Natural Habitat Evanston

10/14/2025

09/17/2025

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DN8kSgujEGg/?igsh=NWEzdGU2b205bHRj

05/18/2025

The Arboretum joins Lincoln Park Zoo, Brookfield Zoo Chicago, Chicago Botanic Garden, and Shedd Aquarium in co-signing today’s Chicago Tribune op-ed, opposing proposed changes to the Endangered Species Act. These changes threaten the habitats of endangered plant and animal species, pushing them closer to extinction.

🌳 U.S. forest ecosystems are vital, supporting thousands of species and providing essential services like air purification, water protection, and resilience against extreme weather. Yet, we continue to lose critical forest cover, leading to species extinction.

Our dedicated staff with the Arboretum’s Center for Species Survival for Trees collaborates nationwide to protect and restore these vital ecosystems.

Read the op-ed: bit.ly/4j44rW0

If you’ve ever made a meaningful memory in nature, we urge you to help protect the Endangered Species Act. 📢 Submit your comments against the proposed changes to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service by May 19: bit.ly/3FbeIBR.

03/14/2025

From the Public Domain Review - Illustrations from Maria Sibylla Merian’s stunning Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium (1705), a compilation of sixty elaborate engravings of insects and their floral environs which the naturalist encountered on her travels to the Dutch colony Surinam. ⁠
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Nestled within the pages, we find a fragmentary understanding of indigenous knowledge, the morsels of information which were shared with Merian by members of the enslaved population. Through her interactions, Merian documented indigenous plant names, as well as their traditional medicinal uses, including use of peacock flower (or red bird of paradise) seeds as a natural abortifacient. Merian understood the painful depth and breadth of the abortifacient’s importance while writing Metamorphosis:⁠
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“The Indians, who are not treated well by their Dutch masters, use the seeds to abort their children, so that they will not become slaves like themselves. The black slaves from Guinea and Angola have demanded to be well treated, threatening to refuse to have children. In fact, they sometimes take their own lives because they are treated so badly, and because they believe they will be born again, free and living in their own land. They told me this themselves.”⁠
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Merian returned to Amsterdam in 1701, opening a shop to sell her specimens and engravings. In 1705, Metamorphosis was published. Her engravings served as one of the first natural histories of Suriname, while her depictions of butterflies helped dispel the myth that insects were spontaneously generated out of mud and standing water. As Metamorphosis was shepherded through several editions and translations following Merian’s death in 1717, her work gained a larger audience. In spite of this, the medicinal use of the peacock flower was seemingly ignored. Instead, the plant became increasingly popular as an eye-catching, uncomplicated, ornamental shrub.

03/14/2025

From the Public Domain Review: Details from the three tables that make up Robert Marsham’s “Indications of Spring”, a meticulous record of the season's presence across half a century, from 1736 to 1788, and published by the Royal Society in 1789. ⁠
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Marsham begins the project tentatively with only a few obvious items, such as when he first hears the song thrush and the arrival of the first swallow, entering the date in the appropriate box in the table. It is a few years before he settles into his methodology, developing a full list of twenty-seven items of flora and fauna recorded at home entirely on his own estate in Norfolk, selected so as to cover the whole spring season from winter to early summer. They include the leafing and flowering of hawthorn and the leafing dates of ash, oak, elm, beech, birch, hornbeam, and chestnut trees, as well as the dates on which birds such as the cuckoo and nightingale began to sing. The snowdrop flower is among the earliest things he expects to see. The last anticipated observation of the season is the distinctive calling of the nightjar, which he terms the “Churn Owl”. Marsham continued to record this information until his death at the age of eighty-nine.⁠
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The project was handed down in the family and only came to a halt in 1958 and it is the unbroken long run — 222 years — that gives it lasting scientific worth. There are a few patchy early records for places in the UK, but Marsham’s is the first truly systematic dataset, according to Tim Sparks, a professor of zoology and quantitative biology at the universities of Cambridge, Liverpool, and Poznań. “It is the longest such record for the UK and has been of immense value in determining the variability in spring and in its response to prevailing weather conditions. He inspired many others to do likewise.”8 Marsham’s record stretches back far enough that it can serve as a baseline for the investigation of changes that have already happened in the more recent past as well as for ongoing studies of the present situation.⁠
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More in our essay by Hugh Aldersey-Williams, “From Snowdrop to Nightjar” — visit link in bio and click image.

08/09/2024

We are honored to support Holly Greenberg's incredible initiative of creating 10,000 birds to highlight the issue of bird collisions in Chicago.

This project was featured in the Chicago Tribune news, emphasizing the need for safer cities for our feathered friends.

Feather Friendly is proud to be mentioned as a scientifically proven solution to prevent bird glass collision.

Read more in the Chicago Tribune article.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2024/07/26/bird-building-collisions-chicago-art/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_content=ap_gfsevng6xn

Bird Collisions in the Anthropocene
Chicago Tribune

08/09/2024