(gentle music) - When I was a kid growing up in Chicago, being in nature meant a day at the beach, or hanging out in the empty lots that we all called "Prairies", but when I got to college, I met a guy who really opened my eyes when we went for a walk in the woods.

He pointed out things I would have completely missed.

Salamanders and mushrooms and wild flowers.

Since then, I have learned to love the simple beauty you can witness with patient observation.

In the next half hour, five stories of people engaging with nature.

There's my own close encounter with an unnervingly large insect, a photographer who will tell you the very best time to catch Chicago's amazing wildflowers, a high school student who saw more bird species in Cook County in a single year than anyone ever, volunteers help restore and maintain a forest preserve in Chicago, and I suit up and join a burn crew as they manage prescribed burns in the Cook County Forest Preserves.

Stick around.

That's right now on "Jay's Chicago".

(smooth jazz music) (man whistles) Hi, I'm Jay Shefsky.

The Oscar winning documentary, "My Octopus Teacher", is about the close relationship a man develops with an octopus.

When I saw it, it got me thinking about a cross species encounter of my own.

(water splashes) This started like a lot of my favorite days, in a kayak on a quiet river, (gentle music) but soon the day would take an unexpected turn.

(gentle music) I was alone on the Paw Paw River, paddling out of Benton Harbor, Michigan.

(gentle music) Wait, what is on that log?

Is that a praying mantis?

(video tape whirs) (gentle music) I don't think I've ever seen a praying mantis in person.

Is it turning its head to watch me pass?

I must be imagining that.

(gentle music) I've gotta get a closer look, so I turn around and sidle up to the fallen tree that is the praying mantis's perch.

And this time, no doubt about it, it turns its head to face me.

(gentle music) It is watching me.

This giant insect that must have been the inspiration for the classic cartoon alien is watching me.

(gentle music) And it doesn't seem to be scared, at least not enough to fly away, or walk away, or whatever it would do.

I'm a little scared, so before I get any closer, I Google "Are praying mantises dangerous?

", and I learned that while they can be quite rough on their prey, they're harmless to humans.

(gentle music) So, I get in closer, hoping to get a few shots before I scare it off, (gentle music) but it doesn't seem scared at all.

It seems curious.

(gentle music) I know, I know, I shouldn't anthropomorphize this critter, but am I wrong to say that it seems every bit as interested in me as I am in it?

Soon, I'm feeling ready to take our relationship to the next level.

(gentle music) Will it read this gesture as a sign I can be trusted?

Doesn't seem to make a difference.

But then, after half an hour of just looking at each other, an amazing thing happens.

It begins to approach, tentatively at first, and then with a little more swagger.

I'm glad I already confirmed that it's not a threat to me, because it's coming aboard.

And then for another half hour it explores me and my kayak.

(Jay laughs) This is totally wild.

(Jay laughs) There's a praying mantis on the bottom of my shoe that I can't, I can't even see it because it's on the bottom of my shoe.

(gentle music) It makes itself quite at home on this new perch, and soon it's ready to make the move to my hand.

That is the wildest thing.

(gentle music) But now I am in "Be careful what you ask for" territory because, while I know that this thing won't hurt me, it's tough to keep my cool as it moves from my hand to my arm.

(Jay gasps) It's getting a little creepy.

(gentle music) Oh!

Geez.

Even though I get it back to more comfortable territory, this giant insect still wants to be better friends.

(gentle music) And then as it explores me, it manages to find the one place I can't film it, on my hand that is holding my phone.

(Jay laughs) This is inches from my face, sitting on the phone that is taking this picture of me.

It is magnificent.

When have I ever spent this much time this close to a critter I encountered in the wild, and which I think has come to trust that I mean it no harm?

(gentle music) Unfortunately, I betrayed that trust, and I'm sorry to say that the rest of the story happened off camera.

Here are some photos from earlier as I recount the unfortunate details.

The praying mantis spent several more minutes on my hand and then startled me by quickly walking up my arm toward my face.

I instinctively flicked it off.

It landed in the water, where I watched it flail as the current carried it downstream.

I was horrified, and I couldn't let my new friend drown, so I took off after it, eventually using the kayak paddle to gently scoop it out of the water.

Then somehow with that same paddle, I made my way to the shore.

And here is my stunned friend on the paddle just before I returned it to safety, and then watched it quickly take off into the brush.

(gentle music) Did I teach it that humans can't be trusted?

Maybe that's not a bad lesson.

And what did it teach me?

Something pretty simple, really.

(gentle music) The benefits of quiet patient observation.

(gentle music) (gentle music) (upbeat music) While Chicago can't claim the grandeur of the Rocky Mountains, or the remote wonders of Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

There is far more natural beauty in the Chicago area than many people know.

