Otsego Marsh Sanctuary - A Wooded Wetland

• A wooded wetland is home for a wide variety of wildlife – animal and vegetable – living in different habitats from the bottom of the pond to the tops of the trees.
• The pond is alive with insects, creatures and plants that are not visible from the land, but provide important food for what we can see around it.
• Minnows and bullheads live in the pond, along with many other wetland creatures, such as frogs, turtles and salamanders. Most of them live largely on insects.
• Frogs and toads are not easy to see, but sometimes you can hear them. Male frogs and toads call to attract females; some call during the day, but most are heard after dark. Several different kinds of frogs live around Otsego Marsh. Each kind has its own distinctive call. Toads seek food on the land. They both devour insects in the summer.
• Mud turtles live and breed in the pond and eat insects. They are best seen when they come out on a log to bask in the sun.
• Herons, egrets, and Sandhill Cranes are birds with long legs, necks and bills that sometimes wade along the pond edges to search for water creatures, which they swallow whole. The white great egret is a threatened species in Wisconsin.
• Waterfowl such as Wood Ducks, Mallards, Blue-winged Teal and Canada Geese nest around the pond. Migrating Canada Geese and Mallards roost in the pond and feed in nearby cornfields, in season.

Follow the wooded wetland trail and enjoy the wildflowers!

The male Wood Duck is one of the most beautiful of American waterfowl, with iridescent green and purple crested head and a white stripe leading from the eye to the end of the crest. The female has a gray-brown head and neck with a brownish green glossed crest. A white teardrop-shaped patch surrounds the female’s brownish-black eye.

The Wood Duck and Hooded Merganser are the only local duck species that nest in tree cavities, or in nest boxes we erect for them. A single Wood Duck nest might hatch 12 eggs in one season. Just after hatching in the spring, Wood ducklings leap from the nest box into the water below, where the mother is waiting and calling for them. Once they are all together, mother leads them to forage in sheltered waters under overhanging trees and other vegetation, such as along the south-eastern shore of Otsego Pond. There they find insects, seeds and other nutritious foods that help them grow quickly and mature in time to fly south for the winter. The males have no part in raising the young, but can be seen hanging around in groups until the chicks are hatched.