 3½” by 2½”, are laid. Both parents incubate the eggs for approximately 30 days, taking turns to leave the site for foraging for food. Chicks are born naked and flesh colored. At 10 days old chicks are covered with thick white down. The parents take turns visiting nearby marshes, rivers, and lakes, but at some rookeries often travel as far as 100 miles distant, to find and swallow food.  The gular pouch is not used to hold and transport food back to the nest.  Parent birds partially digest food and then later regurgitate in order to feed their chicks.

At about 3 weeks old, chicks from numerous parents are gathered into protective groups called crèches or pods. The young pelicans begin to fly in 7-10 weeks, and shortly thereafter abandon their breeding colony. About three-quarters of the chicks survive to adulthood.

Nearly half of the entire white pelican population in North America breed at four colonies: Marsh Lake in Minnesota, Medicine Lake National Wildlife Refuge in Montana, Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge in South Dakota, and Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge in North Dakota. The Chase Lake breeding colony is the largest with 35,000 breeding birds recorded there in the early 2000s.

Since white pelicans are colonial-nesting birds and their rookeries are concentrated in a few small areas, they are extremely vulnerable to disturbances, such as disease, predation, or weather events, which can dramatically influence reproductive productivity. Between 2002-2005, several large-scale disturbances at the breeding colonies appear to have shifted white pelican summering — and breeding — territories eastward to the Mississippi River and have resulted in the increased numbers of pelicans in Monroe County.

In 2002 and 2003, West Nile virus infected pelican chicks at the colonies, causing mortality in about half the youngsters. In May 2004, for uncertain reasons, nearly 30,000 white pelicans dispersed from Chase Lake, abandoning their chicks, and have never returned to the refuge in as great numbers. In 2005, a late-May cold outbreak, with frigid strong winds, killed 8,000 chicks at Chase Lake. Pelican populations at the refuge have declined to 14,000 in 2009.

This summer, for the first time in Illinois, white pelicans successfully bred on an island of the Mississippi River in Carroll County in the extreme northwest corner of the state. Given the apparent eastward shift in white pelican summer and breeding ranges, we can hope that in time they may be breeding in Monroe County.

That promise is now more possible because of the tremendous wetland restoration efforts that have been ongoing at Kidd and Conner Lakes in Monroe County. A handful of resourceful duck hunting club operators have painstakingly restored perennially flooded and marginal farmlands to their former naturally wet conditions – the large, marshy shallow lake bed of ancient pre-settlement times.  Myriads of waterfowl and shorebirds now again visit on their twice-annual migrations.  The shallow waters of these recreated wetlands, teaming with emergent plants and invertebrates, form a rich food larder enabling survival and reproductive success for migratory birds. The feathered flurry on the bottoms bears witness to the riches of wildlife our area can help sustain and support.

Tom Rollins, Thomas Rollins Photography

Clifftop, a local nonprofit organization, is focused on preserving and protecting area bluff lands.

A version of this article appeared in the January 1st 2010 edition of the Monroe County Independent.

© 2010 all content rights reserved, Clifftop NFP.

Martin Kemper, Illinois Department of Natural Resources

Monroe County boasts the greatest contiguous swath of hill prairies in the Midwest.  The largest complex, at Fults Hill Prairie Nature Preserve, has been designated a National Natural Landmark by the U.S. Park Service.  One of only 600 such Landmarks in the U.S., Fults Hill Prairie’s recognition is testimony to its enduring value in the nation’s natural treasure chest.

Our hill prairie corridor, however, frames only the spine of our region’s distinctly unique natural heritage.  Monroe County also boasts a large karst area, with 50,000 acres of steep-slope forests, sinkholes, and caves that hold the greatest biodiversity in the state.  And, at the foot of our beautiful bluff’s cliff face lie several ancient wetlands, once-dependant upon watercourses from the uplands creeks.

Tom Rollins, Thomas Rollins Photography

Taken together, the hill prairies, karst and wetlands constitute Illinois’ Ozarks, a one-of-a-kind landscape and viewscape, right here in Monroe County.

