Trip Report: Ryerson Woods, 12/23/2010

Try as I might, I always am behind on my post processing. On the plus side, I have less than a months worth in the backlog finally. Yesterday I finally went through my shots from a outing to Ryerson Woods the afternoon of December 23.


Ryerson is one of my favorite haunts, and one I regularly go to after work during the part of the year when there's actual still daylight when I get out of work. Unfortunately this means I really don't have much chance to get there in the winter. I always toy with going on the weekend and then Saturday comes and I'm lazy and don't want to drive all the way out and instead go to Labagh Woods or North Park Nature Center, both of which are five minutes from my house.

But December 23 was a half day at work, so I made a point to stop and spend a little time taking some winter shots at Ryerson. It's a beautiful and interesting preserve, and like most Lake County Forest Preserves, it makes me very sad that Cook County can't take care of their preserves half as well. The woods cover a large swatch of land along the Des Plaines River, and contains a mix of several kinds of wet and dry forests, along with a few restored grassland areas.

Brushwood Meadow in Winter

I started from the Brushwood parking lot. Brushwood was the home of Edward L. Ryerson, who owned the land and left it to Lake County on his death. There are multiple directions of trails that start in this area, and I like to take the one that goes through the large meadow and over the small seasonal creek. In the summer this area is a gorgeous grassland, and a great area for wildflowers and insects.

Small Bridge

After trail crosses over the small creek on a wooden bridge, and from their you can chose either of two trails into the woodlands.  The area straight is very marshy in the spring and even most of the summer. If you can tolerate the mosquitoes it's a really nice swampy area and a good spot for a lot of different birds and deer.

The area to the right leads into the main trail that runs east-west through the woods.

Trail to the River

There are multiple trails that  intersect north/south with this trail that leads down to the river. Most of these are short connecting trails that are perhaps a 1/4 - 1/2 mile long. There are several cabins in the woods, these were summer cabins of Ryerson and his friends built.




The Albright Cabin is fairly close to Brushwood, and can easily be seen from the trails.In the summer it's hard to get any shot worth keeping, since the trees obscure it from view.


From this trail I finally emerge by the Des Plaines River. It was still open despite the cold but had some nice ice build up and ice floes in places.

Des Plaines River Looking West

Trees Reflecting in the River

I followed the river trail west, which runs along the banks, over a few boardwalks in places, and over a few bridges that cross seasonal overflow creeks. In the spring those creeks are running like crazy and theirs tons of water everywhere.

Not too far along the trail I came across a large flock of robins that was gathering along the banks to drink from the river. Most flew away when I approached, but I spotted a few on ice floes near the opposite bank. Didn't get any great shots, they were too far away. But snapped a few I liked with the bird and the ice and the water.



For some reason I always have a delayed reaction in recognizing a Kingfisher vocalizing. I don't know why... they have very recognizable calls. But in any case, despite having been hearing him for a bit, I didn't spot the Kingfisher till he flew across the river and landed in another tree. They're very reclusive and hard to spot not matter what. I've had a lot of luck at Ryerson with them. In the summer there was one that was often hanging out around the dam.


Unfortunately, 300mm was not nearly long enough to get a good shot of him. But let's play a "Can You Find the Kingfisher in this shot??" game.

There's a kingfisher in there, trust me!

Did you find him? A little off center to the left. Here's a deep crop of the shot to show him.

Belted Kingfisher

Much to my surprise, he took off and dove while I was watching. Too far away and not nearly fast enough reflexes later, I had a series of lovely blurs that with some imagination other people may be able to tell it was a kingfisher diving into the river and snagging a fish...  The shots are god-awful, but it was cool enough that I feel like I might as well share.

 

 

 

 

Diving

 

 

Splash

Coming up with the fish

Flying Away

National Geographic they're not, but hope you liked them anyway.

I lost the Kingfisher after he grabbed his lunch. After about 10 minutes of looking to see if I could find him again, I gave up and continued on towards Ryerson Cabin and the dam.

There were a few woodpeckers making noise high up in the trees, but they stayed well out of sight. A little up stream I spotted some mallards sleeping on an ice floe.

I passed a cross country skier, but other than that it was very quiet and serene.





When I got to the dam I found it partially frozen upstream of the dam, but flowing pretty good right at the dam base. There's a little overflow sluice by the dam that was pretty, but I couldn't find an angle I liked without getting wet, and it was a bit too cold for that!

The top of the dam had a lot of ice build up, and the water was flowing under it, like a little ice cavern. It was very pretty.

After I packed up my tripod and headed down the loop back to the parking lot. I was getting cold at that point. There were several cross-country skiers out enjoying the woods, and I'd had quite an enjoyable outing.