Autumn in the Parks: Cudahy Nature Preserve & Falk Park

Falk Park

I had wanted to explore Barloga Woods, a part of Falk Park, for quite a while. It was reputed to be one of the more pristine forested areas in the Milwaukee County Parks system. I drove to the dead end of 20^th Street looking for a way to enter the woods. Houses and private front yards faced the street the whole way, or so it seemed. I consulted the parks system map again. It showed the two sections of Barloga Woods divided cleanly by the private land except for two tiny strips of green that connected to the street somewhere near the middle. I must have missed them.

I drove slowly back and sure enough there was a short space without a yard fronting the street. No sign identified the park and no obvious trail led into it on either side. I parked on the shoulder and chose the more inviting side to the west. Although I never found a trail the ground was remarkably clear of undergrowth. And the canopy was spectacular, like an autumn-hued stained glass ceiling in the cathedral of nature (above and below.)

How fitting, I thought, that this lovely place was so hard to find. Richard Barloga, for whom it was named, had been characteristically reserved and a little hard to penetrate. Unless, that is, you got him started about the native plants of Milwaukee’s natural areas, which were his passion. He knew all the best places and the names of all the species you could find in them. And he devoted his life to protecting them until he died in 2014.

I spent only a short time in the woods. I knew I would have to return for a more thorough exploration. I had already spent hours that morning walking the entire loop trail in the main, easily accessible section of Falk Park. There I had been disappointed in the foliage. I found a few splashes of orange and yellow, but much of the forest was either still green or already gone brown. Knowing where and when to go to see the best autumn colors has been tricky this year.

As I drove away from Barloga Woods I stopped again briefly on 27^th Street. I could see the forest in the distance across a drab landscape of fallow fields (below.) 

Even the canopy at which I had marveled just moments ago was muted. The distant view gave little hint of the natural wonders that could be found on the inside. But what was immediately clear was the pressure of development. A sprawling condominium complex ironically called “Colonial Woods” had already colonized any actual woods that might have been in its place. The fallow field between Barloga Woods and me most likely will follow before too long.

Cudahy Nature Preserve

I “discovered” this magnificent park last spring thanks to Milwaukee County Parks Dept. Natural Areas Coordinator Brian Russart. When I first wrote about it then it was the luxuriant spring flowers that blew me away. So I’ve been waiting with enthusiastic anticipation to see what it would be like in the fall. I went there on Oct. 22 only to find that the forest remained largely green.

I persevered and when I reached the southern edge of the preserve I stepped across the threshold to see what it would look like from the outside. As you can see, the “edge effect” was striking. The south-facing trees were much further along than those inside the forest. (Just as striking, of course, was how abrupt was the transition from forest to lawn.)

A week later I returned and was rewarded with what has so far been the most magnificent display of intense autumn color I’ve seen in Milwaukee this season. The photographs can barely suggest the splendor of being immersed in such a sea of color, which ranged from quickly yellowing shades of green, through gold and on into orange and rusty red.

Cudahy Nature Preserve is located next to one of the flight paths of Mitchell Airport. When the wind is right the planes take off and land almost directly overhead. Periodically one is subjected to the tremendous roar of ascent. But they are mostly invisible from the depths of the forest.

Access to Cudahy Nature Preserve is from College Avenue. This is a view of the preserve from Rawson Avenue, which is to the south. The canopy of the woods is just visible in the background, beyond the truck distribution facility, another reminder that this is an urban wilderness.

This is the sixth in a series of posts about autumn in Milwaukee (with more to come!)

Here are links to the others:

Monarch butterflies on the Mke County Grounds

Mke River Greenway: Riverside and Gordon Parks

Havenwoods State Forest

Greenfield Park

Grant and McGovern

You can also see more photos of Milwaukee's magnificent parks and natural areas in other seasons on my Flickr album.

Cudahy Nature Preserve bursting with spring wildflowers

Where it began at the parking area the upland trail led me through a woods still disappointingly barren. But warm sun shone through the leafless canopy and I was happy just to be out and feeling it on my face. Besides, I had it on good authority that there was a treasure of wildflowers hiding somewhere in this place. I strolled on.

When the land and the trail dipped into a small valley I discovered the promised treasure. Small white flowers--trout lillies, I later learned--spread across the valley floor like a carpet of green with white flecks. Where a thin stream of black water trickled under a plank bridge there were luxuriant bouquets of marsh marigold.

