Nestled between the Clark Street Beach House and the Segal Visitors Center is two acres of land filled with blooming shrubs, growing trees and grassy patches. From spring to fall, you can hear the leaves rustling, the birds chirping and the insects buzzing away in this space. 

This is the Clark Street Beach Bird Sanctuary, which offers migrating birds a stopover point to eat and rest.  

The sanctuary’s inception

Evanston North Shore Bird Club member Libby Hill said she frequently went birding with her friends in the wild patch of land that used to lie between Northwestern’s campus and Clark Street Beach. The area was filled with tall cottonwood trees, dense leafy shrubs and many species of birds that nested there or passed through on their migration paths.

“The birds liked to be in the tall trees, and also in the shrubs and on the ground,” Hill said. “It was this wonderful habitat.” 

On one of her birding trips, she learned NU was planning to cut down most of the trees in the area to make space for the Segal Visitors Center construction in 2012. 

According to the sanctuary’s website, since the construction expanded onto the city’s park land, NU paid a fine for each tree it removed, in accordance with a city ordinance. Hill requested that the city use the money to “replace what (it) was going to be losing” by building a bird sanctuary.

“We were just grateful we had this place for as long as we did and that we were able to go there with no restrictions,” Hill said.

She worked with members of the city staff to investigate potential locations for the bird sanctuary, and they looked toward the Montrose Point Bird Sanctuary in Chicago as a model. Eventually, they chose to expand the remaining habitat onto Clark Street Beach.

The city hired Evanston landscape architecture firm Kettelkamp & Kettelkamp to design the sanctuary, and initial planting began in the fall of 2015.

Developing the team

After the construction of the sanctuary, husband and wife Jerry Herst and Julie Dorfman became its first stewards. 

The couple participated in Chicago conservation group Openlands’ TreeKeepers training program after retiring, through which they learned how to take care of forests in urban spaces. They also helped monitor birds in the Miami Woods forest preserve in Morton Grove.

“We’ve always been interested in the environment, as well as all aspects of environmentalism and the climate crisis, so this matched our interests well,” Herst said. 

Throughout their nine years as sanctuary stewards, the couple worked tirelessly to grow and maintain the habitat. They also recruited volunteers and delegated responsibilities among their expanded team, including removing invasive species, monitoring bird activity and watering plants consistently.

Herst said the sanctuary needed healthy native plants that attracted insects and offered seasonal berries for the migratory birds. Selected plants were meant to withstand harsh and dry environments. However, they still required watering and nurturing while they were young and growing.

“It was fun to go every week and get to see the changes in the plants, how they’re going from young sprouts to larger plants into flowering and seeds,” Herst said. “I enjoyed talking to people, telling people what we were doing, and just building community that way.” 

After Herst and Dorfman officially retired from their positions, Hill and another frequent volunteer, Robert Linsenmeier, who is also a professor of biomedical engineering and neurobiology at NU, became co-stewards in 2023.

Since then, they have led the effort to maintain the sanctuary — while also collaborating with a steering committee that helps make decisions, a leader for bird monitoring and watering and a volunteer coordinator.

Trouble in paradise

Since its inception, the sanctuary has faced significant difficulties. In 2021, Lake Michigan’s water levels rose and took down the sanctuary’s eastern fence. Beavers that lived in NU’s lagoon found their way in, and cut down many of the cottonwood trees. 

After putting up fences around the remaining cottonwoods and repairing the main fence, the volunteers successfully blocked the beavers from causing further damage. But their animal problems didn’t stop there.

“This is our main nemesis,” Linsenmeier said, pointing at a rabbit as he led a sanctuary tour. 

He added that the rabbits eat the native plants, and the volunteers haven’t found any viable solutions to keep them out of the habitat. However, they put up cages around some individual plants, which has protected them from the rabbits. 

One plant safe from rabbits is the soapwort, which Linsenmeier described as the “most problematic” invasive plant. He said it is aggressive and spreads not only through seeds, but also rhizomes, with roots spreading underground and new plants growing from the expanded roots.

Soapworts crowd out native plants that are better for the birds, so volunteers work on removing the plant throughout the year, he said. Other invasive species that are removed regularly are the white sweetclover and cheatgrass. 

‘The people and the plants’ 

While most of the sanctuary consists of grasses, shrubs and trees, a small unfenced part hosts various flowering plants. Linsenmeier said he wants to make this garden area attractive to passersby, and hopes it inspires people to grow the same native plants in their own yards. 

Volunteers typically work in the sanctuary from mid-April to the end of October. During this active period, they engage in planting and weeding on Wednesday afternoons and on even-numbered Saturday mornings.

“My favorite part is getting to meet new volunteers and seeing how the plants move around and how they grow,” Hill said. “It’s a combination of the people and the plants.”

During the migration season, a member of the bird monitoring team spends at least half an hour each day tracking bird activity within the sanctuary. They identify species, the number of birds they saw and which section of the sanctuary they noticed the birds in. Bird monitors record this information into eBird, an online database for bird observations. 

According to Nancy Pinchar, who leads the bird monitoring volunteer team, some of the species they see the most often are sparrows, warblers and thrushes. Pinchar’s assigned bird monitoring day is Sunday, and she said she usually arrives between 7:30 and 8 a.m.

“It’s really relaxing, there are people jogging by (and) dogs on the dog beach just to the south,” Pinchar said. “If you stop and really peer into the foliage, all of a sudden you’ll see that (birds) are floating around in there, and that’s the fun part, searching for them and being able to get a really good look.”

The team uses the information they collect to improve the habitat, so they can best meet the needs of the birds coming through the sanctuary, Pinchar said. If they notice that a specific section is not attracting any birds, they make changes to that environment so birds will use it more.

The sanctuary is not a perfect replacement for the habitat that was there before the Segal Visitors Center was built, and consequently, the bird population has changed, Hill said. She added that the current cottonwood trees are not as tall, and there are no more nesting birds in the area. However, new species are migrating through the area and using the sanctuary.

“We’re trying to do our best to grow things to mimic that original wild area, but that’s tough to do,” Hill said. “It’s just a different place, but it’s still appealing to birds.”

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