Scioto Audubon Metro Park

The Columbus Dispatch

NATURE

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Jim McCormac

October 7, 2012

One of Franklin County’s newest Metro Parks is also its most urban refuge.

Scioto Audubon Metro Park, which was opened in 2007, sits on 120 acres wedged between the Scioto River and Downtown Columbus. The city’s skyscrapers almost cast shadows on the park, and the Brewery District is a stone’s throw to the east.

Before Lucas Sullivant platted out Franklinton on the Scioto River’s west bank in the late 1790s, the river corridor was a wild place. Massive cottonwoods and sycamores shaded the free-flowing stream, which teemed with fish. Wildlife flourished in the streamside forests, including species long gone from Ohio. The raucous calls of Carolina parakeets rang from the treetops, the festive yellow, orange and green birds filling the forests with color and life. This species is now extinct, having died out by the 1930s. The last wild Ohio birds were seen on the grounds of the Statehouse in 1862, about three-fourths of a mile northeast of Scioto Audubon Metro Park.

Sullivant’s work ushered in major growth, and the Scioto River corridor was soon tamed. By the mid-1900s, the lobe of land known as the Whittier Street Peninsula had long been overrun with industrial activities. Eventually the city’s impound lot was put there, and many a peeved motorist trekked to the peninsula to get a car out of hock.

By the early 2000s, talks were under way to transform the peninsula into a wilder state. Through a three-way partnership, the city of Columbus, Franklin County Metro Parks and Audubon Ohio planned for urban renewal of a natural sort.

Great strides have been made on the peninsula during the past five years. The rows of impounded vehicles are gone, and much of the industrial past has been erased. Metro Parks has constructed wetlands and planted acres of meadows populated by native flora. A crown jewel is the Grange Insurance Audubon Center, which was dedicated in August 2009. This building overlooks the meadows and wetlands, and features numerous exhibits about Ohio’s natural history.

Bird-watchers have long known this area as a hot spot. The Greenlawn Avenue dam widens the Scioto River into a slack-water lake attractive to migrant waterbirds. Many a rarity has turned up, such as the great black-backed gull and the black-legged kittiwake, which are almost unknown in Ohio’s interior. Bird-watchers generally shunned the peninsula’s terrestrial habitats, though, in the olden days — too trashy and overdeveloped to provide a good environment.

I went down to the Audubon center recently to lead a group around the park. What a change the new management has wrought. We were dazzled by myriad creatures using the restored habitats. Butterflies were much in evidence, guzzling nectar from native prairie plants. Our group was especially smitten by a stunning gray hairstreak; camera-wielding paparazzi clicked off dozens of images. They were equally taken with a snowberry clearwing caterpillar that I spotted; the elegant caterpillar will transform into a hummingbird moth.
The wetlands hosted three species of turtles, an extroverted muskrat and more than a dozen species of dragonflies. The screams of a red-tailed hawk drew our eyes skyward — a pair of peregrine falcons had bushwhacked it, and the raptors were dogfighting overhead. Especially apropos are the dozens of great egrets currently hanging around the adjacent riverbanks. This stately white wader is the National Audubon Society’s symbol.

During my visit, I saw dozens of people enjoying the park. The human presence was especially gratifying, as parks are for people, too, and little in the way of wildlife or people visited this site before Scioto Audubon Metro Park was established. The park might not bring back Carolina parakeets, but it has resulted in an oasis for scores of other species.

Naturalist Jim McCormac writes a column for The Dispatch on the first and third Sundays of the month. He also writes about nature at www.jimmccormac.blogspot.com.

The transformation of an urban wasteland

The Grange Insurance Audubon Center, which smacks right up against downtown Columbus, Ohio, takes shape. I made this photo on December 3, 2008, when the center was under construction. It was officially dedicated on August 3, 2009 and is now a vibrant center that hosts lots of events and provides outreach within the urban core of Columbus.

I was there yesterday to present a program as part of a dragonfly workshop - just one example of the varied events that take place at GIAC.

This Google Earth map is a few years old, and shows some of the former uses of the Whittier Street Peninsula, where the GIAC is located. The big parking lots are part of the former City of Columbus Impoundment Facility; many an irate driver had to to make the pilgrimage here to retrieve a misparked vehicle. The impound lot is gone now, moved to a new locale on the south side. Franklin County Metro Parks owns and manages much of the peninsula as the Scioto Audubon Metro Park, and has made great strides in improving the local habitat.

I've long been familiar with this area. Ever since I was a kid, I'd head to this wide spot in the Scioto River - courtesy the Greenlawn Avenue dam - to look for birds. The pooled waters behind the dam are, and were, a beacon for waterbirds. Many a rarity has turned up here over the years, and yours truly has found Great Black-backed Gull and Black-legged Kittiwake here - both major central Ohio rarities.

While we were always interested in the river, birders pretty much shunned the terrestrial habitats of the Whittier Street Peninsula. It was a rough place, peopled by unsavory characters frequenting unsavory habitats. Excepting a narrow fringe of cottonwood, silver maple and a few other riparian trees along the river, there just wasn't much habitat worth exploring.

A Virginian tiger moth, Spilosoma virginica (I think) peers at your blogger. After yesterday's talks had concluded, we split the group up and headed outside to look for dragonflies and other critters. What a change has come to the Whittier Street Peninsula since the pre-GIAC days! Restoration and recovery of habitat has led to an enormous spike in native plant diversity, and with that increase in botanical diversity comes a huge increase in animal diversity.

We only had an hour and a half to poke around, and it went fast. While the dragonflies weren't overly exceptional, although we did see quite a few, there were scads of other interesting animals and we nearly always had something noteworthy in our sights.

A locust borer, Megacyllene robiniae, feasts on goldenrod nectar. What was not long ago waste ground is now reverting to meadow, and much of it is rich with Canada goldenrod, Solidago canadensis. I am an unabashed goldenrod fan; if you want to find fabulously diverse insect communities, just dive into the local goldenrod patch.

A gray hairstreak, Strymon melinus, delighted the group and for a brief time, become a Lepidopteran celebrity with cameras clicking all around. We saw lots of butterflies of many species, including immigrants such as the common buckeye. Metro Parks and GIAC are augmenting the natural flora of the area with native plant plantings, and it's working - the local biodiversity has exploded compared to what it was just a few short years ago.

I was especially pleased to find this gorgeous caterpillar - it is the larva of the snowberry clearwing, Hemaris diffinis. This is one of the day-flying "hummingbird moths".

We saw far more during our brief foray than I can share here. Many species of dragonflies were frequenting the newly created wetlands, and the buffering meadows were full of cool insects. A Pied-billed Grebe and a couple of Blue-winged Teal loafed in the water, and a muskrat put on quite a show, as did a big snapping turtle accompanied by a painted turtle that was attempting to graze algae from the larger turtle's back. Especially exciting was the appearance, directly overhead, of a pair of Peregrine Falcons, probably the local downtown nesters.

The Whittier Street Peninsula will only improve with age. As the wetlands, meadows, and woodlands mature and diversify, the attendant animal life will also improve. Given its location in such a highly urbanized area, the Audubon Scioto Metro Park serves as a major beacon to migratory birds and insects. I suspect some very noteworthy records will be made here in coming years.

It has been gratifying to watch the ongoing restoration of what, not long ago, was pretty much an urban wasteland. The transformation of the Whittier Peninsula from impound lot/industrial refuse to vibrant natural habitats is a great positive for the City of Columbus, and should serve as a model of urban brownfield restoration.

To learn more about this area, CLICK HERE, and HERE.