Wild Saturday (Readers' turn) 3-1-08

The regalness of eagles and wolves brings out readers.

Before we get to the reader’s wild notes, two clean-up items.

Wild Saturday will become Wild Sunday from now on. Spring and family limit my Saturdays.

And here’s an update on a canine killed near Lena in northwest Illinois last month. Glen Kruse, head of Illinois’ divison of wildlife heritage, e-mailed, “We will get it to the [U.S.] Fish and Wildlife Service and can then only wait until they have a chance to do the analysis. Depending on the backlog of work at their labs, that could be weeks or months.”

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Now to wild things from readers.

Alan Anderson, an avid birder and e-mailer from Des Plaines, who sighted a bald eagle at Busse Woods Friday afternoon. Sent a follow-up note of some interest, especially to people who visit or fish Busse Woods.

I’ve had reports of eagles at every river in the area this winter, but don’t remember one from Busse. That would be interesting to know, especially since there was more ice fishing at Busse this year than most years.

IBET is a bird-watching list for Illinois.

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John Heneghan, another faithful e-mailer, knows I love the comeback of wolves and sent a link to a cool ongoing Wolf-Moose winter study on Isle Royale.

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A couple weeks ago, Neal Steinken responded to a February Wild Saturday with this inquiry: “`I have heard recent (Feb 20, 2008) word of mouth that residents have seen a `wolf’ in Mokena. Has anyone heard any details or investigated?”

My followup question was whether it was from people who know a wolf from a big coyote

And he replied, “They indicated they knew the difference, but by some of the descriptions of behavior it sounds more like a hybrid or misidentified dog. The strange thing is that apparently more than a handful of people have said they have seen it.”

I was not able to track down anything on that report.

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And we keep looking.