Somme Fights the “Death By A Thousand Cuts”

Can you write a letter? Or make a phone call?

For that matter, can you negotiate?

 

A lot of people care about the Northbrook Forest Preserves, but “the team” that exists has worked mostly on conserving plants and animals with our hands in dirt, seeds, and science. That’s what they’re “wired” for. Advocates are needed too. 

 

This week shook us awake.

• Heavy equipment damaged both Somme Prairie and Somme Prairie Grove along Dundee Road.
• A beekeeper illegally (and damagingly to rare native bees) installed a commercial honeybee hive in Somme Prairie Grove.
• Heavy landscaping refuse was found by the Northbrook village sign along the edge of Waukegan Road in Somme Prairie Grove. 
• Damaging honeybee hives were found adjacent to Somme Prairie on Underwriters property. 
• Appalling piles of garbage were hauled off by a valiant team that included two elected officials, which led to a revised “Walk-light” initiative to ease crossing Waukegan Road from Somme Woods to Somme Prairie Grove.
• Then a snag emerged in the Walk-light initiative.

Some people say, “The Forest Preserve has staff. Why can’t they handle these things?” Answer: Many FP staff work hard on these things and do a great job (as you’ll see reflected below). But with 70,000 acres in a major metro area and small staff, they need and appreciate help.

 

Read on.

 

Heavy equipment damaged both Somme Prairie and Somme Prairie Grove along Dundee Road.

 

This contractor company (and whoever employed them) should have coordinated with both the Forest Preserve District and the Illinois Nature Preserves Commission before working adjacent to either of the two Somme Nature Preserves. They did not. 

What’s going on here? The streets were blocked and there was no parking anywhere near, but it was obvious from the car that damage was being done.

 

As soon as they heard about it, the Forest Preserve staff demanded that the project be shut down and sent surveyors who marked the preserve boundary. Serious damage had already been done.

The contractor company told Forest Preserve staff they were “very sorry” about the damage but didn’t know there was a concern.

Apparently they hadn’t noticed the 5’ x 8’ sign that reads “Somme Prairie Nature Preserve – Restoring original prairie habitat for native plants and animals” and also giving Forest Preserve contact info. 

 

East of the Metra tracks, Somme Prairie Grove Nature Preserve was similarly damaged. 

This area might look like “a lot of brush” – and indeed it was mostly buckthorn. But this is a thicket that we’ve been working for years to restore to natural quality. The shrubs here include American plum, choke cherry, and young oaks. Nearby the restoration thrives with hazelnut, elderberry, indigo bush, Illinois rose, and many others. 

This is the edge of the damaged area in Somme Prairie Grove. If you look close, and we do look close, along the edges of the bulldozed former remnant community you can see surviving wild geranium, mayapple, prairie trillium, Pennsylvania sedge, starry false Solomon’s seal, Chicago leek, and many more. Perhaps equally important, this is an area that was never plowed; it has original soil, not bulldozed clay. Restoration would have done well here. It will still do well, but it will take more time and work. 

 

We asked the question, “Will there be compensation for the damage done?” Apparently, it wasn’t yet being asked. It may take a person continuing to keep focus on it and trouble-shoot as needed. 

 

Five other challenges emerged this week as well … to be described in future blog posts. 

 

There aren’t currently enough volunteer advocates to cope with all these things. This beautiful and important preserve deserves better. If you might be interested in lending a hand, let us know at info@sommepreserve.org.

 

We’ll post more on those other issues. Great credit goes to all staff and volunteers involved. 

And finally, three recent photos from Somme, to remind you of the stakes.

Some of the oldest bur oaks Somme remind us of times when the tree canopy was open enough that the lower limbs didn't die of shade. 

Violet wood sorrel, scarlet painted cup, and white-eyed grass thrive out in the open savanna.

Wood betony and large-flowered trillium bloom in the bur oak woodland. 

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the Forest Preserve District of Cook County for buying the land and then doing the best that a small staff can to protect and manage it ... and then being good partners for citizen volunteers who want to help out.  

Thanks to Eriko Kojima for proofing and edits of this post. 

Early May 2024

The morning was deliciously foggy. As I walked by this grassy pond, a Virginia rail and a sedge wren flew up, freshly back from the south. Welcome back. Our stewardship is as much for the animals as the plants. 

We don't see the rails often. We do hear their calls. We are glad to feel their neighborly presence. 

At the edge of the oaks, the rare wood betony (red-purple) bloomed side by side with the commoner prairie betony (yellow). The red form seems to like the woods more than the prairie. 

Burn scars shock some people. Looking raw and wounded, they're from tree-clearing last winter and are a valuable part of the woodland ecosystem. Diversity requires such scars ...

