Great Backyard Bird Count

Update Feb 23 2013

American has just completed its biggest Great Backyard Bird Count ever and in our Indian River neighborhoods we had 13 checklists submitted from 6 observers.   Together they identified 48 bird species.   Birds on everyone's checklist included the Carolina Chickadee and the Northern Cardinal.   One of the more rarely reported sightings was a quartet of Greater Scaup ducks.

Cumulative counts from the various checklists:

143	American Crow			34	Northern Cardinal
126	American Goldfinch	7	Downy Woodpecker	7	Northern Mockingbird
81	American Robin	2	Eastern Bluebird	3	Pied-billed Grebe
1	Belted Kingfisher	2	Eastern Towhee	4	Pine Siskin
34	Blue Jay	110	European Starling	4	Pine Warbler
7	Boat-tailed Grackle	4	Fox Sparrow	5	Red-bellied Woodpecker
1	Brown Pelican	1	Gray Catbird	10	Red-breasted Nuthatch
5	Brown Thrasher	3	Great Black-backed Gull	2	Red-tailed Hawk
50	Brown-headed Cowbird	1	Great Egret	200	Red-winged Blackbird
26	Bufflehead	4	Greater Scaup	84	Ring-billed Gull
42	Canada Goose	1	Hairy Woodpecker	2	Sharp-shinned Hawk
33	Carolina Chickadee	1	hawk sp.	5	Song Sparrow
9	Carolina Wren	7	Hooded Merganser	10	Tufted Titmouse
32	Cedar Waxwing	71	House Finch	1	Turkey Vulture
105	Common Grackle	30	House Sparrow	1	White-breasted Nuthatch
32	crow sp.	13	Mallard	114	White-throated Sparrow
21	Dark-eyed Junco	97	Mourning Dove	10	Yellow-rumped Warbler

---

The group had a real treat at our meeting on Feb 14 as Anita and Anne from Wildbirds Unlimited talked to us about backyard birding - and even left us with some treats to share with our feathered friends.   We also discussed moving our meeting date and narrowed our consideration to the 1st Wednesday of the month starting in September.   Our next meeting will be Thursday, March 14 and Pam Fisher will be talking to us about Bees in our Garden.  On Saturday, March 16 we will have a volunteer event for our quarterly Adopt-A-Road cleanup along Indian River Road.

This weekend (Feb 15 thru 18) is the Great Backyard Bird Count.   Its an opportunity for everyone to participate in a fun and easy effort to counts birds around the nation.   This citizen effort provides valuable information to help determine what birds are where; the data is collected and analyzed by researchers at  Cornell Lab of Ornithology.   You can spend as little 15 minutes, or much of the weekend if you wish, watching birds in your backyard and reporting the count online.   For details and the link to submit your count, visit http://www.birdsource.org/gbbc/whycount.html

If you do participate in the count, send a copy of count to info@friendsofindianriver.org.   We would love to have a cumulative count of what was reported in our area.

More Ivy Removal on Saturday, Feb 9

The crew ready for action

Update:  We had another productive work session in Indian River Park this morning.  Six of us used the morning to clear English Ivy from the trees across another acre of the park.  That means dozens of trees that won't be smothered or host berry producing ivy.

Next Saturday, February 9th, at 9 am, we're going to have another volunteer event to tackle another area of ivy in the Park .   We'll be meeting at the park parking lot at Rokeby Ave. and Main St. (on the south side of Military Highway away from the firehouse).  Wear long pants, close-toed shoes, and bring work or gardening gloves. Bring pruning clippers, loppers, screwdrivers (which are amazingly useful in prying ivy off tree trunks) and/or pruning saws if you have them.     

I hope many of you had the chance to see the front page article about the Friends of Indian River in the Clipper on January 21st.   Covering our effort to halt the spread of invasive ivy in Indian River Park, the story also highlighted the general threats of this and other invasive plants.   A link to the article can be found at http://www.friendsofindianriver.org/p/press.html

Invasive English Ivy Removal - Saturday, 1/12/13

Update 3 PM: A small, but dedicated crew came out in the early morning fog and worked on the English Ivy removal in the park.    With the goal to stop the Ivy that had climbed into the tree tops, six of us moved in with loppers, clippers, and saws.   The tactic was to remove the ivy from the bottom 4 to 6 feet of the tree, which leaves the Ivy higher up to wither and die.   This approach saves the tree from slowly being choked and prevents the the Ivy from producing seeds which are spread to other parts of the park.   We cut the Ivy from about a hundred trees.  A reporter from the Chesapeake Clipper came out to see us in action, so look for an article in next weeks Clipper.

We are planning to tackle another area of Ivy next month, on Saturday, February 9th.   Come out and join us!

_______________________________________

On Saturday, January 12th, 9 am,  the Friends of Indian River will be having a volunteer event to remove English Ivy in Indian River Park.  We'll be meeting at the park parking lot at Rokeby Ave. and Main St. (on the south side of Military Highway away from the firehouse).  Wear long pants, close-toed shoes, and bring work or gardening gloves. Bring pruning clippers, loppers, and/or pruning saws if you have them.

Indian River Park is a beautiful 90 acre oasis in our community with miles of trails, century old trees, and a variety of wildlife.   It protects and buffers the eastern headwaters - the source - of the Indian River.   Volunteers from the Chesapeake Arboretum have identified at least 33 species of native trees in the park including massive old Beech trees and Tulip Poplars.   A variety of birds from tiny Wrens to our biggest woodpecker, the Pileated Woodpecker, can be spotted amongst the trees.   The park is favorite local walkers and for the bikers of the Eastern Virginia Mountain Bike Association.

But the park has been invaded.    While most of the park is mostly clear, several large areas of English Ivy are established and dozens more hot-spots exist around the park.   Started from seeds dropped by birds, the English Ivy if left unchecked threatens to turn Indian River Park into a green desert.   While birds do eat the seeds of mature Ivy, little else does.   The Ivy crowds out all other ground cover, smothers bushes, and eventually overtops and kills trees.   Having little nutritional value to wildlife, it breaks the food chain so birds and  animals are also forced out of the park.   Eventually you have nothing but a boring green carpet of one kind of leaf.

But the invasion is still early and the impact is limited.   If we get in there now we can contain and start rolling back the invaders.    Our first step will be to stop the Ivy from crawling up the trees; when it climbs the tree that it matures and starts making seeds.   Stopping the tree climb will dramatically slow the spread giving us time to eliminate small outbreaks and eventually strip out the major outbreaks.

On-going vigilance will be needed but come out and join us this Saturday as we take our steps to push out this green invader.

There is a good video on English Ivy removal steps at http://www.portlandoregon.gov/parks/article/201781
and another straight forward list of instructions at http://ivyout.org/ivyremove.html