The search for the mystery artist behind the wooden birds on the Oak Leaf Trail

For this Bubbler Talk, we set out to solve a mystery.

Laurel Heebsh has been hiking Milwaukee County’s Oak Leaf Trail since the start of the pandemic when something caught her eye, and she decided to ask Bubbler Talk:

“I noticed these little wood-carved birds and I’m just wondering who makes those and puts those up."

Bubbler Talk

What have you always wanted to know about the Milwaukee area that you'd like WUWM to explore?

I was determined to find out.

Heebsh says the wooden birds can usually be found nailed to bridges and rails along the Menomonee Line, also known as the pink line, of the Oak Leaf Trail system.

The wooden birds have a folk art vibe and vary in size — usually between two to three inches long and four to five inches wide. They’re also not very detailed birds: The body, beak, tail and eye are each painted a different color.

The Oak Leaf Trail is managed by Milwaukee County Parks, so I thought, “They must know the artist making these birds!” So I reached out to their trails coordinator, Jacob Sanchez, and asked him about it.

"It's a mystery that me and my team have been aware of for some time, but we do not know who makes the birds,” Sanchez said.

Bummer. This wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought.

Next, I turned to the people of Milwaukee Reddit for help. I posted pictures of the birds and asked if anyone knew the artist.

There were lots of opinions but still no answers.

In my search for Milwaukee’s Banksy, I reverse-image searched pictures of the wooden birds, looked up Wisconsin artists on Etsy and reached out to local Milwaukee art groups.

It still didn’t lead me to the artist.

That’s when my research led me to stumble upon Jo Jensen — while she isn’t the Milwaukee artist behind the wooden birds, she is a Madison artist!

While Jensen has always been an artist of various mediums — including pull tab art, sculptures and portraits — she most recently got attention for making wooden birds for her neighborhood.

Her wooden birds are a little more realistic looking than the mystery birds in Milwaukee.

“People's motivations for making things are as diverse as the stuff that they make,” Jensen says.

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A wooden Tufted-titmouse made by Madison artist Jo Jensen. She says what started as a scrap project for herself, turned into a gift for one neighbor and exploded into a painted flock across her neighborhood. Her neighbors up and down the block started asking for one.

Jo Jensen

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A wooden White-breasted nuthatch made by Madison artist Jo Jensen, is secured to a mailbox to mimic the bird's tendency to climb up and down trees.

Jo Jensen

I thought Jensen might be able to help me understand the mind of the mystery artist making the wooden birds in Milwaukee.

“Because [the Milwaukee artist] made them and they left them in public places, I think they're trying to get people to notice birds, to be conscious of the world around you, the living things around you,” she says.

Jensen describes this form of art as guerilla art.

“Putting something without asking, and something that could be considered as permanent, or changing the color of something, or attaching something to something else — one person might say, ‘Oh, that's lovely.’ Another person says, “You're defacing public property,” Jensen explains. "So, I understand why the bird [artist] in Milwaukee is keeping it quiet — because you have two sides of the coin."

But the mystery artist does not need to fret. Milwaukee County Parks staff are huge fans.

“They're benign, they're kind of fun, they're whimsical, they're not hurting anyone, and they add a little freshness to the trail,” Sanchez says. “Especially in these shoulder seasons like we have now, when all the plants are dead, it's fun to see a pop of color on the trail."

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Bubbler Talk listener, Laurel Heebsh, says she stops and takes a picture every time she sees a wooden bird on the Oak Leaf Trail. “I like to keep a memory and think about the places I’ve walked and places I still want to go to,” she says.

Xcaret Nuñez / WUWM

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Bubbler Talk listener, Laurel Heebsh, says she started noticing the wooden birds in March 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, when she started walking the Oak Leaf Trail regularly with her dog (pictured above).

Laurel Heebsh

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While most of the wooden birds found along the Oak Leaf Trail are up for interpretation, Bubbler Talk listener, Laurel Heebsh, says some are painted to resemble certain bird species. “I know there’s a loon (pictured above)... and a few that look like bluebirds, ducks and sparrows.”

Laurel Heebsh

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Bubbler Talk listener, Laurel Heebsh, says the wooden birds can often be found nailed to bridges and rails along the Oak Leaf Trail, but are sometimes also nailed to tree cavities.

Laurel Heebsh

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Although the mystery remains unsolved – for now – Bubbler Talk listener Laurel Heebsh, hopes the mystery artist gets to hear the story. “At least they’ll know that people are seeing them and people are liking them,” she says. “Maybe they don't even know that.”

Laurel Heebsh

Back on the Oak Leaf Trail, Bubbler Talk listener, Laurel Heebsh, and I met up at Hart Park in Wauwatosa to find the wooden birds together:

“Oh, yeah, look at that. This one's not even a bird. That's exciting! This one's a fish,” Heebsh says pointing out a wooden fish that’s seemingly similar to the wooden birds.

Xcaret Nuñez

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WUWM

She says she’d love for the artist to make a map of where to find the birds to draw more people to the trails, but thinks it might be best for this case to remain unsolved.

“Maybe it would be better to just keep them a mystery,” Heebsh says. “Just know that somebody out there is thinking about the hikers and bikers and wants to bring a little happiness to people's lives.”

In the meantime, keep your eyes peeled and enjoy the scavenger hunt. You never know what you might find in nature.

Get in touch 

If you’re the mystery artist behind the whimsical wood-carved birds, WUWM’s Lake Effect producer Xcaret Nuñez would love to hear from you! Please get in touch by emailing her at nunezx@uwm.edu.

And if you’re an admirer of the wooden birds and don’t see a marker placed for them on the Google map that Xcaret has created, she’d love to hear from you too! Feel free to email her the location of where you found a wooden bird at nunezx@uwm.edu.