This next story is about a man who has made it his mission to let you know, not only where to explore the wilds of Chicago, but especially when.

When you're a nature photographer, timing is critical.

Like many photographers, Mike MacDonald usually goes out early because of the beautiful light.

(gentle orchestral music) - It's not just the light, 'cause it have that similar light in the evenings, but you have that atmosphere, the fog, the dew, the birds calling, at that time of day.

- [Jay] Mike MacDonald's specialty and his passion is Chicago area nature, especially wild flowers like these Virginia bluebells.

(gentle orchestral music) And that adds another critical element of timing.

(gentle orchestral music) - Once upon a time, I went to a preserve and I saw these flowers fading, and I said, "Oh man, I gotta wait another year".

And then I came back two or three weeks later and there was another flower fading.

And I said, "Okay, forget it.

This is never happening again".

- [Jay] So, Mike now keeps careful track of when and where wild flowers are blooming best around Chicago.

- I'm talking, like, photogenic, blow your mind, beautiful, that the public would love.

(gentle orchestral music) - [Jay] And he shares that information with the public, through his website, Chicago Nature Now.

- The "Now" in Chicago Nature Now refers to, "Go into Chicago nature at this moment to get a wildflower blooming event that's absolutely world-class and breathtaking".

(gentle orchestral music) A lot of people know where to see stuff, but it's like, "When?".

- [Jay] The week I met Mike, it was the Virginia bluebells at O'Hara Woods in Romeoville.

And yes, it was breathtaking.

Now, you know, I've seen bluebells before, but I've never seen bluebells like this.

(gentle orchestral music) See, this is not just about making beautiful photos.

Mike MacDonald is a kind of Chicago nature evangelist.

- Chicago has more protected natural area within 50 miles of downtown than most national parks, and more native plant species than any national park by far.

- Wait, more native plant species in the Chicago area than in any national park?

- Any national park.

So for example, we have, I think, 1,706 or so, and the Grand Canyon has, like, 1,544/45.

- [Jay] Mike has also photographed many spectacular national park landscapes, and he says Chicago's flat terrain needs a different treatment.

- We are not geological based, where we have rocks and mountains and icons.

Ours is botanically based, where the landscape changes every single week.

And so, I needed to figure out a way, how to make images that were as three dimensional as those calendar shots of the west, to make those shots of Chicago that immersive and deep.

- The solution was to include a wide view of the landscape and a close look at what's nearby.

You're kind of shooting both landscapes and close-ups at the same time, right?

- Yeah As you can see, I'm at a distance that most macro photographers shoot just to fill the frame with one of these flowers, but I'm also using a super wide angle lens.

So, what I'm getting is two perspectives of the world.

(gentle orchestral music) The two perspectives, I think, that we experience in a landscape like this, they're looking everywhere and seeing it all, and then they're also suddenly focusing at the feet or their ankles and they see the flowers and that fills their world.

(gentle orchestral music) So, it emulates the experience of being here, which is the whole goal of my photography, is to make you feel like you're with me.

(gentle orchestral music) - And the goal of that is to get people out here.

- And the goal of that is to get people out here and to fall in love with it, because once you're here, how can you not?

(gentle music) - I already love being out in nature, but being here when the flowers are exploding?

Amazing.

(gentle music) (gentle music) (upbeat music) Teachers always want their students to be active learners, and parents hope their kids will pursue a passion.

This next story is about a high school senior who wouldn't let COVID slow him down, as he spent 2020 pursuing an unusual educational and personal goal.

(gentle music) (seagulls squawking) There are a lot of birders out here today, at Saganashkee Slough in Southwestern Cook County.

They haven't come for the seagulls or even for these American Coots.

No, they're aiming their spotting scopes at a rare visitor to the Chicago area.

- We're looking at a really special bird out here.

It's called an eared grebe, and they tend to show up about once a year, once every other year in Cook County.

- [Jay] That eared grebe is way out there.

Just a speck, even in their scopes.

- Yeah, it's been a really exciting day out here.

(gentle music) - [Jay] But 17 year old Isoo O'Brien has another reason to be excited.

That eared grebe is the 281st bird species that Isoo saw in Cook County in 2020.

It's only October, and he's tied the all-time record.

- You know, this has been a goal that I've been pursuing since January, and to now realize that I'm tied and I'm so close to breaking it is, it feels really unreal.

(gentle music) - [Jay] Isoo is attempting what birders call a "Big Year".

- Well, Big Year is basically, it's a birding competition where you try to see as many bird species as you can in a certain geographic area.

(gentle music) (seagulls squawking) - [Jay] It's not an organized competition exactly.

