Early in the year yields many trips to the Sand Ridge complex in Calumet City – for wetlands with the year’s earliest flowers, skunk cabbage, and sandy woodland openings with the beginnings of spring ephemerals.
February 28
April 4
April 11
We go to the part of the Salt Creek complex in the northeast corner, often, but here, we approached Brownell Woods from the east side of 394! following the equestrian trail under the freeway.
First you walk through an old plantation,
under the freeway,
and back out on the west side, to some strange sights,
but also some familiar ones.
An unseasonably warm day in November – still autumn leaves falling and a cold-blooded friend out and about.
A gorgeously warm November afternoon yielded a golden IRM, with the last of the asters and goldenrod setting seed.
I started on the trail going north, through the wet prairie-
-and then kept going.
At the old Wisconsin Steel/Acme Coke site I found a new slag for the typology- charcoal briquet slag?! It was all quite dark black (some were also really lightweight), even if the raking sun bleached out some of the photos below. Or maybe this is just some coking byproduct.
It was really quiet and isolated in a sea of Aristida and a few interspersed cottonwoods and willows. I’m quite surprised I didn’t see any deer or other animals about. In fact, I was only surrounded by birds birds birds (mostly dark eyed juncos), in the the many standing dead trees – and a big crabapple – once back at Indian Ridge Marsh.
Do you ever get tired of the bottle gentians? Me neither.
and there is so much else this season, too!
We hadn’t been to the south part of Beaubien in years. We thought we might get a chance to see lots of roosting birds in the trees, but I think we were too early in the evening.
We wanted to get close to the Little Cal so we went down by the railroad tracks, and like most days we CRAC, we thank ourselves for wearing muck boots.
I couldn’t get a good picture of the juvenile bald eagle we saw, but I promise it was there! The trees around this wetland are just the spot to rest and recuperate before going for a hunt over the Little Calumet River.
I’ve spent many months at Marian Byrnes Park- mostly doing research and botanizing. It’s where my favorite slag wetland is, a secret garden hidden behind a lovely woodland stroll. Just a few years ago, this park was pretty overgrown and inaccessible. Now it’s such a gem, with great shaded walking trails in a narrow savanna-esque strip, right off of 103rd.
Out on the slag, we see a human-modified ecosystem, just like the woodland (which of course is a highly managed park) but it’s such an unfamiliar landscape. You see remnants of its recent past as a flydumping mecca and plants that looks like weeds on concrete.
But with little human intervention for several decades in the management of this ecosystem, one could argue it’s more “natural” than the familiar tall trees and open understory along the path.
Black Partridge Woods has beautiful spring ephemerals and real nice topography –geology makes these ravines possible!
Fields of wood betony are just finishing flowering; bumble bees still want them!
Headed out to pull some garlic mustard and then a take mossy retreat.
Calumet Region Adventure Club 