The Just-Say-No-to-Boredom Guide to the City and Beyond

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Hiking

by Karin Horgan Sullivan

Take the trail through Indian Boundary Prairies (near the junction of Route 57 and Interstate 294, Markham; 312-580-2100, www.nature.org/wherewework/northamerica/states/illinois/preserves/art1119.html), a rare example of virgin—not merely restored—Illinois prairie, and look for nearly 700 species of butterflies, birds, and wildflowers. Sean Shaffer, an education naturalist at the North Park Village Nature Center (5801 N. Pulaski Rd.; 312-744-5472), gave us this field guide to a few easy-to-spot birds, leaves, and paw prints.

Birds

BIRDS
With their brown bodies and red breasts, robins are typically found near rain puddles, pulling worms out of the ground. When the weather turns colder, they often team up to stay warm as they forage for seeds and berries in the bushes.

Mourning doves look like skinny pigeons, with longer necks and smaller heads; in flight, their tails have a pointed, diamond shape rather than a fan shape like those of other birds. These tan birds with a black-and-white-speckled breast usually are found in pairs and have a mournful cry.

Look for long-toed brown creepers "hopping up and down the sides of trees like Spider-man," Shaffer says. The sparrow-size brown birds with the slightly curving beaks are looking for insect eggs and larvae and seeds stuck in the bark of trees. Once they've climbed to the top of a tree, they'll fly down to the next one and begin climbing again.

Male red-winged blackbirds have red and yellow shoulder feathers and can be found around wet, marshy areas. They're aggressive in defending their nests in late spring and early summer. "I've seen them chase off deer and a hawk," Shaffer says. "They're small but very determined."

LEAVES
A maple is the leaf that appears on the Canadian flag.

Leaves

The catalpa has heart-shaped leaves so big they can be worn as hats. The trees have thin, curving seedpods that can be a foot long and become more visible after the leaves fall.

Honey locusts have composite leaves; each leaf is composed of 14 to 24 small leaflets with toothed edges and a stretched-oval shape. In the fall, the seedpods look like flattened brown bananas and make great rattles.

Unlike most other leaves, which are symmetrical, those of the basswood—also known as the linden—are not. Fold the roughly heart-shaped leaf with tiny teeth in half; if the sides don't match, you've found a basswood leaf.

PAW PRINTS
The front paw prints of a raccoon look like an infant's handprint but with claws; they have five digits, including a thumb. The back paw prints are longer and look more like our feet but, again, with claws. Look for them in muddier areas, especially at the edges of ponds.

Deer have distinctive, heart-shaped hoof prints that point in the direction they're moving. Some folks say that if you draw a straight line and all the deer prints touch it, you're looking at male prints. A female's two back prints won't touch the line because they have wider hips for birthing.

If you see prints that look like exclamation points, you've likely found the tracks of a fast-moving rabbit. Its back paws are twice as long as the front ones; when rabbits move quickly, the back paws land in front. Squirrels run that way, too; if the prints stop at a tree, you've found squirrel prints, while a rabbit's will keep going.


	These days, what can you buy with four measly quarters? A kid-size milk shake, Wednesdays at the University of Chicago's C-Shop, open to the public and situated inside the Reynolds Club (5706 S. University Ave.). On a warm day, take your whipped-cream-and-Nilla Wafer-topped treat to Botany Pond (on the Quads, on the south side of 57th Street, A University and Ellis) and look for turtles, fish, and ducks.

Like a Diamond in the Sky

For an old-fashioned adventure, nothing beats stargazing with the naked eye

by Mark Byrne

From March through June, the Big Dipper is most visible around 10 p.m. Look north, tilt your head back about 60 degrees, and look for seven stars in the shape of a ladle. If you want to impress your child with more obscure shapes and patterns, spend $5 on a planisphere, a small rotating disk used to find constellations visible to the naked eye. "What people have done in the past, and continue to do today, is just drive out to the country," says Mitch Gerdisch of the Naperville Astronomical Association. Of course, if you can't escape the city, the Adler Planetarium (1300 S. Lake Shore Dr.; 312-922-7827, adlerplanetarium.org) offers its Astrover-night events once a month to which children bring sleeping bags and lie beneath a planetarium's worth of stars. Friday evenings, kids can look through the enormous telescope at Northwestern University's Dearborn Observatory (2131 Tech Drive, Evanston; 847-491-7650, www.astro.northwestern.edu/observatory.php), where graduate students in physics and astronomy lead tours and answer questions.

Illustrations: Julia Kuhl

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