WNR magazine NEWS & REVIEWS November 2018

A $750,000 donation from the Friends of Peninsula State Park will go a long way toward helping to rebuild the park’s Eagle Tower, closed since 2015 because of safety concerns. The Wisconsin Natural Resources Board accepted the donation in late September. The $2.07 million project was approved by the State Building Commission in August. Other state and federal funds also will be used for the project, which will include a 60-foot-high tower with a 1,000-square-foot deck and an 850-foot accessible ramp with an additional observation area. The DNR hopes to have the project completed in late summer next year. For details, see dnr.wi.gov, keywords "Eagle Tower."

A quartet of bird species rarely if ever confirmed as breeding in Wisconsin were sighted in the state during the latest round of the Wisconsin Breeding Bird Atlas II. But their breeding could not be confirmed in 2018 — a tantalizing near-miss for the survey in the fourth of its five seasons. Seen but not documented as breeding were: a pair of American three-toed woodpeckers in Bayfield County, several barn owls in southwestern Wisconsin, a yellow-crowned night-heron in Jefferson County and a pair of eared grebes in Columbia County. "So check barns for barn owls, and keep an eye out for these other species to see if we can claim them as Wisconsin breeding birds in our final year of data collection," said DNR conservation biologist Ryan Brady. Largely through citizen-based monitoring, the survey coordinated by the DNR and partner groups aims to document every bird species breeding in Wisconsin to help guide conservation efforts. Volunteers are always needed. For details, see dnr.wi.gov, keywords “bird atlas.”