rahopko's Identifications

Last year, Garland Park became one of my go-to observation spots. It's right next to Cherry Creek, which supports a variety of urban wildlife, and the lake is a stopover point for migrating birds of all sorts.

That is, until a stormwater and flooding diversion project started this spring. The city created a new outfall, adding a couple of features that will eventually add more varied habitat; to do so, though, the project required massive destruction of habitat that was already present. This included scraping the lakeshore to bare earth (and only adding erosion control once our very rainy spring and summer were well underway) and putting cofferdams at either end of the lake, to the detriment of the reeds, cattails, and everything that depended on them. Much of the local crayfish population was killed off, which means the lake won't be a haven for mergansers this year. Likewise, the fish populations suffered from the mud washed into the lake, which means less to attract herons, egrets, cormorants, and pelicans. Songbirds were largely absent this year, as were swallows. Even the Red-winged Blackbirds seemed to give up on nesting in the area. No muskrats or beaver. In fact, the only wildlife that I saw for most of the summer were Canada Geese. Nothing stops them.

Once it was possible to get near the shore, I took the camera get a better idea of how bad the situation was. Multiple species were either noticibly depleted or absent. There were fewer odes than I had seen on my worst day last year. I saw exactly one butterfly, no fingerling fish (which could have been due to the silt in the water), and I've already mentioned the effect on the bird population.

We'll see what happens over the winter and coming spring, but I have a feeling that it's going to be a long while before this place returns to what it was.