There's no trophy or prize money, just bragging rights, and a lot of time spent looking for birds that most of us never see.

- If you're gonna do a real serious Big Year, it's an enormous effort.

- [Jay] Josh Engel is a longtime birder and birding guide.

He's also one of Isoo O'Brien's mentors.

- From January 1st, you set off and every day you need to be out trying to find that next new bird.

- [Jay] But since he often goes out alone, how do we know that he's telling the truth, or that he's knowledgeable enough to distinguish an eared grebe from some other grebe?

- If there's any question about what you saw during your Big Year, birders will, sort of, whisper about it in the next year, you know, whether the record can be believed or not, but you know, one of the great things about Isoo is that, you know, we know his record is iron clad.

He's a really great young birder.

And we know that what he's saying he's seeing, he's actually seeing for sure.

(gentle music) - [Jay] Isoo has been a passionate birder since he was nine, when his grandparents took him out during spring migration.

- Well, so my husband and I are not birders, so we don't really understand.

(gentle music) For me, I'm just happy that he's doing something that he really loves.

It takes people a lifetime to find something that they feel passionate about, and he found it at such a young age.

(seagulls screeching) - [Jay] But today he is not finding another bird species.

Then two days later at Montrose Point, this happened.

- [Isoo] Sitting over there on the-- - Oh, that's it!

- I got it.

- You got it?

- Yeah!

(gentle music) - [Jay] It was the common redpoll that put him over the top, bird number 282 in Isoo O'Brien's Big Year.

- It's really hard to explain, but there's this thrill that comes with a Big Year.

It's not like there's any prize money involved or, you know, anything like that, but being able to say that you did is something incredible, and that's the, that's the reward.

(gentle music) (gentle music) (upbeat music) - Cook County has the largest urban forest preserve system in the country.

And since the early nineties, part of managing all that land has involved burning parts of it from time to time.

I always wondered how they do that safely and why they do it at all.

I had a chance to find out one day, when I was invited to join a forest preserve burn crew.

Have you ever been out in one of the Cook County Forest Preserves and suddenly you enter some kind of magic wonderland?

Look closely.

Those woods are on fire.

(fire crackles) But the good news is that this fire has been started on purpose and is being carefully managed.

In fact, the kind of devastating fires that happen out west could not happen here.

- Trees we have are a fire dependent species and actually like the fact that the fire's here.

Totally different than what happens out west.

- [Jay] John McCabe is in charge of the burn program for the Forest Preserves.

He says the burns have a wide variety of benefits, including managing invasive plant species, promoting biological diversity, and improving the health of the soil.

- [John] That's good there, Chris.

- [Jay] The burns happen in spring and fall at sites throughout Cook County.

- All right.

- [Jay] And John has invited me to spend a day working with one of those crews.

There will be 11 crews out today burning 24 sites.

Each crew has five or six people.

For me, they've selected a site at Busse Woods, so close to their headquarters that we can walk over.

And even though they've burned this site and many others many times, each site and each day's conditions require a different careful plan.

Everyone has a job and there is a clear chain of command, critical if anything gets out of hand.

Some crew members are assigned to communicate with the public and some, like me today, will actually start this field on fire, using what they call a drip torch.

The bike path here acts as a natural firebreak.

We start by burning a strip alongside it, at the downwind end of the site.

(fire crackles) - Even though we have a good break here, with the paved bike trail, we're widening that break.

before we set a more intense fire into this area.

Smoke is the main concern for us.

We have all these natural barriers, like a paved bike trail, or a road, or somebody who's got mowed grass around their house, but a fire, when it hits that, it's gonna put itself out.

It's us having to manage that smoke that could jump those barriers and negatively impact the general public.

- [Jay] Monica Mueller is an ecologist with the Forest Preserves.

She says the burn is especially helpful to native plant species.

- It really helps to stimulate them and cause them to produce more flowers and more seed.

Our prarie plants have deep root systems.

They store all their energy underground and are able to come back quickly after a burn.

(gentle music) - [Jay] And finally, they start what is called "The head fire" at the upwind end of the site.

It will be contained by the wider breaks along the perimeter that we've already created.

And soon, what's left is a burnt and smoldering field.

So, what happens now?

- Well, at this point, we're just letting the unit burn itself out.

- Okay.

- And it's totally contained.

So, the fire that's burning on the interior unit is surrounded by all black.

So, we don't have anything to worry about from a security standpoint, but we do need to be here because of the general public out on a trail.

If they don't see us, gonna call the fire department or something, so we wanna make sure that that doesn't happen.

- [Jay] So, how long until this comes back?

- Well, it won't be long, especially since we're in the spring season.

