Meeting, Cleanup Results and Upcoming Events

Its been a busy few days for the Friends of Indian River.   On Thursday evening we had our regular monthly meeting.   Carol reported on what I consider our group winning the Outstanding Citizens Award and the Mayor's Outstanding Service Award at the Chesapeake Environmental Improvement Council Awards Luncheon.   This is an accomplishment that would not have been possible without the dedicated efforts of all our volunteers and members.    Then our speaker for the evening was Pam Fisher, President of the Beekeepers Guild of Southeast Virginia, who gave an extremely interesting and information filled presentation about the importance of bees in our gardens and how to attract and support bees.   We also approved our budget for our 2013 fiscal year which starts on April 1st; a copy of the budget is available on request.   

On Saturday, 11 volunteers braved the ominous clouds to come out and clean up along Indian River Road.   These cleanups are important to help beautify our neighborhood and keep trash and pollutants from being washed down the storm sewer into the river.   Despite a short rain event that interrupted the cleanup, we collected about 14 bags of garbage, about 7 of which we hauled up from the shoreline under Indian River Bridge.   Unfortunately the trash included all the usual items - bottles, cans, styrofoam, plastic bags, an innumerable number of cigarette butts (which are NOT biodegradable) - and at least one discarded motor oil container and one old motor oil filter found in the gutter.    A big thank you to our volunteers for their good work and dedication.

In April and May, we shift our attention to gardening.   Our speaker on April 11th will be naturalist, forager, and publisher Vickie Shufer will present "Meet the Natives" regarding how to use native plants in your garden.   On April 13th we resume efforts around Indian River Bridge by working to clear weeds and invasive plants from the four planters at the bridge corners in preparation for May 4th when we will plant gardens at the two bridge corners on the westbound side of the road to match the two we planted on the other side in the fall.

Stay tuned for updates on these events and much more information as we continue into our second year.  

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

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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