Reports

April 25, 2015 - BFNC North Simcoe Rail Trail Earth Day Cleanup

The weather was perfect for a spring Earth Day cleanup.  It was a crisp, clear spring morning, starting at 5 degrees C and climbing up to 9 degrees C by noon.

Thank you to all of the participants: Clare Holden, Lane Henderson, Judy Watson, Ormie Van Alstyne, Gwen Scott, Ruth Noland-Flores, Chris Evans, Don Scanlan, John Doll and Eldon Somerville.  A big thankyou to John Doll for his invaluable logistics experience with organizing and deploying the crews and to Eldon Somerville for providing, barbecuing and serving the hotdogs and refreshments back at the Minesing Station Park Pavilion.

Only 4 bags of garbage and 2 bags of recyclable material were collected.  This is a very promising indication that public education and environmental awareness are sinking in and trail users are acting more responsibly.  (Wish I could say the same for our roadsides!)  Much of the materials cleaned up came from high traffic road crossings.  Remarkably, however, beer cans and bottles were a significant portion of the material collected at these road crossings.

On the brighter side, lots of birds, were observed.  Here are the species and observations Ruth and I made.  I tried to record every species, but not necessarily every occurrence, as I was looking for and picking up some of the garbage, too!  ; )

2015-04-25 BFNC Earth Day North Simcoe Rail Trail Cleanup
12 hours starting Apr 25, 2015 @ 8:30 AM and ending Apr 25, 2015 @ 12:00 PM

Bird: (26 species)
 American Crow x1
 American Goldfinch x1
 American Robin x1
 Belted Kingfisher x1
 Black-capped Chickadee x3
 Blue Jay x2
 Brown-headed Cowbird x2
 Canada Goose x4

 Chipping Sparrow x1
 Common Grackle x6
 Dark-eyed Junco x1
 Double-crested Cormorant x1
 Downy Woodpecker x1
 Eastern Phoebe x4
 Falcon sp.

 Field Sparrow x4
 Golden-crowned Kinglet x1
 Gull sp. x27

 Hairy Woodpecker x1
 Northern Cardinal x1
 Northern Flicker x1
 Red-breasted Nuthatch x1
 Red-tailed Hawk x2, 1 adult & 1 juvenile
 Red-winged Blackbird x1
 Song Sparrow x2
 Turkey Vulture x2

Mammal:
 Eastern Chipmunk x1

 Eastern Gray Squirrel x3

Other:
 ATV Damaged Hine’s Emerald Dragonfly habitat along NSRT

Invasive Plant:
 Common Buckthorn x3