Marianne Hahn spent a recent Saturday morning seeking birdies with binoculars instead of a club at Olympia Fields Country Club’s two 18-hole golf courses.
“We began at 8:30, and in two hours we counted 47 species,” Hahn said.
Besides spotting ovenbirds, eastern phoebes and palm warblers at the private club, Hahn noted unusual birds such as the indigo bunting.
“We also saw the great crested flycatcher. You don’t see them every day,” said Hahn, a Homewood resident and president of the Thorn Creek Audubon Society.
Hahn was leading a small team of birdwatchers on the first North American Golf Course Birdwatching Open on May 9. The event was open to golf courses certified as wildlife sanctuaries in a program sponsored by Audubon International, a not-for-profit environmental organization headquartered in Selkirk, N.Y.
The Olympia Fields club garnered the certification in 1994 by demonstrating its commitment to environmental planning, wildlife and habitat management, public involvement, integrated pest management, water conservation and water quality management. It is one of 13 golf courses in Illinois and 130 nationwide that have received certification since the program began in 1989. (Other southwest suburban certified clubs include Ravisloe Country Club in Homewood, Silver Lake Country Club in Orland Park and Flossmoor Country Club.)
“We have some of the most committed and absolutely groundbreaking superintendents. For them to get involved and go through the certification process, which is quite rigorous, is a positive accomplishment,” said Mary Colleen Liburdi, director of communications for Audubon International.
Dave Ward of Homewood has been superintendent of the golf course since 1990. Working with Ward, Hahn and other birdwatchers spent one day a week in 1993 recording bird species as part of the six-step certification process that can take up to three years. Which begs the question, why go through all this?
“You get the public relations value, and the golf course becomes more interesting visually,” Ward said. Adds Liburdi, “They can show the community they’re managing the land environmentally.”
Hahn noted some 97 species that nest in or pass through the property.
“We have some nice ecosystems here,” Ward said, “There are prairies, oak woods, savannas and wetlands. As cities and suburbs develop, golf courses, forest preserves and park districts are the only open spaces left.”
Opened in 1915, the 375-acre club features rolling terrain and immaculately groomed fairways surrounded by century-old woodlands and meadows.
At many Chicago-area golf courses, including Olympia Fields, lawnmowers are no longer used in much of the woods and natural areas outside of the fairways, according to Tom Voigt, extension turf grass specialist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
“Handled properly, these unmowed areas increase wildlife habitat, save money on labor, equipment and chemicals and enhance the golf experience. The golfers, the environment and wildlife all benefit,” Voigt said.
Ward stopped the mowing in selected woodlands and prairie areas several years ago.
“Some of the native plants are regenerating,” he said.
(According to Ward, the United States Golf Association has established rules for dealing with sensitive environmental areas on golf courses. Such sites, including a prairie restoration area at Olympia Fields, are marked with stakes, and golfers don’t chase balls in there. They drop a ball where the lost one crossed over and play from there.)
Spring beauties, Solomon’s seal, Jacob’s ladder, bloodroot, anemone, trillium and other native wildflowers poke their heads through the tall grass that now carpets the ground between a stand of 120-year-old oaks in an area called an oak savanna.
“We spend about 300 hours each year controlling non-natives such as buckthorn and garlic mustard. Those two will shade out other species and destroy the population of native plants,” Ward said. He explained that control is achieved by yanking the offending plants from the ground by hand. Only when a buckthorn is too large will they use herbicide, applied after the tree is cut to a stump.
Connor Shaw is the owner of Possibility Place Nursery in Monee, which supplies native trees, shrubs and prairie plants each year to the golf course.
“Our climate is very tough on plant material. Natives are the ones that fit best with an informal look (of the oak woods). And they’re better adapted and durable,” Shaw said.
In one area, Ward and his crew removed a dense thicket of buckthorn and replaced it with several native trees and shrubs, including sassafras, spicebush, viburnum, chokeberry, redbud, sugar maple, serviceberry and witch hazel. This spring, a soft haze of Virginia bluebells decorated the ground beneath them.
“Trying to make a planting like Mother Nature (does) is really difficult. A formal planting is much easier,” Ward said.
He solves the problem by planting trees close together instead of in rows.
“A lot of times you see golf courses with widely spaced trees. That’s to get the mower through,” Ward said.
To regenerate native plants, Ward has prescribed a careful regimen of burning in the savannas and prairies, done in November and March when few golfers are present. Corky bark on the oaks and deep roots on native wildflowers help them survive the intense heat while eliminating the weedy non-native species.
“You’ve got an oak woods that is informal, and that’s the ambience that makes the course special. Nothing else can really go in those woods (and do well),” Shaw said.
