Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy

Camp Out in Your Backyard!

Camping is a great way to establish a love for the outdoors and to learn to appreciate wildlife.  Parents, consider taking your kids camping this weekend.  Kids, if you can’t get to a campground, plan a camping trip to your backyard!  While you probably won’t hear as many nature sounds in your backyard as you would at campsite in the forest, camping in your yard is a great way to get used to sleeping in a tent, cooking your food over a fire and learning to identify those eerie nighttime noises.  Here are some things you’ll need to gather.
• Tent
• Sleeping bag or other bedding
• Sleeping pad or air mattress
• Warm clothes
• Flashlight and extra batteries
• Insect repellent
• Bottle of water

If you don’t have a tent, try making one using a tarp attached to a tree, the side of your house, or a clothesline.  If you aren’t able to fashion a tent, check the weather report and consider sleeping out under the stars- at least for a little while.  The advantage to camping in your backyard is that the comforts of home are just a few steps away.

Here are some things you might want to bring for fun, whether you’re going on a longer trip or just into your backyard.
• Checklist of animals and plants that you might see or hear
• Playing cards or games
• Something to read
• Musical instruments and song books
• Camp chairs
• Snacks
• GPS device
• Binoculars
• Camera

If you’re lucky, while you set up your site you might see birds, butterflies, squirrels and wildflowers.  As it gets darker, look for fireflies and bats and listen for rustling birds and owls calling whowhoo.  Remember to have fun, respect nature and keep an open mind.

Make a Wildlife Collage

You’ll need:
- a base: construction paper, cardboard, poster board
- old magazines, newspapers, pictures
- scissors
- glue or paste
- items you’ve collected, respectfully with permission, from the outdoors

A collage is a piece of artwork or a poster that is made of many different images or objects.  To make a wildlife collage, first choose a theme, animal or habitat.  Try Red Fox, Birds of Virginia, or Forests.

Now, search old magazines and newspapers for pictures related to your theme.  Cut them out and arrange them on a piece of construction paper, cardboard, or poster board. 

To make your project more exciting, collect things outside that might relate to your theme.  Make sure to respect nature and only collect things that you find on the ground or in your own yard. 

Creatively glue your pictures and other items on your base.  You might decide to arrange objects on your base so they form the shape of a raccoon, you might glue dried leaves on a poster about caterpillars, or you might find lots of pictures of birds and arrange them by colors.

If you want to go more in depth with your project, choose an animal or plant and think about the ecosystem they are part of.  If you are interested in Northern Ringneck snakes, for example, a little research will tell you that they live in hardwood or pine forests.  Glue on some pinecones!  These snakes eat voles, carpenter ants, and copperheads.  Try to find a picture of their prey or cut out the shape of an ant and affix it to your poster.  Attach some paper coils to represent the Northern Ringneck snake’s defense mechanism of coiling its tail when threatened.  They are also nocturnal, so you might choose a black background or paint your poster before you attach your items.

For more collage theme ideas check out the Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy’s Habitat Herald Archives to read a short article about something that interests you before you get started.  Be artistic with your science!

Dave Thomas had a wonderful experience this past spring and was kind enough to write up his observations for us here. I’ll include a few of the photos in this post but will put the full album of the 20 photos on our Facebook Album. It’s a wonderful visual chronology!

Red-shouldered Hawks Nesting at Lansdowne, March — June, 2010, by Dave Thomas

In February, a few residents of our condominium in Lansdowne (part of Leisure World of Virginia) noticed a pair of hawks being very active around a tall oak tree behind the rear parking area of our 11-story building.  For those who know the area, the oak is less than 100 yards from the property boundary with our neighbor, Landsowne Resort.

The hawks took over a squirrel’s nest nicely located at a large tree fork opposite the ninth floor. They then greatly enlarged the nest and drove off squirrels that occasionally came back to look.

During March the pair evidently mated and settled in.  Even before the trees leafed out, however, the interior of the nest was impossible to view, so we could not be sure when and how many eggs were laid.  Much later, it became clear that one young hawk was being raised.

The twenty photographs and captions capture a fragmentary “natural history” of the story as it unfolded.  Even though the photography was difficult, and still distant despite a good telephoto lens, it was a “once-in-a-lifetime” experience for us.

The photographs are selected from well over 1000, most of them sequences at six frames per second to capture fleeting moments. 