... for some biota. Those are the species that evolved for a specialized niche - created when the fallen trunk of an ancient tree finally passes through the final stage of its life cycle. For many trees in savanna and woodland ecosystems, that stage is not rot. It's fire. As these scars succeed they host impressive waves of algae, mosses, and vascular plants. The endangered Bicknell's geranium is one of many species that we find only or mostly where wood burns out the competition for a while. 

Fire is obviously violent. But there are more subtle kinds of violence:

Our many big cottonwood trees are shady invaders, not typical of a healthy savanna. Their seedlings can't compete in a competitive turf. Their shade kills some species that would otherwise thrive. Is not death by shade a kind of violence? 

Worse in the photo above, the dense shrubs and trees in the background represent a more final brutality. As they wipe out all natural plants and animals beneath, how ruthless should we be in return? We cut, burn, sow, and pamper. 

In Somme Prairie Grove's bur oak woodland areas ...

... we have, over the decades, eliminated or thinned buckthorn, ash, hickory, box elder, and more. At least 90% of the woody stems belonged to invaders. Red oaks (shorter-lived than bur or white) help by falling down dead; other trees grow bigger. The thin-barked hop hornbeam in the foreground was girdled to kill it. Hornbeams make deep shade. To the top left above, you can see other trees so dense they look like a picket fence. They should go. We'll get to them.

With shade reduction at the right pace, a thrillingly complex turf of rare plants develops. More and more conservative species move around and increase, year after year. 

Oak woodland is now recognized as one of our rarest and most threatened ecosystem types. In Paul Nelson's drawings below - not as sunny as a savanna; not as shady as a forest - oak woodland is in the third panel down: 

Looking at the same visual from above:

                Prairie                              Savanna                         Woodland                         Forest

The "herb layer" of the woodland may be as rich or richer than a prairie:

Plants shown above: In bloom, wood betony, white trillium, and rue anemone. 

In the open savanna, scarlet painted cups are visible. This species is almost gone from the region. Somme has an over-population of white-tailed deer. The blooming one above is in a deer-exclusion cage. Below it, to the right, is one in a vole exclusion cage. How will we divide what time we allot to caging which species this year? 

 

Last year was a painted-cup bonanza, a bit of which is shown below:

In this patch we counted 358 plants. Overall we counted 572 plants in 19 separate populations. Since we first seeded this species from a nearby population in 2016, every year it has been a thrill to see the first ones emerge, and then more and more, in some years. But we continue to puzzle over its fickle unpredictability. 

Scarlet Painted-cup Numbers at Somme Prairie Grove

	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025
# of plants	45	1	73	29	162	85	101	572

A native shrub thicket (hard to manage) in a wet area where most fires, like this year's, burn up to the edge, and then stop. When we pass this thicket during the year's Breeding Bird Census, we regularly see orchard orioles, willow flycatchers, hummingbirds, indigo buntings, and more. They like it.

Seen from another angle, this thicket shows top-killed gray dogwood to the left and monstrous cottonwoods behind, towering over the mature bur oaks, behind them. Those cottonwoods should go. In their area they "take up all the oxygen in the room." Nature can't recover under their shade and level of water consumption. 

Counterintuitively, a main problem for oak savannas and woodlands is too many trees. Decades without fire left the bur oaks (below) too close together. 

We girdled some to kill them. Tall, skinny trees fighting for the light do not lead to healthy oak woodland. 

Here a half-dozen stems of bastard toadflax have invaded the top of a mound of dropseed grass. The toadflax, wood betony, and scarlet painted-cup are hemiparasites. We now know that many parasitic animals, plants, fungi, and bacteria play crucial and ultimately healthful roles. 

In this Illinois Nature Preserve, visitors are required to stay on the path system unless authorized to step off for stewardship or scientific study. Somme Prairie Grove includes 2.7 miles of maintained trails. These footpaths are minimal ...

... but they're designed to resist erosion and are reinforced, where they pass through wetlands, with the wood of cut invasives. 

In the photo below, a path winds through open savanna.    

Here the oaks are mostly small. Farmers had cut most long ago. Bur oak was the principal tree species here. The dark young tree to the right (above) is a bur oak we had protected from deer and fire. One to a few trees per acre are enough for a savanna. How much time will we invest in protecting more? 

In the map below, most trees are invaders. The original bur oaks survived farming in three small areas. Bur oaks return, but they're slow.  

The pussy willow patch below got protected. For decades it was a minor presence, stems never more than a foot tall, as it was occasionally burned by fire and the re-sprouting stems then eaten by deer. 

