not calculated to please the nesting bobolinks and sa- 

 vannah sparrows. 



Some mornings, Doug will collect 50 birders for the 

 outing. His will be the largest group, but by no means the 

 only one. Small groups of friends and lone individuals 

 are also about. 



They are attracted by some of the best birding in 

 the Chicago area. Doug's groups have, during the 12 

 years, compiled an aggregate list of 266 species. Included 

 in that total are the first Illinois record for Townsend's 

 warbler, a western bird that you would not expect to see 

 east of Wyoming; a lesser black-backed gull, a bird that 

 does not breed in the Western Hemisphere. 



And there is a long list of somewhat less remarkable 

 but nonetheless very interesting species, like the gos- 

 hawk that spent a good part of the 1984-85 winter 

 on the island, the peregrine falcon that could be found 

 perched at the top of a tall, dead cotton wood for two 

 weeks, or the bald eagle that occupied another tree . 



We owe some of these records to the sheer numbers 



of birders who visit the island. All those eyes make a 

 difference. A rare bird has only a slim chance of slipping 

 through unnoticed at Wooded Island. 



We owe the others to the fact that Wooded Island, 

 while it is not actually a woods, is more thickly planted 

 with trees and shrubs than any other Chicago Park Dis- 

 trict property. It still remains much of the "secluded, 

 natural, sylvan aspect" that the great landscape architect 

 Frederick Law Olmsted wanted. 



Jackson Park was created for the 1893 World's 

 Columbian Exposition, the great fair organized to cele- 

 brate the 500th anniversary of Columbus's discovery of 

 America. The architectural firm of Burnham and Root 

 conceived the overall design for the fairgrounds, and 

 Olmsted, the man who designed New York's Central 

 Park and the Capitol grounds in Washington, had the 

 responsibility for landscaping. Given the state of Jack- 

 son Park, his was a very large job. 



Olmsted thought so little of the Jackson Park site 

 that he tried to convince the fair's organizers to select a 



Observant visitors may glimpse the handsome wood duck ( Aix sponsa) feeding in the quiet lagoon waters. 



16 



Kenneth W. Fink/Bnjce Coleman Inc. New York 



