|
Chicago's
Montrose Point Gets Enhancements for Migratory Birds and
Rare Native Plants
On
April 13, the Chicago
Park District will unveil its $465,000 Montrose Point
enhancement project. With input from Chicago-area birders,
the park district has planted numerous bur oaks, jack pines,
plum and hawthorn trees to enhance habitat for more than
300 species of migratory birds.
Montrose
Point is a legendary birding hotspot. A 150-yard stretch
of trees and bushes left behind by the Army in 1970, the
famous Magic
Hedge (CW, Spring ’98) harbors waves of migratory
birds including the fox sparrow, hermit thrush, golden-crowned
and ruby-crowned kinglet, the rarer Connecticut warbler
and LeConte’s sparrow.
The
new trees, planted last fall, are grouped around the perimeter
of Montrose’s central meadow. Visitors can meander
along mown grass paths and a series of smaller paths. Perennials
such as milkweed, black-eyed Susan, little blue stem, and
side oat gamma have been planted.
The
natural dunes now forming on Montrose Beach (News,
CW, Fall ’00), where rare plants have begun to colonize,
are now a Chicago Wilderness Plants of Concern (POC) study
site. Last summer, in recognition of how sensitive this
area is, the Chicago Park District installed two bilingual
(Spanish/English) dune habitat protection signs to educate
beachgoers and regulate activity in the vegetated portion
of the beach. "We are very excited about the plant and animal
species we’re seeing on this increasingly high quality
beach fragment," says Leslie Borns, bird conservationist
and POC monitor. "The new signs give people a framework
for understanding that there is something different, of
conservation significance, going on here."
Other
recent improvements include a stone birdbath that releases
a constant trickle of water and attracts migratory birds,
stone stair access to the beach and revetment work. The
district will continue to improve the bird sanctuary habitat
through habitat restoration and monitoring. (A proposed
plan will be available for public comment sometime in March.)
In
a little more than a year and a half, the Chicago Park District
has significantly improved four migratory stopping points
along Lake Michigan: Lincoln Park Bird Sanctuary, South
Shore Cultural Center (News,
CW, Fall ’01), Wooded Island in Jackson Park (News,
CW, Fall ’01) and Montrose Point. "This accomplishment
is a nice tribute to Mayor Daley’s influence on the
priorities of bird conservation and green space preservation,"
notes Mary Van Haaften, natural areas manager with the Chicago
Park District.
—
Alison Carney Brown
|
