Suburban Wild

The North Shore suburbs of Chicago, teeming with housing developments, commuters and pollution, are also home to a wide variety of wildlife. Naturalist Friederici grew up in these suburbs, and, for this mixture of memoir and natural history, he returns to his boyhood home along the Lake Michigan shore to write of what he sees, what he remembers and the importance of our connection to the natural world. In 12 highly personal essays, one for each month of the year, Friederici captures the area's ""fleeting scents on the wind, half-heard rustlings of birds among fallen leaves"" while discussing how it has been transformed by the boom in residential development. In March, hearing the honking of geese flying overhead, he realizes that such a sound used to be a harbinger of spring. But no longer: now that hunting is banned in the neighboring ""landscape of golf courses and corporate complexes surrounded by lawns and ponds,"" geese remain in the Chicago area all year long. Friederici does not just describe the beauty of nature; he also details the periodic cicada's 17-year life cycle, the decline of the freshwater mussel and why chickadees are less skittish in winter. In chapters on green herons, passenger pigeons, ducks and owls, he does a superb job of blending natural history, evocative description and environmental ethics. (Nov.)