On Saturday, February 15, 2025, the Urban Bird Project, with the 2025 Spring Scholars, and members of the community, came together to explore the wetlands of Mitchell Lake led by Erin Magerl of the Mitchell Lake Audubon Center. Historically, and still today, this place is also called Laguna de Los Patos (“Lake of Ducks”) by the San Antonio locals of the area and the Spaniards of the 1700s because the ephemeral wetlands invited a rich biodiversity of ducks and waterbirds. After decades of private ownership as part of the Mitchell family ranch, the city purchased the land to create a sewage dump that lasted for over half a century. The area was reclaimed as a nature preserve in the 1970s, and today it is managed by the National Audubon Society as a thriving urban wildlife refuge and a critical wetland stopover site that attracts over 300 birds a year (see The Cultural Landscape Foundation).
As visitors made their way through the prairie along thinly unpaved roads leading to the wetlands, we explored the birds, the wildlife, and the recent historical findings from the Mitchell family. In 2019, a descendant of the colonist Asa Mitchell unearthed a family photo of an enslaved man named Burl Ross. This photo led to the uncovering of a nearby slave cemetery on the former Mitchell Ranch now owned by Texas A&M University-San Antonio. Mitchell Lake holds a complex and multi-layered history that few folks have begun to unpack. In the wetlands, an odor arose from the mud and it triggered memories for the local community members who talked about how the smell of sewage was a signal of home. With the American Kestrel soaring through the backdrop of a frigid and overcast sky, along with the constant booms of bullets from a nearby shooting range, the mud clung to our feet causing a heaviness like weights strapped to our ankles. Layered in colonial history, the land continues to speak through its biodiversity and ecological perseverance. The land wanted us to remember; it called us to remember.
