Into the Wild

Almond Marsh

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Lake County, IL

Don’t take the easy way to get to Almond Marsh. Although this Lake County forest preserve is readily accessible by major highways, take the slow backroads of Casey and Almond Roads instead. Drive past working farms and the preserved open spaces of the 3,200 acre Liberty Prairie Reserve, where 292-acre Almond Marsh Forest Preserve is one of the “noisier” gems.

“Loud” is the way Lake County Forest Preserve restoration ecologist Ken Klick describes the marsh on the north side of the preserve. Sandhill cranes, belted kingfishers, pied-billed grebes, and green herons provide a daily concert while spring migrants such as northern shovelers and pintails, green-winged teals, hooded mergansers, and buffleheads glide and listen. In the oaks to the west and south of the wetland, a variety of warblers, bluebirds, indigo buntings, and rose-breasted grosbeaks add higher notes to the chorus.

In the early 1980s, a neighbor on Almond Road disrupted a tile line draining through his property to create a small pond in his backyard. Over the following decade, an “accidental” wetland slowly grew between his land and Route 120 — land that the Forest Preserve District purchased in 1990. By the late 1990s, the rising water had killed large cottonwoods in the middle of the marsh, attracting a nesting colony of great blue herons. In recent years, green herons and double-crested cormorants moved in, increasing the housing stock to about 40 nests.

While the “hemi-marsh” and its rookery on the south side of Route 120 are highly visible to passersby, the actual Almond Marsh hides away as it meanders around the south half of the site. Dedicated as an Illinois Nature Preserve in 1990, this 110-acre marsh and sedge meadow complex is home to at least ten sedge species including beaked sedge and the rare wheat sedge. Oak woods, savanna, and old fields ring the sedge meadow and marsh.

“You really get the feeling here of what the early settlers called oak openings,” says Klick. Shooting stars, cow parsnip, and wild phlox bloom in the wide spaces between the middle-aged red and white oaks and the centuries-old bur oaks.

Access to Almond Marsh Forest Preserve — also home to Forest Preserve offices — is very limited. A small employee parking lot provides the best view of the rookery, but it is open only on weekdays during work hours (roadside parking is dangerous and inadvisable). Since the preserve has no formal trails, the best way to see Almond Marsh is to join co-stewards Jerry Kolar and Don Wilson on a volunteer restoration workday. They gather from 9 to 11 a.m. on the third Saturday of each month between March and December. Or join one of the district’s regular guided tours; this spring, they’re leading a “birdwatching primer” at Almond Marsh on March 26. To volunteer or join a tour, call (847) 968-3321 or visit the Lake County Forest Preserves Web site.

— Gary Mechanic