Walking With Nature: Walking the DuPage River Greenway in March

Poet Emily Dickinson wrote that “March is the month of expectation.” Had I been in a coma for several months and been dropped onto the DuPage River Greenway in mid-March, I would have doubted my calendar. True, the tall grasses were still mostly a golden-tan. The first bird that serenaded me was a black-capped chickadee—a little neighbor who generally sticks around all winter. And jackets were needed. But some of what is normally “expectation” in a northern Illinois March had already arrived.

Gnats—or some insect annoyingly similar to them—hovered over a small patch of the path. The water level at the Hidden Lakes Trout Farm was high enough that access to the bench at the end of the “peninsula” was cut off. There was no ice on the river or on the lakes. Near the Trout Farm parking lot, a plethora of robins were hopping in the grass.

By March 15, there was much more green in the tall grasses. More trees were budding. Raspberry and other wild plants showed their color. I saw two different kinds of butterflies, one mostly black and one mostly orange. They flew by too quickly for positive identification. A hiker I talked to had seen a third species, a small lavender butterfly. Three petite white-winged insects, which I took to be moths, flew across the paths as I walked.

I was excited to see a turtle—a yellow-bellied slider—sunning himself on a log in the river. The natural habitat of this turtle is the Southeastern United States, so likely this fellow was a pet which someone grew tired of and released into the wild. This unfortunate practice sometimes upsets the balance of nature.

On March 16, garter snakes and fox snakes (neither of which is a threat to human beings) were spotted behind the Hidden Oaks Nature Center. Unfortunately, the snakes went back into hiding before I arrived. That same morning, teachers and children of The Seedlings Preschool discovered a few Spring Beauties already blooming in the woods. These tiny blooms are considered by many to be a truer sign of spring than robins. I failed to find any on my own, but one of the teachers helped me out. By Saturday, March 17, Spring Beauties were more plentiful. And the insect I brushed off my face that morning looked a lot like a mosquito.

Christine Martner, Superintendent of Buildings, Grounds and Natural Resources for the Bolingbrook Park District, says the Greenway is changing so rapidly in this warm March that a person could find something new almost daily. If you haven’t walked the Greenway, this is a wonderful time to give it a try!

© 2012