For example, the snake was visible in successive photos both approaching the nest and being fed to the young hawk. Unfortunately, sharp focus is often difficult to achieve, but the events were faithfully recorded.

I thank many neighbors who watched developments carefully and kept me informed, and Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy members who identified the hawk species and nesting behavior.  Finally, I have greater awe than then ever of the remarkable work done by dedicated and talented nature photographers. –Dave Thomas

Happy Summer Solstice! This is the day of the year when we have most number of hours of daylight…longest day of the year here in the northern hemisphere, while it’s the shortest day of the year in the southern hemisphere.

If you’ve been doing a photo journal of nature through the seasons, today is the day to go back out to your special nature spot and get your picture. We started this last fall with the Autumnal Equinox, so if you did each season you should now have four seasonal views of your nature spot.

I think its pretty neat to take a look at a place from this perspective – all the changes – the sights, the sounds, the smells – yet with the familiar at the foundation. Have a happy day.

Our Ruby-throated Hummingbirds have returned and while it’s great fun to watch them come to the hummingbird feeder, it’s even cooler to watch them nectar from flowers!  It’s really easy to create a hummingbird garden that will have them (and other interesting visitors like sphynx moths) zipping through your yard.

The first thing to do is select the site – you’ll want to pick a sunny site that is a little sheltered from the wind. It’s also nice to have a tree nearby that your hummingbirds can use as a perch as they take breaks between patrols of your garden.

Next, select the plants – Wonderful native plants that the hummingbirds will love include Bee Balm, Cardinal Flower, Bergamot, Penstemon, Trumpet Vine, Columbine, and Jewelweed (aka Touch-me-not).

The bright red of the Bee Balm and Cardinal Flower will be immediate magnets drawing the hummers in.  In the fall, Jewelweed is a really important nectar source for hummers as they head south.

I sometimes buy annuals that are not native but still pretty and I put them in containers on our deck. Some of the plants that I select for that area are Salvia, Verbena, and Lantana – all in bright reds!

If you have a water source nearby, you can try setting up a mister that the hummingbirds can use to drink from and bath in. I haven’t tried this myself but once I do I’ll send out a blog post on how well it worked.

Some great books on gardening for wildlife that include hummingbird gardens include:

The Wildlife Gardener’s Guide to Hummingbirds, by Susan Day, et al

Attracting Butterflies and Hummingbirdsto Your Backyard, by Sally Roth

Over the next 15 days, teams of nature enthusiasts, young and old (hopefully you!), will get together, plan some time to get outside, and count birds – all for a good cause! There’s still time for you to jump into this if you’d like to form a team.  You don’t need to be an expert birder and in fact, this is a great way to start learning about birds!

To participate in the bird-a-thon, simply find a friend or two, set a day that you’d like to go birding (you can do it for just a few hours or more if you like), download the bird count form, and pick a place to bird. You can do your bird count in your backyard, neighborhood or local park at any time between May 1-15, or join us on one of our bird walks on May 8 and get some help with your bird identification.

Prior to doing your bird count, talk to friends, family and colleagues at work and let them know what you’re doing (they may give you a funny look but that’s part of the fun) and see if they’d be willing to sponsor you in your count. Many people pledge a flat amount of anywhere from $10 on up while others pledge a per species amount like 10 cents a species (so if you see 30 species, they’d donate $3.) Donations are tax deductible and we have thank you gifts for donors giving $100 or more as well as prizes for bird-a-thon participants.

I hope you’ll join us in this annual event!  More information can be found on our Bird-a-thon page.

Here are some fun Earth Day ideas for things to do to get outdoors and enjoy nature!

• Plant a tree or two at our Habitat Restoration event in the Leesburg this weekend.

• Get into Gardening for Wildlife – plant native and let your garden be a wild place!

• Take your children outside and discover nature – we have lots of field trips planned each month.

• Pick up trash at a local park – there are Great Places in every corner of Loudoun, so you don’t have to go far. Just grab a trash bag and pick up litter as you walk along a trail.

• Visit Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy at our fair booth at the Earthday Family Festival on Sunday.

• Contact our County Supervisors and tell them about environmental issues you care about.

• Join/Donate to Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy. Your steady support helps us preserve and protect wildlife habitat here in Loudoun. Your donation provides funding for our environmental education and outreach efforts, and your membership raises our voice for wildlife when we speak out.

