Diverse wildlife drawn to preserve
You might call it Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport’s gift to nature lovers — a 56-acre preserve in Fayette County known as Sams Lake Bird Sanctuary.
Workers from the world’s busiest airport have drained and transformed the site’s artificial lake into several ponds, small islands, a winding stream and a meadow — all fringed by woods. The sanctuary already is drawing a diversity of wildlife, as was evident last weekend when we visited it on the one-year anniversary of its opening. (The preserve was a stop on the Atlanta Audubon Society’s annual wildlife sanctuary tour last weekend.)
At the first of three wildlife observation decks in the preserve, we saw a great egret standing stoically in a marshy area waiting for an unwary frog or other small creature to wander by. A great blue heron flapped in the distance, and a Carolina wren, white-eyed vireo and red-bellied woodpecker called from the woods. We were told that beavers already have built two dams on the site, and a flock of wild turkeys roam there.
Airport officials, though, did not necessarily create the sanctuary out of a great love of nature. The $5 million restoration effort is, in essence, a mitigation project to offset the loss of nearly 14 acres of wetlands paved over when the airport’s fifth runway was built.
By definition, a wetland is land that’s regularly wet or flooded, such as a marsh, bog or swamp. Wetlands are important wildlife habitats and play valuable ecological roles, such as filtering pollutants from water.
For every acre of wetland destroyed by infrastructure development, the federal Clean Water Act requires that an equal amount of wetland be created or restored to offset the loss. The Army Corps of Engineers gave the airport permission to restore Sams Lake.
Located on Old Senoia Road south of Fayetteville, the property was donated to the nonprofit Southern Conservation Trust by the Ferrol and Helen Sams family of Fayetteville. The City of Atlanta then agreed to restore the site to wetlands as part of the airport mitigation project.
Birds were not the only wild things grabbing attention at Sams Lake last weekend. Fall wildflowers also put on a colorful show. Along the trail we saw several species in bloom — narrowleaf sunflower, spotted jewelweed (touch-me-not), boneset, lady’s thumb, cardinal flower, ironweed and others.
In a placid pond, purple-flowered pickerelweed was blooming.
In the sky: Autumn officially begins Tuesday at 5:19 p.m., says David Dundee, astronomer at the Tellus Northwest Georgia Science Museum. The first day of autumn is known as the autumnal equinox, when the sun rises almost due east and sets due west. We will have about 12 hours of day and 12 hours of night. After Tuesday, the nights will gradually become longer than the day, until we reach the shortest day of the year on Dec. 21.
The moon was new on Friday and thus can‘t be seen tonight. But by Sunday look for a thin crescent moon low in the west just after dark. Venus rises about two hours before the sun. Mars rises out of the east about 1 a.m. Jupiter rises out of the east before sunset.
