Early May is peak migration time for birds and the Union Slough National Wildlife Refuge in northern Iowa is open through the weekend for drive-through tours. Erich Gilbert, the assistant manager at the refuge near Bancroft, says normal wet-dry cycles are healthy for the wetland system and make it more productive.

“The past few years, during the dry times the, emergent plants growing up out of the marsh, like cattails or bulrush, have expended,” he says, “and as it’s got wet here now and the water levels have come back up, we’ll see muskrats move back in and start to eat those plants and provide more open water.” Sandhill cranes returned to the refuge in 2019 for the first time in more than a century and Gilbert says they have been back ever since.  “We have a building sandhill crane population not only at Union Slough, but just kind of in Iowa in general,” Gilbert says. “…Most times when I’ve gone on the tour I’ve seen sandhills and definitely heard sandhills as well.”

You can see the trumpeter swans when you visit.  “We have up to 12 pairs nesting on the refuge and there will be several that will be along the tour route in the marsh there,” Gilbert says. “River otters have moved back in the last 10 years or so. They were extirpated by 1939 and have been reintroduced in Iowa. .Of course these will be a variety of ducks and geese and deer. And you might even see a badger.”

Gilbert says visitors may want to bring binoculars and take the tour when the birds and other animals are most active in the early morning and early evening. The tour route is 4.5 miles long and is open from sunrise to sunset through Sunday night. The slough closes to traffic for primary nesting season before reopening August 1.

(By Brian Wilson, KLGA, Algona)

 

Share this:
Radio Iowa