When you join Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy, you:
• Support nature programs and projects local to our community.

• Help expand our environmental education and outreach efforts.

• Stay informed and learn more about local wildlife and plants with our quarterly newsletter, the Habitat Herald.

• Receive invitations to our special events and training opportunities, like our upcoming Annual Meeting, celebrating our 15 years of environmental education and action here in Loudoun.

I often think of April as early spring since there are a lot of seasonal changes happening but there’s still some overlap with the slumber of late winter.

Of course by late April, the balance certainly is tipping with migrant birds coming through regularly and wildflowers popping up all over. But, since I’m writing this in the first week of April, I thought it’d be nice to stop to think about those early signs of spring that we see. 

Here are a few that come to mind for me:

- Violets popping up in the lawn, ready for the earliest of pollinators
- Frogs and toads on a rainy night, followed by tadpoles
- The dawn chorus, so much louder than in previous months, such that it wakes me before any alarm
- Dogwoods and Redbuds starting to bloom
- The sweet smell of viburnum through the air
- Black rat snakes warming up in the sun
- Spring azures, Commas, Question Marks and other first of season butterflies flying with purpose
- Cleaning out nestboxes so they’re ready for Chickadees, Bluebirds, House Wrens and others
- Chipmunks back to the ground-level seed feeder, filling up their cheeks
- Hummingbird feeders, cleaned and filled, ready for the first visitors
- Opening all the windows and letting the fresh air blow through

What are some early spring signs of the season for you?

Beavers are great members of the wild kingdom – they play such a critical role in our ecosystem, helping develop and maintain wetlands which serve as some of the richest habitats in our area.

I recently received the latest issue of Beaversprite – the newsletter prepared by a great organization called Beavers Wetlands and Wildlife, and in it they talked about International Beaver Day and some ideas on how to celebrate our wetland engineers:

“International Beaver Day on April 7 celebrates the “keepers of the streams.” It is a great time to hike to a beaver pond, read a beaver book, attend or give a beaver program and write a letter to the editor about these amazing animals. Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife has beaver brochures and other materials available about this keystone species and ways to coexist with the animal that restores our land’s best life support system.”

There’s a beaver pond over at Banshee Reeks Nature Preseve in Leesburg – not sure if the beavers are active there this year but it’s worth a check. 

Check out this latest issue of Beaversprite as well as the Beavers Wetlands and Wildlife website to learn more about living well with Beavers. They’re really cool friends.

As you may recall from my post last year, April is National Frog Month!  While we may laugh at how there seems to be a month or day for every cause, I get excited about a few of them and Frog Month certainly is one of those.

Of course, our season for big amphibian activity really starts up in March and goes through at least July but we’ll take April as a good time to focus in on frogs.

Here are a few ideas for things to do in celebration and appreciation of our frogs (and other amphibians) this month:

- Clean up litter around a wetland – For some reason, it’s been pushed into our psyches that streams, ponds and other waterways are a good place to dump trash. You see old refrigerators, tires, litter and all sorts of other things getting dumped in these sensitive areas. Cleaning up one of these place not only helps get rid of the pollution but also helps change that psyche. A place that has trash is more likely to get more of it. Cleaning up a location shows that someone cares about it.

- Build a frog pond – We have a great set of articles on building a backyard pond. Backyard ponds don’t have to be very large to attract visitors either so this can be lots of fun in all sorts of places.  Just don’t be tempted to buy tadpoles….be patient and your local neighborhood frogs and toads will find it.  And no fish please.

- Learn the frog calls and try your hand at identifying them – Frogs call primarily in the spring to both establish territories and attract mates so this is a great time of year to learn their calls. Through our amphibian monitoring program, volunteers receive an id guide as well as a cd so if you really get interested in frogs (and toads and salamanders) consider signing up but in the meantime, you can find calls on the Virginia Herpetological Society’s website.

- Join us for Frog Walk – while our April walk is already full, we’ll be doing more walks through the late spring and summer. Check our calendar for details.

- Learn about the Frogs and Toads of Loudoun – We had an article in the Habitat Herald awhile back specifically on the species of Frogs, Toads and Salamanders that we have here in Loudoun.  You can read through that article and then have some fun with our Frogs and Toads crossword puzzle.