Notes from You
Use this page to share your experiences with Kleinstuck:
What have you seen? Heard? What is your favorite thing about Kleinstuck? A special place? A particular time of year?
Post a Comment
- Oops, you forgot something.
10 Comments
The frogs are loving the warm & wet weather. They will make your ears ring down there with Spring Peepers, Chorus Frogs, Wood Frogs, and American Toads. Last night I heard my first Gray Treefrog of the spring. They will be getting rowdy in the wetland now as well. While other frogs trend to call from the water, just poking their heads and throats above the waterline, Gray Treefrogs sit in the branches of shrubs over the water courting their mates.
Bloodroot is in full bloom and the Cut-leaf Toothwort and Spring Beauties are heading towards peak soon as well. The Kalamazoo Nature Center has started their birding surveys again this year. John Brenneman tells me that he is seeing hermit thrushes, sapsuckers, winter wrens and other species starting show up.
This 80 degree weather has got the American toads all hot and bothered! They started calling this afternoon - you can hear their melodious trilling all the way from Cherry Street.
The bloodroot are starting to poke up and I expect some will be flowering by the end of the week. I saw a blossom on one that was emerging at the base of the planted white oak along the trail on the east side of the preserve. Lots of them are starting to emerge near where the YMCA access meets the main trail. Their clorophyll wasn't cooking just yet and that distinctive leaf that looks like a cloak wrapped around the flower stem was still purple.
Jack,
We (WMU) found a burried flagpole in the area of the pitcher pump and foundation. I think this is where you are talking about the RR car and camp were. Would like to get pictures (if available) for our archive on the WMU Kleinstuck Site (www.wmich.edu/kleinstuck) and possibly the location of the pole in the 70s. We may reinstall it at the original site for Archeological interest ... or just for the hell of it. Can you help ?
P Mac
Jack Urban says...My favorite spot in Kleinstuck is Mr. Fun's House (what's left of it). Years ago, in the 1970's the YMCA operated a summer day camp - Camp A-HomeA - in the preserve. Our son Sam attended it, and learned to play "capture the flag" there. He also learned the apocryphal story about Mr. Fun, the mysterious person who inhabited the preserve and supposedly lived in an old caboose that had been moved onto the property many years before. In the 1970's and '80's the caboose was still visible, though overgrown with weeds and underbrush. Now all that remains is a few iron straps. It's hard to find. It's at the location marked "foundation" on the east side of the property map. Although Sam and his friends never laid on Mr. Fun, it was fun to believe the story. I think so too.
Does anyone know how the caboose got there, and when?
- Jack Urban
It is Friday evening, March 12, and the first frogs are calling in Kleinstuck! A smattering of spring peepers were calling from the wetland. A few bats were chattering while hunting bugs over the marsh too. A lovely early spring evening.
This website has an ABUNDANCE of great information. And imagine, all of it is done by volunteers. Generosity and talent without financial compensation are still alive in the world
My favorite spot in Kleinstuck is Mr. Fun's House (what's left of it). Years ago, in the 1970's the YMCA operated a summer day camp - Camp A-HomeA - in the preserve. Our son Sam attended it, and learned to play "capture the flag" there. He also learned the apocryphal story about Mr. Fun, the mysterious person who inhabited the preserve and supposedly lived in an old caboose that had been moved onto the property many years before. In the 1970's and '80's the caboose was still visible, though overgrown with weeds and underbrush. Now all that remains is a few iron straps. It's hard to find. It's at the location marked "foundation" on the east side of the property map. Although Sam and his friends never laid on Mr. Fun, it was fun to believe the story. I think so too.
Does anyone know how the caboose got there, and when?
- Jack Urban
Thanks Jim, the library is having a seminar hosted by One place next week and Jacquelyn and myself are planning on attending for Kleinstuck.
Bob
The Kalamazoo Public Library has a new department designed to help nonprofit organzations. It's called "ONE place @ kpl". ONE stands for Opportunities for Nonprofit Excellence. I know the staff person Bobbe Luce. She might be able to assist you on your goal of becoming a non profit.
