It’s one of nature’s confounding ironies that the last stronghold of the black-crowned night heron in Illinois lies in the few undeveloped parcels that remain between the landfill mountains and the rusting industrial sheds of Chicago’s Tenth Ward. Every year these birds return to the Calumet wetlands from points as far away as Belize, Guatemala, and Cuba. They come, as their ancestors have since the retreat of the glaciers thousands of years ago, to the remnants of what was once 50,000 acres of wetland and prairie. The numbers vary from year to year, but several thousand night herons still roost in colonies in the midst of this industrial and garbage wasteland, a place environmental activists hope to one day turn into a national park.
“When they constructed the ‘natural’ wetlands, they ruined the real wetlands,” says Marlene, laughing.
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“It’s not that they were purposely trying to hurt the birds,” says Marlene. “When we go in we’ll just go in a short way, and then we’ll stop and wait 15 or 20 minutes until they get used to us. And then we’ll go a little further, just ease on in. And if we see they’re starting to get a little disturbed, then we stop immediately and stay still. But if you don’t know to do that, just walking through can get them very upset.”
The access path is flooded so we approach the rookery by walking along the Norfolk Southern tracks, breathing in the annoying aroma of the creosote-soaked ties. Seaside goldenrod, which is native to the Atlantic coast, sprouts along the tracks where salt has spilled out of boxcars.
“There’re so many of them that if you’re in there when the young are a pretty good size the smell of fish from their droppings is overwhelming,” says Marlene.
At dawn the male returns to the nest and greets his mate in a ceremony in which male and female bow to each other and touch or rattle their bills together. During the day they will hang around the rookery, loafing or working on their nests.
Since the 1700s 85 percent of the state’s wetlands have been lost, and while the wetland provisions of the Clean Water Act have put a brake on marsh filling, the new Republican majority in Congress may make wetlands protection more precarious than ever.