Willows are a valuable component of the wet savanna community. So a few years ago we found time to put a cage around this one, and we watched it grow to a size that seemed secure. But buck deer responded by raking their antlers on its trunks last fall until the bark was gone ...

... killing most stems. Scores of new shoots are now emerging, which the deer will probably eat. Cage it again? 

At the end of March, we notice woodhen nests.  

As it happens, a few times each spring, snowfall nearly buries the hen. We see her head in the whiteness. She is devoted.

On April 28th, she's still there. Incubation takes 20-21 days. I peek in again on May 2nd ...

... and only egg shells remain. For 14 days, until they can fly, she'll do her best to keep the chicks safe and protected. We emulate her dedication and persistence. 

Acknowledgements

For a longer and more technical version of this post, click here.

Cook County Forest Preserve staff deserve credit for technical supervision and prescribed burns. We volunteer stewards do most of the rest. Illinois Nature Preserves System staff, Commissioners, and protective laws are important back-up protection, as are Friends of Illinois Nature Preserves. 

Thanks to Paul Nelson (and the Tallgrass Restoration Handbook) for the drawings showing the structure of prairie, savanna, woodland ,and forest. 

Base preserve map by Carol Freeman. Graphic edits by Linda Masters.

The splendid Virginia Rail photo is from Tinyfishy on Flickr.

Thanks for proofing and edits to Eriko Kojima.

A Winter Walk in Snowy Woods

The original post was from January 21, 2024. In response, Rebeccah Hartz sent photos and comments, which follow.

On Jan. 21, Stephen Packard wrote: "During my two-hour walk in Somme Woods, I saw no birds and only one species of mammal. Yet I felt community with my wild neighbors, as their tracks were everywhere." 

Here, amid deer hoof prints, juncos left prints from their wing feathers. A careful look at the brown spots here and there in the snow revealed their purpose here - eating the seeds that were falling into the snow from the tree above. 

This photo shows the seeds better. Hop hornbeam seeds are enclosed in brown papery containers (that look as they hang in clusters on the tree like the hops used to brew beer). 

These tracks were made by a white-footed mouse - probably the commonest animal in the woods. As they bound along, all four feet land close together, and their long tail makes a signature imprint in the snow. 

This is a "mouse highway." Mice spend most of their time relatively safe from predators under the snow. But here, a mouse has emerged repeatedly from its snow tunnel, through the dark hole at the bottom of the photo, to cross the Outer Loop footpath (here showing coyote footprints), probably to get to one of its food caches. Mice hide seeds and nuts in little storehouses and then venture out from time to time to retrieve and bring them to their cozy nest to eat. That coyote would be happy to catch that mouse for its own meal. 

Here, under some old bur oaks, much of the snow has been kicked aside, as deer look for acorns. Most trees produce a big crop of acorns only every few years. But the deer know where those places are. Acorns are a major winter food for them. 

Here, in a large area of unbroken snow, two patches stand out. Probably some squirrel has cached two patches of acorns under white oaks. Squirrels bury some acorns, but that's a lot of work. So sometimes they just assemble them in the leaves, and if the deer find them, they'll raid them.

White oaks are identifiable in winter by their whitish bark. The oldest trees in Somme Woods are bur and white oaks. Typical old ones have wide spreading limbs and the remains of now-dead spreading limbs that died in the shade before we rescued them from invasive "pole trees." The tall, dense, skinny pole trees are the most common trees in this photo. Many natural, now-rare woodland plants and animals don't survive the dense shade produced by the pole trees. Here in the foreground, stewardship volunteers have removed enough of them to support the development of new growth and new life.

The woodland footprints here are those of stewards who, on a below-zero day yesterday, cut invasive trees to make room from some young oaks (upper left). They left the stumps to cut low later when they'll have a better chance to apply herbicide to the stumps without having to contend with the snow. 

A second bonfire pile from yesterday. Though without flames, the coals can remain hot. Notice that in the background of this former open oak woodland - tall, skinny, invader trees are way too dense. As the stewards continue to thin them, we'll start to see the first bur and white oak reproduction in decades as well as increasing populations of the now-rare animals, plants, and other biota that depend on sunny oak woodlands. 

These deer were sleeping next to Fourth Pond, where the Forest Preserve staff girdled large cottonwood trees to reduce shade years ago. It's easy to see where the strip of bark and phloem were removed from two trees on the right. As I walked by on the Outer Loop trail, the deer stood up, just in case. After I passed by, they lay back down and went back to sleep. 

Here, a well-travelled trail seemed to have been made by a possum. But a coyote used it too and, rather than duck under this log like the possum, it stepped on the log as it jumped over. A great many animals like to use trails started by others. The possum trail started at a big old bur oak with holes to "hole up" in during cold weather. Why this possum made such a densely packed trail and, indeed, what they eat in winter are obscure to me. 