Deeper in the woods, where the soil was moist, a thick, rich stew of skunk cabbage gave the forest floor an intensely green buoyancy. A few of the trees in the under-story were just budding out, adding a complimentary reds to the otherwise somber palette of spring. I was exploring the Cudahy Nature Preserve for the first time, thanks to the recommendation of Brian Russart, Natural Areas Coordinator at the Milwaukee County Parks Department.

Here are a few shots that I took while I wandered, rapt and enchanted in the urban wilderness.

Trout lillies carpet the forest floor

Vole-eye view of trout lillies

Field of skunk cabbage

Skunk cabbage

Field of skunk cabbage

Marsh marigolds in wetland

Upland woods

Budding trees

Purple cress

Oh, I suppose I should mention the noise. Every few minutes I was subjected to the tremendous roar of jet engines as an airliner began its acceleration towards liftoff from Mitchell Field. The end of the north-south runway is right next to the park. Between flights it was very peaceful.

Flight path, adjacent to the preserve

To see more photos of Milwaukee's parks and natural areas, go to my Flickr album.

Warnimont Park gun club update: public hearing today!

Should the Cudahy skeet-shooters remain in Warnimont Park? Should they be allowed to destroy one of the best sites for birding in Milwaukee County?

Speak up at a public hearing Wed. June 3, 2015, at Cudahy Family Library.

The Cudahy Sportsmen’s Club, a skeet-shooting club, have met in Warnimont Park on Lake Michigan for many years, but neighbors increasingly object to the shooting noise and the debris left in the lark and in the lake. The club is requesting a new location in the park, but opponents say the new site is too close to private houses and a hospital. The Audubon Society has voiced strong opposition because of the sensitive ecology of the proposed new site.

Read much more (and see more photos) in my earlier column in Milwaukee Magazine.

        WHAT: Public hearing to discuss whether Cudahy Sportsmen’s Club may remain in Warnimont Park
        WHEN: Wednesday, June 3, from 6:30-8:30 p.m. Public comments will begin at 7:15
        WHERE: Cudahy Family Library, 3500 Library Drive, Cudahy

DIRECTIONS: Take East Layton Avenue to Sweet Applewood Lane. Turn south on Sweet Applewood. Turn east on Barnard Drive and cross RR tracks. The green library building on Library Drive will be visible on your right. Park on Barnard Drive or behind library. (Directions allow for construction in area.)

Milwaukee County parkland threatened by gun club’s plan for shooting range

This story was first published (edited and with fewer photos) as a column for Milwaukee Magazine with the title, A Bullseye View: A Milwaukee County park on Lake Michigan may be threatened by a Cudahy gun club’s new shooting range.

A persistent, hollow rat-a-tat-tat echoed from somewhere unseen, deepening the woods. Clearly a woodpecker; seemingly a large one. Then, close by, a lighter tapping drew my eye upwards. Short bursts, like stitching, repeated at irregular intervals. A small black and white downy woodpecker flitted along the tree line next to the trail. Suddenly it was directly overhead, tapping a dead branch. In a moment it was gone. Wildlife enthusiasts live for such ephemeral moments.

I had come to Warnimont Park in early April with my friend Karen Johnson, a birder who—unlike me—can tell a downy woodpecker from a red-bellied one just by the sound it makes. We continued along the bike path, listening, looking for movement amongst the trees, bright with morning sun but still gray and leafless in the lingering Wisconsin winter. The light, lively chatter, Karen said, was mostly chickadees that have been around all winter. Their bright chirps vary from a high-pitched, serene “sweet-tee” to the occasional, more urgent “chick-a-dee-dee-dee” for which they are named.

Although it is early in the season we were hoping to hear and see a few of the migrating birds that congregate in Warnimont on their annual trek north from distant wintering areas. We have two reasons for coming to this particular park. The relative wildness of the middle section of the park along with a diversity of habitats make it one of the premier locations in Milwaukee County for birders. For my part, I wanted to see what might be lost if a controversial plan to create a shooting range in the middle of it is approved.

At its north end, next to Warnimont Golf Course, the park currently has a shooting range that is slated to close. Operated by the 83-year old Cudahy Sportsmen’s Club (CSC), the range has been used for decades by gun-owners and, occasionally, by local law-enforcement. It also has been a magnet for controversy. Its bluff-top location causes lead shot to be deposited into Lake Michigan, a serious hazard to aquatic wildlife as well as a violation of both the federal Clean Water Act and Resource Conservation Recovery Act. As a result, the Milwaukee County Parks Department finally terminated the CSC’s lease in November, 2014.