I'm suspecting, at this site, two to three weeks.

The other thing that's-- - Wait, in two to three weeks this'll be back looking like a prairie?

- Right, right.

- And sure enough, we stopped back two weeks later.

Not only is it looking pretty green, a coyote wandered by, perhaps to offer its approval.

(gentle music) (gentle music) (upbeat music) Keeping Cook County's Forest Preserves healthy requires a lot more than prescribed burns, and it's more than the county's able staff can handle.

So for years, the Forest Preserve District has relied on volunteer work crews to manage its nearly 70,000 acres.

One of the busiest volunteer operations is at LaBagh Woods on the Northwest Side.

(upbeat music) LaBagh Woods is one of the smaller Forest Preserves in Cook County.

(upbeat music) Jeff Skrentny's been coming here for about 15 years, and despite LaBagh's small size, Jeff and other LaBagh lovers have identified an astonishing variety of life here.

- We know there's more than a thousand things that call this home.

(upbeat music) Plants, animals, slime molds, fungus, butterflies, dragonflies.

It's all here in this 80 acres, tucked in in the Northwest Side of one of the most populous cities, in one of the most populous counties in the United States.

(upbeat music) - [Jay] And when you know a place this well, you take care of it.

(upbeat music) (chainsaw whirs) It's a Saturday workday in March.

The first volunteers to arrive are the Sawyers, specially trained by the Forest Preserve to safely cut down unwanted trees.

- If you look in here now, you just see lots of trees, too many trees.

What we wanna do is try to create a space here that mimics what this used to be, which was more of an oak savanna.

(chainsaw whirs) We can't do this without you guys.

- [Jay] And that takes a lot of work.

(upbeat music) There are roughly 45 volunteer workdays a year at LaBagh.

Today, they'll help remove the fallen trees and other unwanted plants.

(upbeat music) Jamie Doherty has been volunteering here for about five years.

- The first time I came here, we saw deer and birds, and in the middle of the city, I was just like, I was in awe.

- [Jay] Jamie and Jeff are planting sedge seed, grasses that will grow where the invasive plants and trees have been removed.

New native shrubs have been planted nearby.

Not only will this work restore the native ecosystems, it will also create better bird habitat.

- That's how I personally got started doing this, Jay.

It was all about birds.

I would come out to LaBagh Woods to look for birds.

- [Jay] And boy, did he find them.

210 bird species have been identified here, making it one of the area's best places to see migrating birds away from the lakefront.

As unwanted plants are removed, they're burned.

Specially trained volunteer brush pile burners will carefully manage the fire all day.

Much of what's removed and burned is an invasive shrub called buckthorn.

- Buckthorn got its name by the terminal bud, which is on the end of a twig.

It sort of looks like a deer track.

- This is enemy number one.

This is buckthorn.

And this is a wall of buckthorn.

And this is what we're trying to remove here.

And it's long, hard tedious work.

(gentle music) But if you look out, you can see what it looks like when we get rid of it.

- [Jay] Dennis Marton knows LaBagh Woods better than just about anyone.

- I started coming out here when I was 10 years old.

- [Jay] Really?

- Yeah, I grew up in LaBagh.

This was my playground.

We're trying to bring it back and make it what it was.

This is our five star hotel for birds.

(gentle music) - [Jay] There are 1,500 workdays each year throughout the Cook County Forest Preserves.

Raquel Garcia-Alvarez runs the volunteer restoration programs.

They call it stewardship.

- LaBagh is one very popular stewardship community.

So, the stewardship leaders here are very welcoming.

- Radhika Miraglia started volunteering here in 2016.

- I had two young boys who I needed to get out of the house and really was concerned that, living in the city, they weren't going to get the experiences in nature that I did growing up.

It was really kind of a lifesaver for me as a parent.

- Of all the work that gets done in the Forest Preserves, one of the most important things is it brings community together, like-minded people who care about their Forest Preserves.

It's very unique, and it's one of the things that matters most to me.

- [Jay] Nice place you got here.

- Yeah, I like it here, Jay.

It makes me happy.

Yeah, we can hear the planes, and the cars, and stuff, but there's still a lot of peace here.

It's a good place.

It's worth saving.

I'm glad it's here for people.

- [Jay] And I'm glad you're improving it all the time.

- Yeah, it'll be a lifelong gardening project.

(men laughing) (gentle music) (gentle music) (upbeat music) - You can watch any of these stories again, along with 15 years worth of other stories on our website, wttw.com/jayschicago.

And while you're there, tell us what you thought of the show.

I'm Jay Shefsky.

Thanks for watching.

(smooth jazz music) (man whistles) (smooth jazz music) (man whistles)