Exhibits

Murals

• The east wall consists of the "How Do You Measure Up?" mural that encourages visitors to compare their own height with various native Illinois prairie plants.
• The largest section, on the south wall, depicts forty-six species of wildlife that are native to the DuPage County region. Many of them are small and hard to find.
• The west wall, adjacent to the entrance, is a continuation of the main mural featuring species that once were common in Illinois, but are now endangered or extinct.

"How Do You Measure Up?" was one of the original exhibits at the Nature Center when it opened in April of 1994. Artist Rob Sula, who also produced the seasonal "Everchanging Oak" exhibit that currently hangs above the fireplace, is shown here in front of the mural.

In May of 2004, local artists Diane Stapleton and Nanette Bonugli were commissioned to design and create a mural for the south wall of the Nature Center.

The first three pictures show the mural as it was being painted. The following pictures show the mural as it appears today and close-ups of a few of the animals depicted.

This mural section, which was added a few years after the main mural, depicts various species that are either extinct in Illinois (and in some cases on Earth!) or considered to be threatened or endangered.

The Carolina parakeet, passenger pigeon, and eastern elk were all eradicated in the late 18th or early 19th centuries. (Other subspecies of elk still survive in the western U.S., but the eastern subspecies is gone.) The passenger pigeon once darkened the skies over Illinois in flocks numbering in the millions or even billions. Settlers wrote of seeing flocks that took hours to pass by overhead.

The bobcat and peregrine falcon, on the other hand, represent two species that had been completely eradicated from Illinois but have made a recovery in recent years, bobcats in forests downstate, and peregrines on the "cliffs" of downtown Chicago.