Nicknames people have called me over the years would be “Chicken Obsessed”, “Bird Nerd”, maybe “Nature Freak.” If my chickens would give me a name, I would say “Mama Shar” for sure.

My name is Shari McCollough and I'm the owner and caretaker of this lovely place called the Lye Creek Prairie Burn.

So the Lye Creek Prairie Burn is an 80 acre wetland prairie that's designed basically for conservation and habitat for birds and wildlife.

Lye Creek Prairie Burn got its name back in 1936 due to a farmer who raked up some corn stalks, burned all the corn stalks and then caught the ground on fire.

So it burned for months.

That's when they figured out that it was a very organic soil.

Wetland prairies like this one are some of the most ecologicall for birds and other wildlife, this place serves as a crossroads, a refuge, a home.

So the birds use this place for many reasons.

So we have resident birds, and those birds live here all year long.

They breed here, they nest here.

They stay here the entire winter time.

And then we have our migrants.

So those are birds that come in in the spring and then use the property to nest, live here throughout the summer months, raise their young and then they migrate back south.

And then we have birds that use this place as a stopover.

So there's birds that just come.

They call staging where they come in, and they might spend 7 to 10 days and they just use it as resting grounds before they move to their actual nesting grounds, which are many times as in Canada.

So it's used by a variety of species.

And that's the thing you never really know what you're going to get here.

“Here comes a white crowned sparrow.

” Keeping a place like this alive takes patience, knowledge, the kind of stubbornness that refuses to let beauty disappear.

So maintaining the property is an ongoing, never ending job.

I always am thinking about how I can make this place better for the birds.

What's invasive, what's not, what's good, what's to get rid of?

And it's been such a huge learning curve about all the different plants when to treat them, what to treat them with.

How is the best way is to manage those plants?

Is it mowing?

Is it spraying?

Is it both?

But yeah, it's always a balance.

While the Burn is first and foremost a sanctuary for nature, Shari welcomes visitors with open arms, year round.

It's privately owned but open to the public.

For like minded folk that like to come out and hike, see birds, enjoy the wildlife, there's always something to see.

Oh my god!

Thats so freaking cool!

It's a little less than a quarter of a mile walk back here, and there's a wonderful place that people could come and sit and watch the bird feeders.

And then a nice trail system.

People can walk and Shari doesn't just watch over the property, she documents it.

We have documented 242 species of birds that have visited this field.

I got into photography, kind of started out the bird part of it by accident.

I've always like to take pictures, start doing nature stuff, like anything spiders, butterflies.

And then I started taking pictures of birds because, you know, they're outside, they're in nature.

And I started noticing their different colors and different stripes.

And that kind of led me to research.

But for me, it's like, I love capturing the birds in like a natural environment, you know, of them preening or bathing nest building, just like naturally doing what they would normally be doing.

I love it, but her love of birds didn't start at like creek or even with the camera.

Before the wetlands, Shari was one of the most decorated competitive chicken breeders in the nation, so we bred a lot of different chickens over the years.

But I've been known for competitively and consistently, silky.

And I loved every minute of it.

Like I was chicken obsessed.

I got really heavily into breeding for perfection.

There is a lot of care involved, specially with with heavily feathered birds.

I was at every show my son and I traveled all over the place together and showed together, and we kicked but all over the place.

While Shari was competing, the Burn was managed by someone else.

Someone who would change her perspective and purpose forever.

So before me, the Burn was maintained by my really, really dear friend Clint Murray and we became fast friends after I really started liking birding and getting into bird photography, and my daughter happened to be doing a Google search.

She goes, “mom, there's a like a nature preserve right over the down the road from us!” And I was like, “What?

!” He introduced me to this place.

And so we were friends for 11 years.

He taught me so much about birding, about birds, about habitat, about native plants.

So he really gave me that bug.

You know, what an amazing person he was to introduce me to all those good things that I needed to know.

I had a conversation with Clint later in life, and he started talking about, “well, I'm not sure what I'm ever going to do with this place when I pass away” and and I said, I will do it.

I will absolutely do it.

So once that baton was passed, it was like, then it was like he just started talking about, you know, this is how I do this.

This is when I do this.

And it's been a very spiritual, I think, experience for me, I feel very responsible for taking care of this place, but in a good way.

The Burn truly is an oasis for wildlife and one that lives on thanks to the passionate preservationists who refuse to let it fade.

This work is done for the birds, it's done for the wildlife, and it's done for the good of this property.

And I can only hope that someday I find somebody passionate, you know, like I am about this place.

And like, Clint was.

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