The wildlife of Wichita

 

South of the Smoky Hills, you can’t expect mountains. But the wild spaces still exist, even if they take different forms. 

I awoke to steady rain on my second day in Kansas and immediately headed south to Wichita. The city of 400,000 people  tucked away some special wild areas. 

The Great Plains Nature Center provides an introduction to creatures of the plains, but it anchors a massive, restored wetlands area in northeastern Wichita. 

A series of trails and boardwalks surround Chisholm Creek, named for Jesse Chisholm, the Scotch-Cherokee tracker who would plot out what would become the Chisholm Trail, the route of numerous cattle drives from the San Antonio to Abilene, Kansas, where they were shipped by railcar. Wichita was along the route. 

Despite the rain, I didn’t have to wait long for a wildlife encounter. I peeked into the creek at some sloshing and heard a massive plunk, which I expected came from a fish. 

Then a little head poked above the water. At first I thought it was a river otter with grizzled fur suited to the wetlands. Then I saw how small it was -maybe a quarter the size of an adult otter - and its rat-like tail. I figured I spotted a nutria, a nasty invasive river rodent with the worst tendencies of beavers and rats. 

Wandering about the nature center later, I discovered the little diver was not invasive, but a native muskrat, a good rodent for wetland development. Nutria have not reach south-central Kansas yet, so we can confirm a muskrat swam past me. 

 Beyond birds, that ended the sightings on this rainy morning. There was no shortage of bird chatter. The landscape often shifted quickly from creek and wetlands to prairie or even a heavily forested section along the park’s edge. The creek wound through a series of fields where deer and bison would have not felt out of place. But the prairie restorations succeeded in restoring a ploughed-under ecosystem, even if they cannot recreate it plant-for-plant. 

Birdsong outshined the rain for the first hour, but eventually the rain grew too heavy for them and for me. I returned in time to visit the Great Plains Visitor Center. Inside the center had little enclosures, including a screech owl and a kestrel. Multiple reptiles and amphibians had space as well, with one turtle buried up to its neck in preparation for the colder months. The building includes a large glass blind that looks out onto the wetlands, although nothing wandered this way as the rain grew to a downpour.  

The nature center was only half the act. In Wichita’s Central Riverside Park on the Little Arkansas north of its confluence with the Arkansas River lies the Kansas Wildlife Exhibit, a small collection of native Kansas animals also administered by the Great Plains Nature Center. 

Pond turtles.

The exhibit lies on the site of Wichita’s original zoo, replaced by the Sedgwick County Zoo in the late 1960s. 

The wildlife exhibit's educational purpose might be more important today. The animals have either suffered injuries or have become imprinted and comfortable with humans. 

The two spots have a synergy – one trying to restore a prairie and wetlands that thrived before development, another giving a glimpse at the wild things that still roam Kansas. 

At twelve noon everyday the keepers feed the KWE animals and give an amazing tutorial of the animals, how they provide enrichment, and more. About a dozen people congregated on this rainy Monday. The keepers couldn’t have been nice and detailed the personalities of the exhibit’s residents. 

Chapa the beaver, who at his weight seemed closer to a capybara. Many animals pack on pounds before winter, although Chapa had a taste for sweet potatoes. Chapa escaped once but was easily recaptured once he realized what wild beavers must endure, the keepers said. 

Rufus the bobcat paced his cage purposely. These were not the movements of a stressed animal, but a cat that knew feeding time neared because his keepers entered the exhibit. 

Rufus received multiple meats, including pieces of chicken hidden around his enclosure, and a special prize, a dead white rat in an Amazon box. He found every bite. The keeper stayed a good eight feet away from Rufus the whole time and mentioned that he would get growly if she got closer. With wild cats, comfort with humans is relative. 

Both Chapa and Rufus had indoor dens hidden under their exhibits, while animals such as Chuck go inside on colder nights. Chuck the vulture is more than 30 years old and remains quite the character. A few days after my visit, his keepers put him on a glove and walked him over to the Keeper of the Plains statue on the river. 

The enclosures included a golden eagle, several opossums that unsurprisingly showed no signs of stirring, birds that included a night heron, ducks, and quite a few turtles.  

Chuck the vulture

The weather stayed warm enough that turtles moved through the small ponds in the exhibit. One keeper told me she walks carefully the colder months because the turtles will burrow into the grass and dirt. The aquatic turtles stay underwater. 

A little stone building adjacent to the outdoor exhibits houses many of the Kansas Wildlife Exhibit’s other reptiles and invertebrates, including numerous nonvenomous snakes, a tarantula, and more. A keeper brought out some of the calmer snakes for people to touch. 

The rain turned heavy at times. But it never inhibited exploring wildlife at different ends of Wichita. 

Staying under till spring.