Just to the west of the Larson Nature Center building, there's a short gravel trail that heads to the west. It heads through some deciduous trees and past some water before hitting a short section of raised boardwalk. The raised boardwalk moves through a shrubby cattail marsh, with a couple of extensions of the boardwalk that provide overlooks of small shallow ponds. It's kind of an interesting area, with cattails and open water mixed in with deciduous trees. It seems to be a habitat Hooded Mergansers really like as I have seen them back here, but traditional cattail marsh wetland birds can also be found here, such as Sora that I've flushed.
The photo below shows the start of the boardwalk. It's a mid-April scene after a horribly snowy and cold winter, so there's not much green yet. But even on this day it was relatively "birdy" walking the boardwalk. It was moving through this section that I've flushed Sora.
There are two of these little extended boardwalk areas that jut out into the small marshy ponds. They provide a better look at the open water in the area, and a clearer view of wetland edges. It's here that I ran into a pair of Hooded Mergansers, and also had an Osprey fly over.
A Google Earth view of the small looped trail, including the boardwalk on the far left edge of the image. The mix of cattail wetland and deciduous trees makes for an interesting habitat mix, and the trail gives great views of both.
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SOUTH DAKOTA BIRDS AND BIRDING - LOCATIONS OF WEBSITE VISITORS
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Please mail any comments/suggestions/additional links for this page to: Terry L. Sohl