Gesamtlänge aller Episoden: 11 hours 11 minutes
Some years ago—never mind how long precisely--I took advantage of a break in the morning rain to bicycle from my home in Champaign to my office on campus at the University of Illinois. As I approached a vacant lot on White Street just east of First, five crows swooped in to land in a leafless silver maple tree, where another crow was already perched, calling as though his life depended on it...
At about this point in the fall a few years back, I noticed a curious phenomenon as I drove along Florida Avenue on the U of I campus. Dozens of crows—a “murder” if you will—were returning day after day to a row of majestic trees, for what looked to me like a great big crow party. This wasn’t a roost, where crows gather at night for safety in numbers (and create misery for the unfortunate humans who live below...
As a writer who loves wildlife, I find no story more difficult to tell than the story of how white-nose syndrome is affecting bats in North America. Before white-nose syndrome arrived, which was only a decade ago, I enjoyed explaining why bats are so amazing in hopes that listeners would come to love, or at least appreciate them. Today, I can only present the grim news of white-nose syndrome’s progress...
Back in 2007, my children came into the studio with me to record a segment on bats as a way of celebrating Halloween. Hearing their young voices in that is an enjoyable trip down memory lane for me. But I want you to hear it today for another reason. At the time we recorded this segment, we were entirely unaware that a pathogen capable of killing bats on a massive scale had arrived in the U.S. So think of this as a happy, “before” piece...
The calls of sandhill cranes carry on the wind by some magic. Whether they are flying, and your view of them is obscured by a tree line, or they’re feeding in a harvested cornfield, where their rust-stained gray feathers make them difficult to pick out, you typically hear cranes before you see them. And hearing sandhill cranes is a great pleasure...
So much of conservation is about the concrete. Stop a pipeline here, plant milkweed for monarchs there, try to move the levers of political power with an email or a protest. Even when we turn our attention to climate change, with its remote effects, we’re on to wind turbines and solar power before very long...
When people think about the landscape of central Illinois prior to European settlement they tend to think “prairie,” vast expanses of flat land covered in tall grass and tall flowers. And for the most part, that image is pretty accurate. But groves of trees intruded on the grasslands here and there, especially on the eastern edges of rivers and streams, which created natural breaks to prairie fires driven by winds from the west...
Andrea Belcher came to the University of Illinois five years ago as a graduate student to study ants with entomology professor Andrew Suarez. In her own words, she was “always interested in small things,” and the research opportunities she took advantage of as an undergraduate in her native Texas led her to focus on ants...
Even though there’s time on the calendar before Autumn begins officially, we’ve passed some important marks on the cultural calendar. Labor Day is a memory, the new school year is in full swing, and the season of traveling to outdoor destinations is over. For me, that means it’s a great time to renew appreciation for the undramatic nature that surrounds us every day. Birds are on the move...
Last week I found a walnut on my windowsill, a big fat one with an unblemished bright green husk. Soon after, another appeared stuck in the wheel of my car. Now they’re cached everywhere around the outside of our house, from the shelf on the grill to the flowerpots on the deck. Acorns are everywhere now, too, as anyone who bicycles where there are oaks can attest. A person’s got to keep both hands on the handlebars to avoid having them wrenched sideways...