Goose Pond

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Goose Pond - Mallard Pond - Swan Pond

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On December 1st, Mark Martin and JD Arnston counted 12,500 mallards, 3,800 Canada geese, and 23 tundra swans at Madison Audubon's Goose Pond. The previous high mallard count was 5,000 mallards by John Romano on November 11, 2010. On December 2nd, Graham Steinhauer and Mark counted 1,149 tundra swans at Goose Pond breaking Carl Schwartz's record of 1,100 set on November 9, 2017. In early afternoon, Mark found a picked cornfield with 1,560 swans about 2.5 miles southwest of Goose Pond. The swans were about .5 miles from Meek Road and Highway I in the middle of about 600 acres of picked corn. Mark returned to Goose Pond and counted 1,050 swans on the pond. Graham watched the swans from the cornfield return to Goose Pond near dusk. The afternoon all time high record was 2,610 tundra swans!

Photo by Arlene Koziol

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Our Pond Runneth Over

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Goose Pond is a prairie pothole, a pond that is fed only by precipitation and run-off. Because of this, Goose Pond water levels change significantly only two or three days a year after a major run-off event. But right now, we’re seeing something we’ve never seen before! Goose Pond is normally four feet deep, but today, it’s at least seven.

Deep snow cover and ice, frozen ground, rain, and high temperatures resulted in record flooding and runoff levels. There is so much water in our above-ground system that you could now kayak from Ankenbrandt Prairie (east of Goose Pond) into Lake Mendota and only have to get out to maneuver around culverts.

Photo by Mark Martin and Sue Foote-Martin

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Rebuilding a Wetland

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On September 10, 2018, after many months of planning and countless meetings and discussions, something big began happening at Goose Pond. Two bulldozers, a large backhoe, and an excavator rolled in Monday evening ready to start moving thousands of cubic yards of soil out of the canary grass dominated wetland. For the next four days, LMS construction worked long hours creating seven wetland scrapes for Goose Pond Sanctuary.

Photo by Arlene Koziol

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One of these is not like the others

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One of these is not like the others

North America’s smallest falcon, the American kestrel, is getting a leg-up in south-central Wisconsin. Four orphaned kestrel chicks were discovered and brought in for rehabilitation, and placed into foster kestrel nests that allowed the chicks to be raised by wild mothers with nestlings their own age. This effort was done in partnership between Madison Audubon, Central Wisconsin Kestrel Research program, and Dane County Humane Society’s Wildlife Center.

Madison Audubon photo

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A snowy owl who almost made it back home

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In January 2018, a snowy owl near Arlington, WI was outfitted with a GPS transmitter and tracked by hundreds of scientists and community members. In April, he was found dead in Benton County, Minnesota. The story of “Arlington”, the snowy owl, is one of science, conservation, and community.

Snowy owls hatch and spend their summers and fall in the tundra of northern Canada, and migrate south in early winter, especially in years of high lemming populations when many young are raised. One particular snowy owl was six months old in December when he stopped to spend the winter near Madison Audubon Society’s Goose Pond Sanctuary and the UW Arlington Agricultural Research Station, 17 miles north of Madison. He was one of thousands of snowy owls that flooded into the northern United States and southern Canada during this snowy owl “irruption year”.

Photo by David Rihn