Well, it almost didn’t happen, but it turned out to be a great morning on the trail.
Hadn’t heard from anyone as of last night, but this morning I found an email from Brian Bassler. I scrambled to get a bucket of tools and head over. Brian, his son, and Larry Hodak were there, already scouting things out and picking up trash. Brian’s wife and daughters joined us soon after.
We all walked the trail together. Larry pointed out lots of different plants. Cathy and the girls gathered and scattered columbine seeds. We pulled some grape vines off some shrubs and tried to reroute them in new directions. The park crew had done a lot of trimming of grasses and other things overgrowing the trail and we opened a few spots that were missed or already regrown. In the middle of the trail, we found two huge (one 12″ and one bigger) branches fallen. Luckily landing just off the trail, cuz they’re too big to move without cutting into pieces. We cut some of the cow parsnip that was just ready for seed gathering and knocked a bunch of that seed around the area opened (to sun) by the falling.
We discovered at least two and perhaps as many as six areas where the park crew had sprayed herbicide to clear small patches, each not more than two square yards. When we scheduled this day, we thought we might have a chance to plant new patches of natives in these areas. Probably the crews will finish these up. If we can get some advanced notice, we might be able to get a few community members out there to do it. (see Trail Management Plan.)
We picked up what seemed like not too much trash along the way. Making a complete pass, south to north. Larry pointed out and named all kinds of flowers, shrubs, and trees along the way. On the walk back south we fixed as best we could a broken spot in the fence.
One woman stopped to say thanks. Turns out she lives in the condos nearby. Hoping to see her and her neighbors out at future trail days.
Total volunteers: 7. Total hours: 21.
Categories: Trail Days · Vols & Hours
In the recent rains, the river rose briefly but significantly, perhaps as much as ten feet. Much of the trail was underwater for some time. On Saturday, July 11th, we’ll do what we can to clean up after that. Some of the timbers that line the trail need attention, for instance.
The Park District is also initiating a new set of projects along the fenced west edge of the nature area. The plan is to clear a number of small (3′x3′) areas and plant them with interesting native species. On Saturday, we’ll help with the beginning of some of this planting work. More on the Park District plan in a future posting.
There will no doubt be weeding (invasives removal) and trash collecting to be done, as well.
We’ll gather at the south end of the trail about 9am and plan to be at it until about noon. Come for any or all of that.
Please mailto:info@ronanparktrail.com if you’re going to come, so that we can plan to have enough tools and gloves and suc but
Categories: Trail Days
Park District Volunteer Stewardship Coordinator, Becky Schillo, and Natural Areas Manager, Zhanna Yermakov, came out today and walked through the Park District’s management plan for the Ronan Park Trail area. Here are some of the highlights…
1. At the south entrance to the trail area, there is a big spread of low-growing sumac. It’s a fairly common landscape architecture feature, but it’s not making the most best welcome at the entrance. It’s to be replaced with more interesting mix of native shrubs.
2. From the south trailhead to the playground halfway north, a contractor crew will herbicide some small, 1-2 sq ft, areas of orchard grasses. These will be cleared and replanted with more interesting natives. The grasses were planted years ago, when it was originally hard to grow on the top part of the trail area, but now there is enough cover there to start mixing in other things.
3. Remove wire mesh and prune new shoots on trees near the playground. (Vols can do this.)
4. Trimming back things like roses and (very tall) cup plant along the south half of the fence line boundary.
5. Remove select invasive mulberry trees in favor of native oaks.
Along the way, we also noticed… indigo, rose, raspberry, wild onions, cup plant, rye grasses, sedges, golden alexander, solomon seal, cow parsnip, columbine.
Total Volunteers: 1. Total Hours: 2.
Categories: Plants · Trail Care · Vols & Hours
Well, the huge team of Lukie Marriott and I gathered at the trail about 9am last Saturday. We started at the north end and scoured the full length south to Lawrence and then back the other side of the trail, picking up trash, pulling garlic mustard and thistle and bindweed, and noticing that there seems to be more wild parsnip popping up this year than last.
