400 Acres of Reston Association Natural Areas Certified as Wildlife Sanctuaries

Photo: Canada Warbler, Dale Bonk/Audubon Photography Awards

Reston has over 800 acres of natural areas and other wildlife-friendly areas, including 55 miles of trails, on property owned by the Reston Association.  

Claudia Thompson-Deahl; Photo: Sean Bahrami, Reston Association

Six of these areas, covering 400 acres, are now certified as Audubon at Home Wildlife Sanctuaries, thanks to the efforts of Reston Association Senior Environmental Resource Manager Claudia Thompson-Deahl, Chief Operating Officer Larry Butler and former Audubon at Home Co-Director Robin Duska. They include Bright Pond and Walker Nature Center and along the Glade West/Meadow trails, Glade East’s Turquoise Trail, Twin Branches Trail and Buttermilk Trail.  

To obtain certification as an Audubon at Home Wildlife Sanctuary, a property owner is asked to sign the Healthy Yard Pledge, pledging to remove invasive non-native plants, reduce area covered by lawn, plant native plants, reduce pesticide and fertilizer use and conserve and protect water quality. Certification also requires providing several habitat features, such as native shrubs and trees, a water feature, or a rain garden or pollinator garden and observing at least 10 Sanctuary Species using the property.

Reston Association already manages its natural areas in line with the Healthy Yard Pledge, and Robin documented 60 different Sanctuary Species in the six sites. All of the sites are designated as “birding hotspots” in the Cornell University eBird database, and birders have observed between 91 and 134 bird species at each. 

For example, Walker Nature Center’s woodland trails leading along Snakeden Stream Valley to Lake Audubon are a prime spot for seeing warblers. Twenty-eight warbler species, including the Canada Warbler recorded on the certification application, along with migratory birds and water birds have been observed there.

Especially during the pandemic, many Reston residents and others enjoy walking or biking the trails through these areas. Hopefully the new signs designating the areas as Wildlife Sanctuaries will help people appreciate how valuable these large, contiguous areas are as wildlife habitat, and encourage better stewardship by not littering or letting dogs run unleashed.  

Robin used the citizen science tools eBird and the Reston Biodiversity project in iNaturalist to certify the sites based on finding species of 29 birds, 22 insects, 4 arachnids, 2 mammals, and 3 reptiles/amphibians. “All Restonians can help document diversity via these tools,” she notes, and you can too.

Are you interested in creating a Wildlife Sanctuary in your own backyard? If you live in Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax, Loudoun, Prince William, Rappahannock or Fauquier, just click here to learn more about the program and request a free visit by an Audubon at Home Ambassador, who will advise on steps you can take to improve habitat for birds and other wildlife in your yard—and get it certified as a Wildlife Sanctuary.

Bird-Window Collision Webinar

Photo: Barred Owl, Robin Conolly

If you missed the 19 March webinar on bird-window collisions, you may watch a recording of it here.

Collisions with windows are the third greatest cause of death for birds in the United States, after habitat loss and predation by outdoor cats.  Peer-reviewed conservative research estimates that about one million birds collide with windows every day—the annual estimate is 365 to 988 million. 

To learn about this threat and how to help mitigate it at your home, Reston Association and the Audubon Society of Northern Virginia invited Peter Saenger, President of Lehigh Valley Audubon Society, and Leigh Altadonna, President of the Wyncote Audubon Society, to speak on 19 March via webinar.  They lead a Pennsylvania-based Bird-Window Collision Working Group that includes the Acopian Center at Muhlenberg College, Audubon Pennsylvania and the Lehigh Valley and Wyncote Audubon Societies. Their group has developed a “Bird-Window Collision Toolkit” which is being used by other Audubon groups.  

Note that after introductions, the webinar describes how this toolkit can be used to educate others; basic information on how and why birds collide with windows then follows. 

Also, this page from Pennsylvania Audubon features "how to" videos on installing solutions to prevent collisions. If you do install materials, the Bird-Window Collision Working Group would welcome your completing a survey on what you did--the survey link is also on the Pennsylvania Audubon page under “Record how you are protecting birds at your own home or place of work.”