Renwick Lake Preserve Heron Rookery - family field trip

Not too long ago our Relief Society (women's organization at church) made a visit to a bird refuge not too far from our house.  I decided to go because, 1)we always drive by and see these huge nesting platforms in the middle of a lake and wonder about them and 2)since my family is into "birding" now, I thought this might be something they would like.  So I went and I am so glad I did!  Not only did I learn a lot but I basically found a lovely little gem of a place about 20 minutes from our home.

After my visit, on our first free Saturday, I took the whole family for visit.  The refuge is called the Renwick Lake Preserve and is in Oswego, Illinois.  In addition to the birds, the "lake" itself has an interesting history.  It used to be a gravel pit, but in the late 1800s the digging uncovered a natural spring and subsequently filled the pit with water, creating a lake.  For a time the lake was used for recreation---swimming, fishing, ice skating.  They even built a hotel and restaurant on it's banks.  Unfortunately, this same hotel and restaurant dumped it's garbage and sewage right into the lake so that by the 1920s the lake was too polluted to be usable and the lake and land around around it were basically left to nature. 

There were a few small islands in the lake covered in trees and other vegetation.  And eventually birds started using the islands to nest.  Three major types of birds would come every year to nest -- Great Blue Herons, Cormorants, and Great Egrets.  There were so many birds that their droppings killed all the vegetation on the islands, so that is when the State of Illinois stepped in and declared it a preserve and built wooden nesting platforms for the birds.  Basically, the islands are a bird nursery, but from a distance they look like the sails of a haunted pirate ship.

Not my photo, it's taken from the Preserve website.  This place
is also popular with nature photographers

Now the area is protected and during the nesting season you can only visit on certain days at certain times, and many of the trails around the lake are closed so as not to disturb the birds.  When you do go visit however, there are volunteer "birders" there with really nice scopes so that you can view the birds. 

Now with all that background out of the way, I have to tell you we loved our family field trip.  It was so fun.  There are thousands of birds and they are huge.  A Great Blue Heron stands over 5 feet tall, yep just about the same height as me!  We could see the birds' nests very clearly.  We were also able to see the parents fusing, feed and taking care of their fuzzy headed babies in their nests.  It really is interesting to see so many birds of different kinds all nesting together.  They sort of have a pecking order or as the visitor center at the rookery said an "apartment building" arrangement.  The Great Blue Heron's are on the top floor, Cormorants on the middle, and Egrets on the bottom.  These birds fly south for the winter but come back every spring during breeding season.  They come from as far away as Argentina. 

Another plus was that we saw a bunch of other birds and animals while at the preserve such as turtles sunning on the islands with all the birds and turkey vultures flying overhead.  While we were there we got lots of good advice about backyard birding from the volunteers and even some more suggestions for birdwatching field trips in the future.