Photo: Magnolia Warbler, Matt Felperin
This spring feels different. The migrating birds are arriving, and I am excitedly filling in my 2025 version of the chart of approximate warbler arrival dates that my friend Kay Bushman sent me several years ago. Here’s a link to an Excel spreadsheet you can use and adapt! I am planning and rounding up donations for several Birdathon teams, the Board Birders and Monticello Madness teams, and I can’t wait to spend a few entire days in May doing nothing but birdwatching! But it isn’t the birdwatching that feels different.
Now that it is spring, NVBA’s conservation work has gone into high gear, and it is this work that has taken on new meaning for me. I have always embraced conservation a way to protect nature for future generations. But the concept of “future generations” became a lot less abstract for me this year. This year feels different because now I have a grandchild – and I want him to be able to enjoy nature just as much as I do and as his father, an avid fisherman, does!
So how am I pitching in and how can you help?
Our Bird Safe NOVA campaign will have its greatest impact if we all do our part. I have redoubled my efforts in and around our home to make our windows bird-safe and to turn off our lights at night; I have reduced pesticide use and keep our cats indoors. I hope you can do the same! We can also encourage our neighbors, homeowners associations, local businesses, and local jurisdictions to take similar actions – our spring 2025 Lights Out for Birds campaign is one way to help.
Our Stretch Our Parks pilot programs are buzzing with activity. At Monticello Park I am co-organizing a one-day Birdathon on May 14th to try to find more than the 58 species we saw last year -- please join for any part of the day as well as a bird walk for non-birding neighbors of the park. We are planning more work days with local Boy Scout troop #129 and other volunteers – so if you are interested in helping preserve this warbler-rich gem of a park, please keep an eye on our Stretch Our Parks webpage that lists activities at this and other parks. On May 4, at Four Mile Run Park, I will be helping out with bilingual festivities and bird walks being co-organized with Casa Chirilagua and the Four Mile Run Conservancy Foundation. I may not be there, but I can gladly point you to volunteer opportunities at Upton Hill Regional Park and Powhatan Skate Park – there are invasive pulls and habitat work with many neighboring groups to join. And at Occoquan Bay NWR – there are several invasive pulls, bird walks, and more activities in the pipeline.
I delight in seeing firsthand each spring and summer how NVBA’s Wildlife Sanctuary Program (WSP) facilitates conservation and habitat restoration, because a few years ago I worked to get our tiny yard certified as a wildlife sanctuary. Since then I have been working with neighbors to help take related actions. This spring I dug up dozens of robust native plants from our yard and gave them away. And although I am not an official WSP Ambassador, my training in botany enabled me to give a WSP talk to neighbors and congregants of the church next door. We are growing a small local wildlife sanctuary: follow this link to the Wildlife Sanctuary Program page and consider doing what you can in your yard and neighborhood!
I hope the spring arrival of birds and wonderful weather inspires you to work on conserving our natural places across northern Virginia for future generations to cherish and enjoy!
And once again - thank you for all of the support you give us in time, expertise, enthusiasm, and funding.