A Great White Egret spotted at the Skokie Lagoons.

Appeared in the Spring/Summer 2024 Gazette
By Barry Levenstam

In the beginning, western Winnetka was icky. For years, calls to “drain the swamp” were pleas for actual drainage of a real swamp that visited “intermittent flooding, mosquitos, and even smoky peat fires.” Yet western Winnetka remained “icky” until Winnetkan Harold Ickes went to Washington DC to serve as FDR’s Interior Secretary, and, in 1933, sent the Civilian Conservation Corps to transform the Skokie Marsh into a series of manmade interconnecting lagoons and rolling hills that became known as the Skokie Lagoons, a jewel in the crown of the Cook County Forest Preserve system.

Great Horned Owl

To be clear, I am not a naturalist or scientist of any kind. I am not a historian, I am not a photographer – I am a retiree. Adrift after 45 years of law practice, I had a plastic kayak bought at a close-out sale, a camera that is too good for my photographic ‘abilities’, a love of the outdoors, and the love of a wife who encouraged me to be out of the house as much as possible during retirement. I also had dim 50-year-old memories of A Great White Egret spotted at the Skokie Lagoons. biking up from Chicago to the Skokie Lagoons in my youth and now had a crazy notion I could recapture those days by getting into the kayak and paddling around the Lagoons. And wow, was I right about that!

Great Horned Owl

When I started kayaking in the Lagoons, I usually went alone, with just my life jacket, paddle, and hat. After surviving a couple of trips without tipping, my cellphone joined me, zipped securely in the lifejacket’s pocket. At first, I saw the obvious birds, great blue herons and beautiful ducks, soaring and diving gulls, disagreeable geese and mourning doves (mourning because they know they are basically just pigeons). But one day I happened to look up and glimpsed a large dark bird with white tailfeathers disappearing over trees. My immediate reaction was, “They’ll never believe this back at home. A bald eagle?!?” Having grown up in the DDT era, I couldn’t imagine an eagle living down the street from me. Since then, I’ve seen eagles hunt, collect sticks to build nests, fledge eaglets, and transform from juveniles to mature adults. I’ve also watched as smaller birds – crows and red winged blackbirds in particular – gather together to mob an eagle to protect their nests from eagle predation.

Equally exciting, eagles have acted as a ‘gateway bird’ and I began to find other birds I might not have noticed. First came raptors, including assorted hawks, three flavors of falcons, great horned owls, and in the warmer months, osprey. Raptors camouflage well and sometimes get skittish when I point a camera at them, but sometimes they appear to sit happily for a portrait. I also focused on photographing other fish-hunters, herons and their cousins the egrets who migrate through in the fall, and kingfishers, all of whom are easy to spot.

Horned Grebe

Eventually, the countless small birds bewitched and bedeviled me. Many stay the winter and can be seen when leaves are down. Who launched the myth that robins are harbingers of spring? When the Lagoons freeze over so I cannot kayak, I hike or ski around them, and find robins too numerous to count all winter long!

But birds are not alone in the Lagoons! Turtles are numerous and obvious when the warm sun shines. Huge snapping turtles are among the ugliest members of the Lagoons menagerie, and smooth softshells among the weirdest. Frogs may be harder to see, but you will hear them early summer mornings! Muskrats dive when I arrive but mink are more curious and may stop to stare. Raccoons shuffle through shallows searching with their paws for crawfish to eat. Deer abound and in fall the bucks lock horns; in the spring, the does deliver the most adorable creatures of all, their fawns.

I’ve also had one or two encounters with coyotes. They seldom show themselves BUT if I summer mornings! Muskrats dive when I arrive but mink are more curious and may stop to stare. Raccoons shuffle through shallows searching with their paws for crawfish to eat. Deer abound and in fall the bucks lock horns; in the spring, the does deliver the most adorable creatures of all, their fawns. I’ve also had one or two encounters with coyotes. They seldom show themselves BUT if I were walking a small dog, I would not let it off leash for its own safety’s sake. But by far the most dangerous animal I’ve seen in the Lagoons goes upon four legs in the morning, two in the afternoon, and three in the evening: humankind. I have freed a turtle from fishhooks, cut a robin loose from tangled fishing line, and sadly, seen line claim the lives of herons. Also troubling is the amount of garbage left strewn about an otherwise beautiful nature preserve. I can’t understand how people can come to enjoy the beautiful environment and leave it fouled or put these wonderful animals at risk. Nothing ruins a photo of a beautiful bird or beast like a background of fast-food wrappers! I ask only this of you, dear reader: if my words or photos move you to visit, think of the Lagoons as your own property and leave them as clean as, or cleaner than, you found them.