Spring 1999

Illinois' largest remant of prairie provides excellent nesting habitat

Grundy County, Illinois

Living large is more than just a fashionable expression at Goose Lake Prairie. This is the largest remnant of prairie left in Illinois; you might say, what's good at the Goose is good for its grandeur.

Goose Lake Prairie was once a part of rolling grasslands that stretched from Indiana to the Rockies. Now composed of 2,468 acres of varied prairie and marsh communities, it is an important habitat for birds, prairie flora, and even rare insects.

Located 50 miles southwest of Chicago and one mile west of the place where the Des Plaines and the Kankakee Rivers converge to form the Illinois, the site includes a 1,500-acre dedicated Illinois nature preserve. As the coyote runs, it's right next door to the 1,800-acre Heidecke State Fish and Wildlife Area, Grant Creek Prairie, and the adjacent 19,000 acre Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie. In fact, it's part of the proposed Grand Prairie Parklands which would take in a whopping 60,000 acres.

Going to the Goose is like peering into the past — when 60 percent of Illinois was prairie. The 1,000-acre lake, which gave this area its name, is no longer. Settlers mostly drained it in the hopes of obtaining more farmland after scraping its underlying clay surface for pottery and fire brick. Marsh Loop Trail goes into the nature preserve, where Goose Lake once lay. Though drained, the moisture of this land prevented it from ever being farmed. The Prairie View Trail is a 3.5-mile loop that passes through low-lying marshland, farmland, and a varied prairie landscape.

As the wind breaks against the bristled tall grass, a precious whispering symphony envelopes the Tallgrass Nature Trail. The trail has two loops: a 1-mile jaunt or a 3.5-mile study. Often known as "big blue" or "turkeyfoot," big bluestem grass has been used to feed livestock in other settings. Here it's just one of the big boys, along with cordgrass, Indian grass, and switch grass. Cordgrass, head and shoulders above the rest, grows up to 12 feet. Readily visible from most nature trails at Goose Lake, switch grass is another common native prairie grass found here. Its bending green stems reach 7 feet in some instances. Growing up to 8 feet, with reddish-brown tassles that bloom in August, Indian grass is also in abundance along the trail.

The Prairie's grassland expanse provides excellent nesting habitat for endangered or threatened birds, such as the upland sandpiper and Henslow's sparrow. The marshes and prairies also harbor Virginia rails, least bitterns, northern harriers, red-winged blackbirds, great blue herons, belted kingfishers, wood ducks, warblers, eastern kingbirds, catbirds, and blue-winged teals.

For more information, call (815) 942-2899.

— Christopher Collier