Join project volunteers at the weekly Rookery Roost outside the Black-crowned Night Heron Rookery at Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo. Starting around 5 pm usually until around dusk, we'll be standing about midway between Webster (West Gate entrance) and Dickens on Stockton Drive. We're on hand to observe the herons, talk about their behavior, help people to spot them, and to talk about the conservation-focused research underway.
This rookery is largest known rookery in Illinois now, by a large multitude, with the species endangered in the state since 1977, and experiencing continued declines here, in the Great Lakes and Northeast regions of the United States.
The research, with Lincoln Park Zoo's Urban Wildlife Institute, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Illinois Department of Natural Resources, has two main goals:
- understand why the birds are successful nesting at this site
- try methods to encourage these birds to re-diversify their nesting sites
Join us Tuesdays to learn more! We'll keep going until the rookery activity winds down, typically sometime late July into August.
In between, when you're by the rookery, look for people with the cameras and the binoculars outside. Chances are, they might either be some of us, or know about the herons and this project too!
Qwok!!
