The City of Chicago as Habitat

Field research on three urban habitats in the city of Chicago, IL (USA): the cemeteries, the community gardens, and the north branch of the Chicago River. Each of these spaces offers something unique in supporting urban biodiversity. We surveyed the cemeteries for cavity-nesting birds, the community gardens for bees, and the Chicago River for aquatic birds to understand how these human-dominated spaces function as habitat. Although not explicitly managed for conservation, urban cemeteries may provide a reserve of dead and dying trees for cavity-nesting birds. We surveyed cavity-nesting birds and their habitat in 18 cemeteries in Chicago. At each location, we examined vegetation, availability of gravestones and monuments for perches, and landscape-level environmental conditions. We tested the importance of these variables for presence of individual bird species, and for overall richness of native cavity-nesting birds. Chicago hosts a robust culture of both community gardens and urban apiculturists (keepers of honey beehives). Western honey bees (Apis mellifera) are not native to North America, and their impact on wild bees is not fully understood. Through interviews with beekeepers and biodiversity surveys in 24 of Chicago’s community gardens (9 with and 15 without beehives), we contributed to this understanding by exploring questions about urban apiculturists’ perceptions and knowledge of wild bees, as well as the impact of urban apiculture on wild bees in community gardens. The Chicago River’s north branch intersects multiple urban land uses, including residential, industrial, commercial, and recreational. The north branch also supports a diversity of birds exploiting a variety of resources and structures along the river as habitat. Here we describe the bird communities along a very urban part of the Chicago River’s north branch. We compare the bird communities in four different sections, representing four different restoration or management styles influenced by land use and demographics. We discuss our results within a social context as well as a conservation context.