Carpenter Nature Center’s $4M expansion opens soon near Hudson. Nesting birds already at home there.

Mary Divine, Pioneer Press
·7 min read

It seems the staff and volunteers aren’t the only ones eager to use the beautiful new Carpenter Nature Center on its 300-acre campus south of Hudson, Wis.

A pair of belted kingfishers this spring moved into a 15-foot pile of topsoil that construction crews had been saving for the center’s gardens. The short-legged birds use their front claws and strong beaks to excavate nesting burrows in earthen banks, usually avoiding those with vegetation.

The pile of dirt that had been sitting for a year near the new parking lot – less than a half-mile from the St. Croix River – fit the bill.

“The birds were scolding and making all sorts of noises in May, but towards the end of June, I didn’t see or hear them,” said Jennifer Vieth, the executive director of the nature center, which also has a 425-acre campus near Afton.

Still, Vieth, an avid birder, didn’t want to give the center’s excavation contractor the go-ahead to move the topsoil “until we knew for certain the birds had vacated the premises.”

Vieth invited an ornithologist friend to drop by with his borescope in early June. Using a camera on the end of the device’s long arm, they were able to confirm that “Mrs. Kingfisher” still was on site, she said.

“She’s adorable,” said Vieth, during a recent tour of the site. “She’s got these spiky blue feathers. Can you hear that chattering? That’s Mr. Kingfisher. He doesn’t like us getting too close.”

No one on the construction crew blinked an eye when they got the news that their plans were changing to accommodate the birds, said Keegan McIntosh, the general contractor’s head supervisor.

“It’s a nature center, so the nature comes first,” said McIntosh, who works for Stotko Speedling Construction in Hastings. “If they say, ‘Don’t touch it, we want to let the birds nest,’ that’s what we’re going to do. … Fortunately, we found out the day that we were going to move it. A day later, it wouldn’t have been good for the kingfisher family.”

DECADES OF PLANNING

The new $4 million interpretive center, which opens to the public July 9, is the result of decades of planning.

Laurie and Al Hein once owned part of the site. In the 1980s, the Heins were looking for an organization to be stewards of their land when a neighbor, Dan Greenwald, suggested they reach out to the Carpenter Nature Center in Minnesota. The couple’s 98-acre donation in 1989 marked the beginning of Carpenter’s Wisconsin campus, just north of the Troy Burne Golf Club.

More parcels were purchased as they came up for sale, and the Wisconsin campus now boasts 300 acres permanently preserved for public use. Like the Minnesota campus, the center is free and open to the public.

Carpenter seeks to protect habitat and teach people about nature, and the new interpretive center will do just that, Vieth said. It features accessible classrooms, restrooms, meeting space, nature exhibits and outdoor teaching spaces.

Carpenter staff gathered suggestions through more than 300 surveys given to people at events like the Cove Art Festival and the River Falls Bird Festival. “We even stationed people outside the County Market grocery store (in Hudson) to see what people wanted,” she said. “You build what people want to use. It turned out perfect.”

The surveys showed that people wanted a room that multigenerational families could use, she said. “You can come out and enjoy nature and watch the birds at the bird feeders even if you can’t get out on the trails,” she said. “You can relax here and have a cup of coffee. It’s accessible to everyone.”

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There’s also a small wellness room just off the family room that can be used for prayer, by nursing mothers or by children “who might need a quiet space for a few moments,” she said.

The family room can be sectioned off from the main part of the interpretive center by a massive rolling door made from Douglas fir reclaimed from a house that once stood on the property’s north end.

“We looked first at restoring the house and making that the visitor center, but it didn’t have a good foundation, and you had to stand in the shower for the electrical system, and the roof leaked,” Vieth said.

The classroom also has doors so school groups can be separated from others using the main room – a lesson learned from the Carpenter Nature Center in Minnesota. “One of the things we learned … was having this big space where everything happens doesn’t always work so well,” Vieth said.

NATURE ABOUNDS

The land, which includes more than 10 miles of trails, includes broad prairie, a wooded hillside, an old farmstead and an oak savanna. Hundreds of red pines planted on the property in the 1940s still remain. “We’ve got this little area of habitat where these species act like it’s the North Woods, so we have nesting golden-winged warblers, and people have seen fishers,” Vieth said. “We also have a pair of ravens.”

Carpenter staff and volunteers have planted a number of native trees, including ironwood, oak, maple and river birch, “to create a diverse tree forest that is more resilient to climate and temperature changes,” Vieth said. “Because the red-pine plantation is a monoculture, it doesn’t support as diverse an ecosystem of birds and insects.”

Inside the nature center, two turtles, snakes, frogs, toads and an axolotl (an aquatic salamander) will be displayed in tanks built into the wall. The room behind the tanks has a washer and dryer “because when you’re cleaning turtle tanks, you need towels,” Vieth said. “It also has a fan in case the turtles are smelly.”

One of Vieth’s favorite features is an interactive migration map that shows Carpenter Nature Center’s 41 years of bird-banding research, including its work on saw-whet owls. “You can touch a spot in Alaska, for example, and a pop-up screen will appear with an image of a dark-eyed junco that was banded at Carpenter and migrated all the way to Alaska,” she said. “There will be data about when the bird was banded, its age at the time and the distance it traveled. As more birds are re-encountered, we’ll add more records, so the map will be ever-changing.”

Also listed will be the name of the volunteer or staff person who banded the bird, Vieth said. “Can you imagine visiting the site with your grandmother or grandfather and seeing their name as the bander on a scientific map like this?”

Displays will feature the smells and sounds native to the area, and there are tables where people can share treasures they find on the property. “We’re expecting agates, rocks, fossils, skulls and chewed-up pieces of wood that the beaver worked on,” Vieth said.

Carpenter board member Scott Northard, who volunteered his time as project manager, said one of his favorite features of the new building is its bird-safe windows. They have horizontal lines that make it easier for birds to perceive the glass, reducing the likelihood of a collision, he said. The windows also don’t face one another, he said, “so that birds won’t think that they can fly through.”

Once the kingfishers are done nesting, Vieth said, crews will finish the garden project.

“Hopefully, that will be pretty soon,” she said.

CARPENTER NATURE CENTER GRAND OPENING

The grand opening of the new $4 million Carpenter Nature Center in Hudson, Wis., will be July 9-10. The nature center is at 279 S. Cove Road, Hudson, Wis. Events planned for the weekend include live raptor shows, Masters of the Sky shows and free guided bird and plant hikes. The building will be open to tour exhibits and spaces from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. To register for the hikes, go to carpenternaturecenter.org.

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