Consulting with Shaw, Ward has added blue beech, bottlebrush buckeye, several varieties of oaks and other natives to the woodland repertoire, creating a lush setting.
Shaw is working with Ward and colleagues from Western Illinois University in Macomb and the Morton Arboretum in Lisle to study tree-boring insects that attack young oak trees.
“When you introduce new plant materials, they are subject to borers found in the old woods,” Shaw explained.
The study will examine 60 of the club’s new burr oaks to determine the best ways to plant and protect young trees from the pests.
And although fewer chemicals now are applied to the golf course turf than a decade ago, the fairways look healthy and green.
“We try to use organic fertilizer that stimulates (beneficial) organisms in the soil. Although insecticides or fungicides might be used, we use them only where needed and try not to do a blanket application,” Ward said.
The club spends about $3,000 each year for new native plants. (The total landscaping budget is about $18,000, which includes trees.) Some native plants are used to stop erosion along the steep banks of Butterfield Creek, which meanders through the property. As part of the certification process, the creek was monitored for water quality. Insect populations and water samples were examined in the creek where it entered, in the middle of, and where it left the property.
“We discovered that the stream is pretty healthy. The water quality is consistent throughout,” Ward said.
He has planted natural buffers of cord and slough grasses, wild iris and other native plants along the stream beds to serve as buffers, preventing fertilizers and other chemicals from leaching into the water.
“It seems like the new wave of golf courses is going to be more natural. Manicuring the out-of-play areas is going to be a thing of the past,” said Don Ferreri, chairman of the Environmental Committee of the Midwest Association of Golf Course Superintendents and superintendent of Seven Bridges Golf Course in Woodridge. “A number of courses in the Chicago area have put in natural trails or small arboretum-type settings. I think it’s real positive with golfers.”
Charles Bonebrake has golfed at Olympia Fields since 1983.
“There are certain areas that have grown up and give a lot more character and definition to the course. The plantings to stop erosion add a lot of color too. It’s a very playable, pretty course,” said Bonebrake of Olympia Fields.
Ward also is a proponent of recycling. No organic matter leaves the course. Grass clippings and leaves are composted, branches are shredded for mulch and oak logs are given to staff members to use for firewood.
Through a study funded by the Midwest Association of Golf Course Superintendents, Voigt is researching more than 50 native plants added to the golf course. He began working in 1993 with Ward on a planting of 15 species of native grasses and prairie plants.
“The plants are primarily those indigenous to the area,” Voigt said.
In a prairie restoration study, one of Voigt’s plots contains sand bluestem, vanilla grass, nodding wild onion, prairie dock and rattlesnake master. Voigt planted meadow rue, shooting stars, phlox, brown-eyed Susan, great blue lobelia and tufted hair grass under a canopy of oaks.
“We’re looking for suitability to the sites, the habitat and to the climate as well as how to combine the different species. We’re also looking at the ornamental characteristics and the flowering times,” Voigt said.
He will examine how well the plants do during at least one more growing season before publishing a booklet of recommended plants for the natural areas of Midwest golf courses.
“There are a lot of questions and not a lot of answers as to what plants do well and what looks good,” Voigt said, adding that the challenge is “to create a setting where these native plants provide wildlife habitat and provide an attractive setting in which to play golf.”
The golf course also is home to deer, fox, raccoons, woodchucks and muskrats. Kit Reay is the staff horticulturist.
“Each day is different. We saw hawks by their nest screeching while a coyote was running near their tree at dusk. I love the woodlands here and the changing wildflowers,” Reay said.
“I love this place. The grounds are magnificent,” said golfer Harry Buoscio of South Holland. His golfing partner, Bill Zielinski of Park Ridge, agreed.
“For my taste, this has got to be the prettiest club in Chicago and one of the top five in the Midwest,” Zielinski said.
The attention to plantings is paying off for golfers and wildlife.
Lori Valerius of Olympia Fields was on Hahn’s five-member birdwatching team. “It was my first time birdwatching, and it was cool. There are birds and plants that I didn’t know were here,” Valerius said.
“We counted nine red-headed woodpeckers, gorgeous birds,” Hahn said. “Now that’s a bird that’s in trouble. It’s not a city woodpecker. It likes a savanna habitat, which is all over the course.”
Kingfishers, acadian flycatchers, red-tailed hawks, Baltimore orioles and a rose-breasted grosbeak also were spotted as the birders pointed their binoculars into thickets and treetops.
Hahn thinks the Audubon golf course certification is important because “it shows people that these native plants work great at a golf course and maybe they could work in a yard.”
Results of the birdwatching open will be tabulated at Audubon headquarters this month.
Watching a baby red-tailed hawk testing its wings in its nest, Ward said, “You can’t beat this as a work environment. I can’t think of anything else I’d rather be doing.”
