Chicago outdoors: Suburban bucks, Jack O’Lantern mushrooms, black crickets and Illinois doves/pigeons

Notes from around Chicago outdoors and beyond.

BUCK OF THE WEEK: UNPLUGGED

Joseph Opoka photographed these bucks Aug. 8 at Brezina Woods in LaGrange Park. “This so represents the beauty of nature in our local forest preserves,” he emailed.

BOTW Unplugged, the celebration of live big bucks around Chicago outdoors, runs as apt in the special two-page outdoors section in the Sun-Times Sports Saturday. To make submissions, email BowmanOutside@gmail.com or contact me on Facebook (Dale Bowman), Twitter (@BowmanOutside) or Instagram (@BowmanOutside).

DALE’S MAILBAG

“The highlight of the day was found a few minutes later growing directly on the ground, several fresh clusters of Jack O’ Lantern mushrooms. Not something you want to eat, as it can be a dreadful sickener, rather this fungus is known for a rather unique property, bioluminescence. The fresh gills emit a faint blue-green glow when your eyes are well adjusted to the dark. Not an effect I found easy to photograph with an iPhone, as the phone’s backlight pretty much eclipsed the mushroom glow, but it was there.” Jay Damm on a mushroom search in Will County

A: I feel privileged to learn from Damm’s outings and reports.

Jay Damm

BIG NUMBER

8: Species of pigeons and doves (Columbidae) officially recorded in Illinois by August, 2022, according to the Illinois Ornithological Records Committee. Included are the extinct passenger pigeon and three accidentals: band-tailed pigeon, Inca dove and common ground-dove.

LAST WORD

“The only other large black cricket in our area is the spring field cricket, but it is a sibling species so similar to the fall field cricket that it can be distinguished only by the season in which it is active. Morphologically and by song, the two are identical.”

Carl Strang, in his “Singing Insects of the Chicago Region”

WILD TIMES

HUNTER SAFETY

Sept. 17-18: Joliet, (815) 727-4811

Sept. 17-18: Momence, (815) 472-4900

ILLINOIS PERMITS

Wednesday, Aug. 31: Final day, applications, public goose and duck permits, first lottery . . . final day, applications for free upland game permits

Thursday, Sept. 1: Dove season opens . . . Early Canada goose season opens . . . First day, applications, public goose and duck blinds, second lottery

WINGSHOOTING CLINICS

Sept. 17-18: Des Plaines SFWA, Wilmington, (815) 423-5326 or click here for more

FISH GATHERING

Wednesday, Aug. 31: Social Night and Brat Fest, Walleyes Unlimited, Fox Lake American Legion Grounds (different site), 6 p.m. (different time), walleyesunlimitedusa.org