On Saturday, I took a soggy and, in some places icy, walk around Crabtree Nature Center. The Visitors Building is still undergoing renovation work and much of the main trail was closed off for maintenance, so I had to make do with what was available.
There are a lot of very old trees in this Cook County Forest Preserve in Barrington and I think they are especially interesting to see without all their summer foliage.
I found some interesting lichen on one of the old fence rails and was pleased to see that the trail was still open to the Children’s Nature Play area. I’m all for encouraging the young ones to explore and learn about nature although, on this particular day, there were no children around to enjoy it.
I’d been wondering where our local nuthatches had gone to. We haven’t seen them for the past couple of weeks. Apparently they are all over at Crabtree. There were hundreds of them, darting among the trees and flying around the bird feeders.