Celebrate Illinois’ Ozarks at Festival of the Bluffs on Saturday May 16^th at Cedar Bluff Park in the Village of Fults from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The nature festival, co-hosted by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) and Clifftop, a local blufflands conservation organization of landholders, will focus on the natural history and stewardship of the area.

Cedar Bluff Park will host a variety of displays and presentations on improving land

Tom Rollins, Thomas Rollins Photography

and wildlife management practices.  There will be a wealth of information and presentations on identifying and controlling invasive plant species, growing native plants, pest management, and groundwater quality.  Close up introductions to the varieties of wildlife in our area include live demonstrations featuring native raptors, snakes, turtles and frogs.

IDNR professionals will lead interpretive hikes at Kidd Lake Marsh State Natural Area and at Fults Hill Prairie Nature Preserve throughout the day.  Hikers can save their energy for the hikes by riding a bus between the main festival grounds in Fults and the hiking areas.

Dennis FitzWilliam, Clifftop

A diverse variety of nature-oriented arts and crafts will be offered for sale at the park.  Many local artisans are participating and their selections include: wood carving, glassware, jewelry, photography, painting, ironwork, weaving and bone art.  Purchasers of native plants or bedding plants will be able to grow a bit of the festival at home.  Nature books and field guides, offered through the Illinois Natural History Survey, can help grow new awareness.

The many threads that create the human cultural tapestry of Southwestern Illinois can be explored throughout the day in performances by a number of area musicians.

Tom Rollins, Thomas Rollins Photography

Illness first led John MacEnulty to explore the spiritual dimensions of music, culminating in his discovery of the Native American Flute.  Mr. MacEnulty, formerly of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and former executive director of the Belleville Philharmonic, will share selections of his music for this instrument and for Native American hand drums.

The four young musicians who formed The String Connection in 2007 are dedicated both to enjoying music and to keeping alive our local area’s musical history.  While their selections of traditional folk songs and ballads bring an echo of early French settlers, the group’s fiddle music, waltzes and bluegrass offer a musical tour from past to present.

Tom Rollins, Thomas Rollins Photography

Nationally known dobro player Bob Breidenbach and Friends will offer their “untraditional” bluegrass music along with some western swing and country tunes.  And, rounding out the day, the Bandroom Brass will offer some easy listening.  The “Brass” players are members of the Bud Light Brigade, a Monroe County music group now celebrating 25 years of music making.

And, just so everybody doesn’t run out of energy for all the listening, seeing, hiking and doing, several local church and social service groups, and others are cooking and serving food and drinks from a menu nearly as vast as our hill prairies.

So, please, come stretch your legs – there will be plenty to see and do – to celebrate Illinois’ Stretch of the Ozarks, at Festival of the Bluffs.

Clifftop, a local nonprofit organization, is focused on preserving and protecting area bluff lands.

Versions of this article appeared in the May 1 2009 edition of the Monroe County Independent and in the May 6 2009 edition of the Suburban Journals Clarion Enterprise.

© 2009 all content rights reserved, Clifftop NFP.

Tom Rollins, Thomas Rollins Photography

Dimly seen through a dreamlike fog and mist, the six huge birds are unmistakably, absolutely, incontrovertibly  juvenile Whooping Cranes:  five-foot tall, white-splotched-with-brown, black-tipped-winged wonders and the rarest bird species in North America.

What are they doing in Monroe County?  That, is, besides wading and eating the occasional frog or bite of corn as they slowly coursed across the wetland.  The greater Mississippi River flyway hosts numerous species of birds, but while Whooping Cranes may have a deep, species-memory of wetland haunts along the river, they have not regularly been here for nearly two centuries.

Whooping Cranes, one of North America’s rarest, largest and most magnificent birds, are relicts from the past. They are absolutely intolerant of human ‘progress.’ They, as Peter Matthiessen, the renowned nature writer, noted, evoke our misgivings on retreating wilderness. Revered by Amerindians, crane calls were viewed as the voice of nature. Native Americans called them the “Echo Makers” and “Speakers for the Clans.”

