Thanks so much to the crew who came out to help with the creek clean up on Saturday! As you know, Wake Audubon’s adopt a creek section of Crabtree Creek is from Atlantic Boulevard to Raleigh Boulevard. This stretch is hard to clean, since for most of it the green way is high up on the slope above the creek and its tricky to get up and down those steep banks.
Exciting finds include: 4 tires, an unopened bottle of bud light (not opened by the cleanup crew) and a Nissan bumper with grill attached. 10 bags of trash total were removed from the creek and banks. Special thanks to Kari Wouk for organizing!
This past weekend was quite a hectic one for Wake Audubon. On Saturday we held a Young Naturalist bird banding event at Prairie Ridge Ecostation. We caught 15 birds, 14 new and one recaptured bird, a Northern Mockingbird that had been originally banded in 2006. The bird was covered in purple from eating poke berries! We also caught Field, White-throated and Song Sparrows, and both types of Kinglets. One of the other highlights was seeing the Loggerhead Shrike as well as two grubs he had impaled in a Parsley-leafed Hawthorne.
Also on Saturday was the pick up for our coffee and bird seed sale. Thanks to everyone who bought coffee and seed, and a special thank you to Outdoor Bird Company for hosting us as well as their kind 10% donation. Donna, the manager, is talking about making it an even bigger event next year for which we are grateful. Also a thank you to John Gerwin for organizing all the orders.
On Sunday, Wake Audubon had a booth at the new Wetlands Environmental Center on Peterson Street in Raleigh. That new building is lovely! It has a nice long porch complete with rocking chairs for sitting and admiring the wetlands. We had many visitors to our booth where we played the “what bird eats which bug” game and I led a birdwalk on the greenway. Thanks to the volunteers who helped man our booth: John Gerwin, Angie D, Mary Lou, and Carol A.
In the news today a “Chicken Hawk” struck a Duke Medical Helicopter. Fortunatley no humans were hurt. However what exactly is a Chicken Hawk, anyway?
The Owl Prowl was a success! We had 18 people on the 11/1 walk, despite the weather (overcast and misting). About three were from the official wake audubon site, the others from Meetup. We walked down to the major lake at Durant Nature Park at 5:15 and a great horned owl answered my hoots! We followed the sounds and were rewarded with a silhouetted owl perched in a dead tree across the lake! They even got to watch her fly off. A second Great Horned Owl hooted nearby, answering the first one.
While we were gathering at Durant Nature Park, taping red plastic onto our flashlights, talking and laughing, a man came up to us and wished us good luck on our owl walk. And then he said “You have completely changed my impression of what birdwatchers look like… I always pictured them as a bunch of little old ladies!” How true; of this bunch of 18, I was the oldest one there, and most were under 30. Oh, it’s okay to be an old birder, but isn’t it great that we are getting these people early in life? Let’s turn them into lifelong supporters of Audubon!
L. Erla, Audubon member since 1974.