Bird & Nature Blog
A clutch of the latest stories from Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance
Spring is prescribed burn season here at Faville Grove, and across southern Wisconsin. There's a lot that goes into a prescribed burn: We take into account the relative humidity, soil moisture, wind speed and direction, temperature, and sky cover. We also need to notify neighbors, the county sheriff, and round up a crew of volunteers on days of a burn. Setting fire to the landscape can be a thrilling experience, but the best burns are those that are boring--excitement means something unplanned has occurred and unplanned events with fire are not a good thing!
You can see in these photos that we only burn when conditions are ideal for what we're trying to accomplish; in both photos with the road, you'll see that the wind is sending the smoke billowing away from the driving lanes, which is necessary for us to conduct a burn along these areas.
Photo by Drew Harry
Goose Pond Sanctuary is a cornerstone of Madison Audubon, an exceptional bird-watching site in south-central Wisconsin, and a symbol of Wisconsin's strong conservation legacy. It has grown from 60 acres that included much of the west pond-with-potential into a flourishing 660-acre sanctuary for native habitats, birds, mammals, insects, and amphibians, and the people who love them.
For some of us, Goose Pond has been a frequent destination for decades; for others, Goose Pond is a new-found gem. Regardless, if you have a favorite memory of Goose Pond Sanctuary, help us celebrate it's 50th year of conservation, research, and education by sharing it below. We will showcase these stories at the various celebrations throughout the year.
Robert Lerch (left) lived at Goose Pond for 20 years before selling to Madison Audubon in 1968. He reminisces with Mark Martin, Sanctuary resident co-manager. Image from MAS December 1994 newsletter
Thank you for your love for Goose Pond Sanctuary and the many hands that have helped shape it.
Please your Goose Pond Sanctuary photographs to Brenna Marsicek (bmarsicek@madisonaudubon.org) with a short explanation. By submitting photos, you give Madison Audubon permission to use them in education and outreach materials. Thank you!
I’ve had so many wonderful experiences as the Goose Pond Sanctuary Land Steward. Some memories stand out and seem to define my time here, while others lose all their sharpness and instead coalesce into something like background music, except that this background music is made up of whistling swans and rustling prairie grasses. I’ve attempted to share a bit of both of these types of memory here. I hope that these reflections will add something to your own savored memories of nature and conservation.
Photo by Maddie Dumas
Some of the most important work organizations do is what the public doesn't see. True to that sentiment is the work of Marge Burke Streitferdt, our Keystone Volunteer this month, who is Madison Audubon's editor extraordinaire. Marge spends uncountable and invaluable hours combing through our quarterly newsletters in search of errors, a talent and hobby that few of us possess and many of us envy. With each newsletter we publish, we count our lucky stars for Marge.
"After retiring as customer communications manager for a large midwestern gas and electric utility, I launched my next career as free-lance writer," says Marge. "Part of my paying job was helping fellow employees with their writing and editing. When Madison Audubon was looking for newsletter help several years ago, I volunteered my assistance."
Within my first month of working at Madison Audubon, I got to see Marge's prowess first-hand when I sent her a draft of our fall 2016 newsletter. It was a both humbling experience but one I could laugh through. Her red pen caught every typo, indentation error, and grammatical mistake with sniper-like accuracy, but her humor and quirky comments made the exercise both educational and fun. Striking that balance takes rare talent, indeed!
"It’s a good outlet for my frequent urges to sneak around town at night with a can of red paint to fix the errors that pop up regularly on billboards and signs (restruant? taco’s? say it isn’t so). I figure volunteering with MAS keeps me out of jail," Marge jokes.
To learn how you can volunteer with Madison Audubon (and stay out of jail too), visit our volunteer page.
Written by Brenna Marsicek, Director of Communications
