Arboretum Diary:
The Grady Tract

"The thrushes were hurrying back to the wood where the blackbird was croaking hoarsely, a sort of neighboring, as if ordering all the birds to keep quiet and go to sleep." Renard, "The Woodcock"









The small parking lot to the Evjue Pines of the Grady Tract, Arboretum, is set right at the cross hairs of some of the heaviest traffic in the city, where Seminole meets the Beltline East, and one couldn't imagine a more unusual spot to locate the beginning of a linkage of Oak Savannahs inside Kettle Moraines and finally a fully restored marshland Prairie.  But that is the unusual jewel of the city, the Arboretum, as it is made up of pockets of restored naturally occurring forms of habitat.  Once past the initial part of the trail, the pines do a nice job of silencing the ongoing traffic and then quickly the fields of oak grubs take over and long stretching knolls of restored oak savannah spread out in holes

and hillocks.  This morning the recently knocked down swaths of forest stand in piles of cherry, walnut and some oak, all soon to be burned away, the same natural process that allowed for the savannah to occur pre-settlement.  Hawks, robins and chickadees the primary birds here this morning, geese in the background and a lone woodpecker pounding in the background.  Down into the Greene Prairie, though a more lively story as the sedge and bulrush begin green and the water subsides enough to reveal the wood planks as walkway through the immaculately restored marshland.  Sandhill Cranes can be common to see in the vast wetland, but today's show is a flock of Goldfinches that stir at my arrival and they playfully disperse into a near by underbrush.  One of the more vibrant birds in north america, the gold finch can be common here all year round, are seedeaters, and like the open edges near creeks and water.  The sun is not out today, so the rest of the Greene Prairie is a bit quieter than it had been in the day past at 60 degrees and sunny, when the Noe Woods, a scattering of pine and oak, was worth a concert ticket.