When it faced identical circumstances, the Milwaukee Gun Club, once located on the lakeshore at the north end of Lincoln Memorial Drive, was compelled to close in 1992. At Warnimont, the Parks Dept. granted the club a one-year extension, allowing operations to continue with the stipulation that steel be used instead of lead shot. But a new controversy looms over the club’s plan to relocate.

Karen and I continued to walk along the winding Oak Leaf Trail. She abruptly raised her binoculars to identify a small, yellowish shape that shot across our path. A golden-crowned kinglet, she tells me with relish, an early migrant. The woodland thins and opens into a broad meadow dotted with low shrubs. Joggers and cyclists swerve around us on the trail.

We head off into the meadow on a dirt path, following a stuttering call that Karen identifies as a song sparrow. Before long we are doubly rewarded. We spot the song sparrow among brambles and then farther along a dark-eyed junco perched atop a leafless bush.

Individually, the woodland and the meadow provide excellent cover and distinct habitats for a wide variety of local and migrating birds. Together, however, they create a remarkably diverse ecosystem, one that’s hard to match in Milwaukee County. The convergence of two habitats, such as the woods and the meadow, creates what naturalists call an ecotone or a point of transition. The mingling of species that occurs in an ecotone makes for a particularly rich environment for wildlife. This is what draws so many birders to Warnimont.

The Cudahy Sportsmen’s Club would like to create its new shooting range smack in the center of this county park’s exquisite and irreplaceable natural area. According to CSC president Tom Ahmad, the design of the range would include six trap and skeet machines, a tall shot curtain and an earth berm between the range and the bluff. Also, unlike the current range, a chain-link fence would surround the new one. The curtain and berm are necessary to protect off-road cyclists, hikers and dog-walkers who frequent the bluff-top path. They also would facilitate clean up of plastic shot wads and broken clay targets, which has been another point of contention at the current site. Bright, often toxic fragments of targets litter the steep, deeply eroded escarpment and plastic wads drift onto popular beaches below.

To the untrained or utilitarian eye, a meadow in a park might seem like the ideal place to develop—unruly grass in an already open space. That’s one of the reasons upland meadows and prairies are among the most endangered habitats in the country. But many bird species require precisely those conditions. Its proximity to the Lake Michigan flyway makes Warnimont Park especially attractive to seasonal migrants. The prospect of bulldozing this exceptional landscape—a jewel in Milwaukee County’s park system—has ignited passionate opposition.

Members of the local chapter of the Audubon Society are incensed. The chapter has posted a petition online opposing the proposed location of the shooting range, addressed to County Supervisor Jursik, whose jurisdiction includes Cudahy. The petition has over 500 signatures. And birders are not the only vocal opponents.

Jursik says that she has received calls from people opposed to the proposal “for all kinds of reasons.” Park neighbors are alarmed that the already disturbing noise of shooting would be moved closer to homes near S. Lake Dr. Aurora St. Luke’s South Shore Hospital on S. Lake Dr. is “very concerned” about it, Jursik says.

The gun club proposal, which has not yet been formally submitted, would clear cut a very sensitive ecological area of mixed conifers, hardwoods, and meadow—and one of the highest points on the western shore of Lake Michigan. It also would move the heavily used Oak Leaf Trail away from the rugged scenery along the bluff to a new route adjacent to S. Lake Dr. thus diminishing the recreational experience. The vast majority of those users have not heard of the proposal and therefore have not weighed in on the controversy.

Gun club members have framed their position as a gun rights issue. “This is totally false,” says Jursik. “It has nothing to do with second amendment rights.” The issue is appropriate land use in a beautiful public park.

When the plan was first announced the club mounted a highly visible public relations campaign to muster support, enlisting the aid of talk radio. After an initial flurry of calls from club supporters, says Jursik, “in the last 2-3 months, all of my calls have been in opposition.”

Milwaukee County is under no obligation to provide a place for the gun club, according to Guy Smith, chief of operations for Milwaukee County Parks. The club has other options on private land. Jursik says the Winchester Gun Club in Racine is willing to accommodate them.

Parks Director John Dargle expects a decision to be made by June, 2016, once a detailed proposal is submitted and after engineering and environmental impact studies and public hearings are completed.

Although I’ve cycled through Warnimont on the Oak Leaf Trail many times, I had never stopped to explore it until I learned of this issue. In the past month I’ve returned several times. I’ve seen the snow melt away and the first blush of spring buds begin to green the woodlands. Thanks to several members of the Audubon Society I’ve seen a wider variety of birds than I knew existed—and heard many more that went unseen. I’m looking forward to May when the buds will have opened, grasses will have greened, and a full array of migratory birds will arrive. 

For more photos (along with captions) from Warnimont Park, click here.