Sitting on the eastern edge of Barrington, Illinois, is Baker's Lake. Sited on a small island in the middle of the lake is an odd-shaped apartment complex, home to over 300 nesting pairs of herons. Like all snowbirds, herons migrate south for the winter and return north in the spring. Early birds began arriving just after March began.

The rookery looks like a jumble of pick-up sticks and is made from old telephone poles, dead trees (including old Christmas trees), and nuts and bolts to hold it all together.

Telephone poles, Christmas trees, and 1,300 birds at Baker's Lake Nature Preserve. Photo by Robert Sliwinski.

The rookery is the heart of the 300-acre forest preserve and birders come from all over to see this largest assembly of herons in the Midwest. Originally the preserve was privately owned land with a peat bog where the lake now sits. At some point in the early part of the last century, the bog caught fire and smoldered for decades, giving Barrington the smell of an ancient Irish cottage.

Water was later diverted to create the lake, which soon became a resting point in heron migration each Spring and Fall. It was made a state nature preserve in 1984. A consortium of state and private conservation groups came forward in the late 1990s to create the apartment complex and since then herons, egrets, and cormorants call Baker's Lake their summer home where they create their nests, lay eggs, and raise their young.

For more information on Baker's Lake and its odd apartment complex, click on the following link: Chicago Wilderness Magazine.