We only found garlic mustard in scattered spots, though there is a big chunk of the west side of the trail where all the garlic mustard was little shoots off of bigger roots. We didn’t have proper tools, so there we couldn’t get the bigger roots. Next time! …as they are sure to make themselves noticeable again. The tall, thick patch that the Lab School kids pulled a couple of weeks ago, on the far southwest edge of the park (just north of the trees and bushes) looked totally clear. No new flowering.
Lots of columbine blooming, some other teeny tiny white clustered flowers, and many things we couldn’t identify. And the weather was perfect. We were finished before it got too hot. I walked home through the park proper, catching last bits of trash. Hopefully a really clean park discouraged some would-be litterers over the long weekend.
Next trail day sometime later in June. Stay tuned here for details. OR… join our mailing list for email alerts.
Total volunteers: 2. Total hours: 6.
Categories: Plants · Trail Days · Vols & Hours
‘Tis the season. We’ve had two groups out already in this last week. And now our first community volunteers day on the trail… Saturday, May 23rd, 9AM to Noon or so. See the Volunteers page for details. And come join us on the trail!
Categories: Needed · Trail Care
Here’s the latest from Annemarie Rand on the birds at Ronan Park:
I went to Ronan Park early on Sunday morning, May 10, to see what migrants were coming through. Since our winter was so long and brutal, it’s nice that spring is here and if you like birds, this is the time to get out and see some beauties!
Springtime is the time for the brightly colored warblers, the jewels of the bird world. They are tiny and quick, but their colors will make you gasp. I was able to see a Nashville warbler, a Black and White warbler, Magnolia warblers and a Palm warbler.
There was a hermit thrush, nesting American Robins, a Gray Catbird, and I heard a Rose-breasted Grosbeak. (I couldn’t see him though, so he must have been way up in the tree.)
There are a lot of Canada geese with babies. They like to walk right on the path, so if you encounter them, please don’t make them feel threatened in any way. They can get quite nasty and will attack. My advice is to stand very still, admire their babies, then get out of their way!
The Belted Kingfishers were flying overhead being very vocal. I also saw and heard White-crowned Sparrows and White-throated Sparrows. The Black-crowned Night Heron was under the old pumping station as usual. There were a lot of Barn Swallows and Chimney swifts as well.
I’m waiting to see the Red-headed Woodpeckers again. They weren’t there yet. I’m really hoping they come and nest again in the dead trees.
In March, I was invited by Audubon-Chicago Region to attend a talk given by National Audubon’s Senior Scientist for important bird areas. This scientist has a program that he would like Audubon-Chicago Region to pilot for him. I was thrilled to be asked to attend the meeting and it was very interesting. I don’t know exactly what the decision will be, but I was able to speak a bit about Ronan Park and the great improvements that have been made there and the wonderful birds that I see. Audubon-Chicago Region knows that I would be willing to do this program at Ronan Park if they and the Chicago Park District decide it’s something they want to pursue.
Categories: Wildlife
Thanks to the Friends of the Chicago River and their 17th annual River Day. Volunteers worked on 60 different sites last Saturday. Ronan Park Nature Trail was one of those sites, and the trail is newly mulched as a result.
Categories: Trail Care
Tagged: Volunteers
A big thanks to the 120 students from the University of Chicago Lab School, for coming out this morning and picking up piles of trash and pulling out aggressively invasive garlic mustard flowers. Half of the group went on to River Park just north of Ronan, while half spread out, scanned and cleaned the whole of Ronan Park. When they reached the top of the park, they all came back along the river trail, picking trash and garlic mustard into bags.
Maybe it’s just early in the season, but there were only scatterings of garlic mustard flowers. One big patch of it in the park proper, southwest corner, in a low spot, near the west fenceline, just north of the grove of trees. That was knee high and thriving. We found one bigger patch between the trail and the river, almost at the very top of the trail, but much of that was less than 12″ tall. Then mostly only scatterings a few to a couple dozen plants, only here and there, along the rest of the trail. So maybe we’re still doing okay on that.
Total volunteers: 120. Total hours: 240.
Categories: Plants · Trail Care · Vols & Hours
It took a while, but finally have gotten around to posting additional Plant Notes.
Categories: Plants · WebsiteNotes