Here a "mouse highway" is crossed by a set of coyote tracks. If you zoom in, you can probably recognize the coyote tracks which, like dog tracks, show their five foot pads (unlike deer tracks, that show two hoof marks).

Deer and mouse tracks.

Rabbit tracks

After two hours in Somme Woods, I headed west to cross Waukegan Road into Somme Prairie Grove. While in Somme Woods I didn't see a single bird, though that could have been because I mostly had my head down, looking down for tracks. I did hear just two birds calling: one chickadee and one hairy woodpecker. 

The first Somme Prairie Grove photo shows these tunnels. There are no indications of hopping here, or long tail marks. These trails are thus likely made by meadow voles (probably the most common animals of our grasslands) or shrews.

I'd vote for shrews, as the voles have long-established tunnels at ground level, under the grass. Voles are vegetarians and in winter mostly eat seeds. Shrews are predators and mostly eat insects in winter. They bulldoze around looking for cocoons, chrysalids, and hibernating invertebrates of any sort. They will also sometimes kill and eat white-footed mice. It's odd to think of tiny shrews hunting for the same animal as big coyotes. But most every predator eats mice, also including foxes, snakes, weasels, hawks, and owls. 

Another sign of the white-footed mouse is isolated holes like the one above. Sometimes I see mouse tracks leading away from them. But mostly they look like this. Was the mouse claustrophobic and just wanting to take a look around? Or had the tunnel air gotten musty, and the hole was for better breathing? Perhaps some expert knows. I just get a kick out of seeing them.

Here some birds - probably tundra sparrows (more commonly, if misleadingly, known as American tree sparrows) have been eating seeds knocked off nearby plants. I saw none, indeed no birds at all, as in Somme Woods, but the frequent tracks indicated that they were here, somewhere. They tend to be in flocks of twenty to fifty, close together, and if you don't happen to walk through the part of the savanna where they are at that moment, you don't see them. 

These four deer were part of a herd of ten in a bur oak grove. Deer were the only animals I actually saw in Somme Prairie Grove, so you might think I would have been glad to see them. Well, I was a little glad. But I was mostly disappointed. A preserve the size of Somme Prairie Grove can sustainably support about two deer, according to the best research. Forest Preserve staff and Village of Northbrook staff both cull some deer in and near this preserve, but they don't cull nearly enough. 

The last photo for this post is below:

Speak of the devil, here a buck has used his antlers to nearly girdle a handsome young bur oak. The bucks choose trees that bend a bit, in order to practice the jousting that results in dominance and best mating prospects. We cage as many young oaks as we find time for, especially in more open areas where farmers long ago cut trees to make way for crops or pasture. But we didn't get to this one. A winter walk is a good time to asses what kinds of work we'll need to do more of next summer and fall. 

To anyone who's enjoyed learning from it, thanks for accompanying me on this walk. It was a pleasure to have you along, as I looked for what might be interesting. 

End of original post.

On January 15, one of those dangerously cold, sub-zero days, Rebeccah Hartz also took a walk in those same Somme Woods, snapped the following photos, and recorded these thoughts:

"The woods were full of life this afternoon, in the awesome silence of the cold. For what it's worth, I think with the right clothes the temperature did not feel so extreme, and the signs of so much life were continuously exciting. I hope these photos capture at least some hints of that excitement." 

This was one of the longest tunnels I came across. You can see the little ridge of slightly protruding/cracked surface snow where the creature burrowed along, and the occasional break where the creatures surfaced and took up running. I suspect shrews.

There were tunnels everywhere! Tracks of a white-footed mouse led to this one.

Detail of the photo shown above. I think the entrances and air vents are irresistible. I like how you can tell there's warmer air coming up from beneath the snow by the longer ice crystals around the hole. 

I walked the Middle Loop trail. No person had been out on it yet, just a solitary coyote and rabbit. Fortunately for the rabbit, the two sets of tracks head in opposite directions. 

At the edge of Fourth Pond, two tundra sparrows were feasting on seeds. They accompanied me the whole time I was there. Here they are against the backdrop of one of the fallen cottonwoods. Above us, a red-headed woodpecker hopped and glided from tree to tree. 

Coyote tracks headed out on the snow-covered pond. This picture doesn't show it, but in places you can see spots where the coyote lost its balance and went skittering across the ice.

Then, thrillingly enough, this beauty appeared. 

She or he gave me a brief look and made a quick retreat into the oaks.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Rebecca Hartz for great photos and thoughts. Thanks to Eriko Kojima for proofing and edits.