{"id":574,"date":"2019-09-04T17:39:15","date_gmt":"2019-09-04T22:39:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wisconsinbirds.org\/iba\/?page_id=574"},"modified":"2019-09-04T17:39:15","modified_gmt":"2019-09-04T22:39:15","slug":"rush-lake","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.wisconsinbirds.org\/iba\/sites\/rush-lake\/","title":{"rendered":"Rush Lake"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Site Description<\/h3>\n

This IBA is located within the WDNR\u2019s Glacial Habitat Restoration Area and encompasses the largest prairie pothole lake east of the Mississippi River.\u00a0 Rush Lake formerly hosted over 1,500 acres of hardstem bulrush beds, for which the lake was named, although these have diminished greatly in recent years due to artificially high water levels, degraded water quality, and carp infestation.\u00a0 An extensive wetland restoration project has been underway for several years.\u00a0 The site contains emergent and submergent marsh, sedge meadow, wet prairie, and shrub carr, with some oak savanna and oak forest in the uplands.<\/p>\n

Ornithological Importance<\/h3>\n

Rush Lake\u2019s large size, productivity, and shallow water make it very valuable to breeding waterbirds and waterfowl.\u00a0 It remains the most important breeding site in Wisconsin for red-necked grebe.\u00a0 Other breeding species include least and American bitterns, Forster\u2019s and black terns, redhead, ruddy duck, Virginia rail, black-crowned night-heron, marsh wren, and swamp sparrow.\u00a0 Other waterbirds, such as American white pelican, double-crested cormorant, and many herons and egrets, use the lake as a foraging area.\u00a0 The site is also important to grassland birds, hosting northern harrier, sedge wren, vesper sparrow, bobolink, and Eastern meadowlark.\u00a0 Migrating waterfowl use the lake as a stopover site and short-eared owls use the grasslands in winter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Rush Lake, photo by Tim Lizotte<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Site Description This IBA is located within the WDNR\u2019s Glacial Habitat Restoration Area and encompasses the largest prairie pothole lake east of the Mississippi River.\u00a0 Rush Lake formerly hosted over 1,500 acres of hardstem bulrush beds, for which the lake was named, although these have diminished greatly in recent years due to artificially high water… [Read more]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":22,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-574","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wisconsinbirds.org\/iba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wisconsinbirds.org\/iba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wisconsinbirds.org\/iba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.wisconsinbirds.org\/iba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.wisconsinbirds.org\/iba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.wisconsinbirds.org\/iba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":576,"href":"http:\/\/www.wisconsinbirds.org\/iba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/574\/revisions\/576"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.wisconsinbirds.org\/iba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/22"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wisconsinbirds.org\/iba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}