Itasca County and Chippewa National Forest Birding
From intersection of CSAH 39 and Birchmont Beach Road, go 2.7 miles east on Birchmont Beach Road, then 6.2 miles south and east on USFS Road 2204, then 2.8 miles north on USFS Road 2671 (Third River Road) to entrance of WMA. Go 1.7 miles W to parking lot.
A 5,000-acre complex of sedge meadows, lowland brush, shallow water ponds, and scattered upland forest, Morph Meadows is worth birding for hooded mergansers, ring-necked ducks, trumpeter swans, olive-sided flycatchers, sandhill cranes, and marsh birds.
Management includes periodic prescribed burns, shearing of lowland brush, manipulation of water levels (drawdown in 2002), duck boxes in impoundment, aspen harvest on uplands.