Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy

Sixteen people showed up for our Saturday (1/10) morning bird walk at the Banshee Reeks Nature Preserve.

The highlights of the 40 species were a couple of BROWN CREEPERS and a WINTER WREN.

Birds seen:
Canada Goose, Wood Duck, American Black Duck, Mallard, Hooded Merganser (actually in pond on Evergreen Mill Rd across from The Woods Rd), Great Blue Heron, Turkey Vulture, Bald Eagle (1), Red-shouldered Hawk (2),Red-tailed Hawk (2), Mourning Dove (8), Belted Kingfisher (1), Red-bellied Woodpecker, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Downy Woodpecker, Northern Flicker, Pileated Woodpecker, Blue Jay, American Crow, Fish Crow, Carolina Chickadee, Tufted Titmouse, White-breasted Nuthatch, Brown Creeper (2), Carolina Wren, Winter Wren, Golden-crowned Kinglet (1), Ruby-crowned Kinglet (1), Eastern Bluebird, Northern Mockingbird, European Starling, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Field Sparrow, Song Sparrow, Swamp Sparrow, White-throated Sparrow, Dark-eyed Junco, Northern Cardinal, American Goldfinch

Information on Banshee Reeks which is now open every weekend from 8 am to 4 pm can be found at http://www.bansheereeks.org, and be sure to check our website for upcoming nature programs and field trips around Loudoun county.

Here’s a nice remembrance for Aldo Leopold. This was posted on the VA Bird list by Harry Glasgow from The Friends of Huntley Meadows. If you haven’t read the Sand County Almanac, it’s well worth putting on your reading list and its not very long: 

January 11 is the 122nd anniversary of the birth of Aldo Leopold.  Leopold was a conservationist, an educator, a writer, and is considered by many to be the father of wildlife management and of the United States wilderness system. 

A year after his death in April, 1948, his collection of essays entitled the Sand County Almanac was published. In this and other writings, Leopold developed and rendered the ideas that have become the spirit of conservation and environmental stewardship, and the basis of today’s land use ethics. 

With over two million copies sold, this book ranks among the seminal works in this nation’s bibliography of conservation and nature writings.  As one reviewer at the time put it, Sand County Almanac belongs on the same shelf as the writings of Thoreau and John Muir.