The historical breeding range of Whooping Cranes extended from

Tom Rollins, Thomas Rollins Photography

Illinois northward and northwestward into Canada. Their wintering ranges were the highlands of Mexico and the U.S. Gulf and Atlantic seaboards. Whooping Cranes were, and are, uncompromisingly dependent on pristine wetland habitats.

Whooping Cranes were never very abundant; they are the rarest of the 15 worldwide species of cranes. Their pre-European settlement population in North America is estimated at only 15,000. By the 1860s their population dwindled to 1400, and in the 1940s plummeted to about a dozen birds.

Tom Rollins, Thomas Rollins Photography

John James Audubon observed a whooper near Massac County in 1819. They  occasionally were seen in Illinois until 1891. A lone accidental sighting, with photograph, was recorded in Pike County in 1958.

Today whoopers are slowly rebounding, with a wild population nearing 600 cranes. The largest population breeds in Wood Buffalo National Park in Canada and winters at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas.

Over the last two decades, the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership, a coalition of nine private and governmental agencies, has been trying to establish a second population of Whooping Cranes.  The overall program goal is to establish a self-sustaining Eastern U.S. flock with a minimum of 125 birds including 25 breeding pairs.  Hatching eggs, then raising Whooping Crane chicks to fledgling age is done in a carefully controlled manner by costumed and silent workers in order to minimize the risks that the birds will imprint on humans rather than their own kind.  Teaching the birds to migrate posed an even greater puzzle.

The inspired solution was to train the birds to follow an ultralight aircraft.  An initial experimental effort conducted with Canada Geese in 1994, and depicted in the popular Columbia Pictures film “Fly

Tom Rollins, Thomas Rollins Photography

Away Home,” led to further trials with Sandhill Cranes.  The first ultralight-led Whooping Crane assisted migration took place in autumn of 2001, with a flight path from National Wildlife Refuges in Necedah, WI to Chassahowitza, FL.  In the first five years of this program, 60 birds have been taught the flight path — four times the number of Whooping Cranes that existed in the 1940s.

With adult birds now proceeding on their own along the migration path, a second effort for migration teaching was devised in 2005, with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service the lead agency among the WCEP partners for this plan.  In this case, fledgling birds are released to follow along with the adults.  This Direct Autumn

Tom Rollins, Thomas Rollins Photography

Release program resulted in the successful migration of four juveniles each year in 2005 and 2006.  This year 10 juveniles were slated for the DAR program while 17 other juvenile birds participate in the ongoing ultralight-led migration program.

Crane disdain for human innovation proved itself again on November 6, 2007.

Six juvenile whoopers in the DAR program broke ranks with their adult-led flock and headed south for Illinois. After numerous several-day stopovers in upstate Illinois, the recalcitrant six-some landed in the American Bottoms of Monroe County Illinois.

On the bed of ancient Kidd Lake Marsh, APH Inc., a private conservation club, and Kidd Lake Marsh State Natural Area together provide superb habitat in a 650-acre wetlands restoration. The six whoopers luxuriated there from December 7th to the 11th. On the 11th, U. S. FWS personnel captured the birds and they began their long drive to the Florida wintering grounds.

Tom Rollins, Thomas Rollins Photography

In the spring the birds will accompany the adults of the flock and return to Wisconsin.  As they fly the birds call to each other, keeping the flock together and on course.  To hear those calls, conservationist Aldo Leopold said, is “to hear the trumpet in the orchestra of evolution.”  Once back on the breeding grounds, the young cranes also will learn the complex choreography of crane dancing as birds pair bond before mating.   And, perhaps, when they have matured and lead their own young on migration, they will remember and return to rich wetland habitats in Monroe County.

Perhaps some day we will hear the bugling calls of Whooping Cranes along restored wetlands in Illinois’ Mississippi River flyway.

CLIFFTOP, a local nonprofit organization of landholders, is focused on preserving and protecting area bluff lands.

Versions of this article appeared in the Winter 2007-2008 edition of Illinois Audubon Magazine, published by the Illinois Audubon Society, Springfield, IL  and in the Spring 2008 edition of Mews News, published by the World Bird Sanctuary, Valley Park, MO.

© 2007 all content rights reserved, Clifftop NFP.