Grand River Marsh Wildlife Area is a Bird Watcher’s Paradise

With over 200 species recorded, being home to endangered Whooping Cranes, and tens of thousands of swallows congregating for staging and stopover in late summer, fall, and spring, Wisconsin’s Grand River Marsh Wildlife Area is a bird watcher’s paradise. And, being a 30-minute walk away, Adeline’s House of Cool has become a nesting location for avid and adventurous bird watchers.

Source: National Audubon Society
Audubon protects birds and the places they need, today and tomorrow.

Wisconsin Grand River Marsh-Grassland is an important Bird Area (IBA) that encompasses the Grand River Marsh Wildlife Area and the western two-thirds of Lake Puckaway, including the Pancake Island wetland-island complex.

This area is part of the bed of Glacial Lake Oshkosh and is underlain with silt, peat, and muck soils of widely varying depths (Pohlman et al. 2006). Topographic relief is slight, with extensive flat areas and barely rolling uplands that have droughty, sandy soils.

The low, flat basins are vegetated with a mosaic of complex natural communities, including sedge meadow, wet prairie, and open bog. In the Grand River Wildlife Area, constructed dikes have impounded the water into flowages, and this area is characterized by a richer sedge meadow flora.

In the past, there were attempts to convert the land to agricultural production. The purchase and subsequent management of the uplands for permanent grass cover have created an excellent mix of habitats for grassland birds.

Vegetative cover types found within this IBA include southern sedge meadow, wet prairie, shrub-carr, oak barrens, oak forest, planted grasslands, deep-water and shallow marsh, and some managed cropland.

Grand River Marsh Ornithological Summary

Grand River Marsh/Grassland is home to a long list of bird species, including numerous high conservation priority species, including the endangered Whooping Crane.

Over 200 species have been recorded here (Schultz 2000), with grassland, shrub, sedge meadow, and marsh species all well represented. This site is considered a grassland habitat core, with up to 3,000 acres of suitable habitat available. A robust population of Henslow’s Sparrow breeds here as well as Grasshopper Sparrow, Bobolink, and Eastern Meadowlark. Short-eared Owls are seen here in late fall, winter, and early spring.

Sedge meadow species include large numbers of Sedge Wrens as well as American Bittern, Northern Harrier, and Black Tern. Shrub and oak savanna habitats harbor Red-headed Woodpecker, Willow Flycatcher, Brown Thrasher, and Field Sparrow.

Breeding colonies are found here for Great Egret, Great Blue Heron, and Forster’s Tern. Marsh habitats also support Blue-winged Teal, Least Bittern, Virginia Rail, Marsh Wren, and Yellow-headed Blackbird. The site is a significant concentration area for waterfowl, shorebirds, colonial and non-colonial waterbirds, and land birds.

Over twenty species of ducks and geese, fourteen species of shorebird, many loons, grebes, rails, herons, egrets, pelicans, thousands of Sandhill Cranes, and tens of thousands of swallows all congregate at this site for staging and stopover in late summer, fall, and spring.