Swallows? We are banking on them!
This week was new and different, because we conducted 3 bank swallow surveys. Everyone on the crew got a chance to go out and walk the beaches of our watershed looking for these little birds. The Island Nature Trust monitors this threatened swallow species through volunteer scientists, and after having conducted surveys for them in 2023 when they asked all of the watersheds to survey their areas, we felt very prepared to conduct some this week. We are happy to report that the bank swallow colony in Victoria is thriving and if you want to learn more about these adorable birds, why they are threatened and what you can do about it, email us at sswaprojects@gmail.com or check out INT’s bank swallow review from a couple years ago.
Speaking of swallows, we finished up banding all of our tree swallow chicks on Thursday so there’s another year of tree swallow monitoring under our belts. We are looking forward to watching the last few nests of chicks fledge and are hoping to put up more boxes for next year to expand our part in this project. A huge thanks to the Wildlife Conservation Fund for their part in this, Forest Fish and Wildlife for helping us band the birds, and all the other watersheds involved, especially Trout River Environmental Committee who is organizing the project this year.
We also received some bat monitors from the Watershed Alliance to conduct bat monitoring surveys in our watershed. This is important information for us to have, and the Alliance tries to cover most of the Island with these surveys to get a whole picture of the health of the bat population, what species are located where, and how many of them there are. It is always exciting to see where we have a lot of bats in the watershed!
Other than that, we removed invasive species, installed 7 brush mats in Tryon and Westmoreland, and restored stream on the west branch of Westmoreland to connect fish passage between two areas we had restored last year. We are happy to be seeing progress towards our restoration goals this summer, and it always feels good to be making a difference.
Keep an eye out for Swim for the South Shore information going live on Monday! We hope to see you out this year, and we have a new 0.5 km option for those of you who are feeling slightly less intrepid.
Hope you are all staying cool and dry!
Love, SSWA
Heading Off into Summer
To start off our week, Monday, we built out some brush mats in Tryon to help support the stream banks and collect sediment. The crew also removed some blockages to the stream. In the afternoon we went to the DeSable estuary where we got some really cool shots and videos of the area with the drone. To finish the day went swallow banding with Matt Ginn since some of our chicks were the right age–you need to band them at 10 or 11 days old.
Tuesday we started the day off with headwater surveys off of the County Line Road. About a 45 minute hike through the woods to the stream headwaters, just to find out that one of them ran under a nearby field and was not flowing much in this dry weather. The other few were looking good and healthy. It’s important to check on the headwaters, because they influence the health of the whole river system. Once the survey was done Cam and Matt went around and checked trail cams while Ian, Teo and Nout went door to door handing out landowner permission forms.
Wednesday we were short two team members as Cameron and Ian were sent to do in the stream chainsawing training with some of the other watershed groups. Half of the team started the day off by checking quadrats to note any changes. At the same time the other half did some estuary monitoring. After the check the crew did yet another headwater survey, this one a little more lengthy. To finish off the day the team transplanted saltmarsh cordgrass into the saltmarsh restoration site in the DeSable Estuary. We are excited to see if it takes well to the area, and are happy to be back working on this project.
Thursday we had a small crew, but they got a lot done! Half of them went to water the trees we had planted a few weeks ago, which took most of the day since there are around 1300 of them. The two people went to clean up the parks and weed the pollinator gardens. With everything looking spiffy, now is a great time to get out and explore some of SSWAs natural parks!
To finish off the week, most of the team went to Branch road to finish up the stream restoration stretch there; this took most of the morning. In the afternoon the crew went and quickly checked our water temperature monitoring devices before heading off to the Linden Hill Pond and Lord’s Pond pollinator gardens to do a thorough weeding and trimming. Right at the very end of the day we trimmed up the edges of the Tryon River Trail and finished it all up with a quick tidy of the office.
Get out and explore!
Love, SSWA
Hatching Schemes
Week five started off with stream restoration on the east branch of Westmoreland. We are heading into the main portion of our summer work now as Cameron and Ian have recently obtained their chainsaw safety certifications and are doing a wonderful job leading the crew. Stream restoration is now focusing on a “less is more” philosophy, ensuring that large obstructions are removed, but enough natural debris is retained in order to maintain the natural habitat. Later that day Matt and Romy joined Forest Fish and Wildlife PEI to band the adult nesting tree swallows found in various boxes throughout the watershed area – many of the swallows had successful hatches, which is amazing.
In other news, the team obtained a water pump generously given by Frank, in order to water the earlier planted trees more efficiently. Doing so greatly increases survival chances of the trees, so we will continue to water them for the next week or two. Finally, part of the team travelled down to Mike’s property in order to observe an impressive and extensive patch of lady slippers. Mike also kindly donated a preserved female ruby-throated hummingbird specimen to display in the team office.
Tuesday, the team continued to water the planted trees. Additionally, the team returned to the stream restoration site from Monday in order to remove invasive plant species. The dominating invasive species was bitter-sweet nightshade. Some morning glory was noted, but did not pose a major concern. Two large notable patches of nightshade were removed. Fun fact: plant members of the nightshade family include trace amounts of nicotine (with tobacco being very high in it). These include common vegetables like tomatoes, potatoes and eggplants. Within these plants, nicotine serves as a natural pest repellent.
Wednesday was started off by checking on the progress of the tree swallows, and doing quadrat checks on saltmarsh grass. The team did some stream restoration along the western westmoreland branch and removed invasive species as needed.
Thursday, part of the team went off to monitor the 17 sites for water quality, while the rest tackled the eastern branch of Tryon river. There, the team removed invasive species and removed obstructions. Brushmats were also created for bank stabilization. All around stream restoration is our goal for the summer and we are off to a good start.
On Friday, part of the team continued with construction of brushmats, with the help of our new team member Rohan. The rest of the team monitored the progress of the tree swallows, and completed a water quality check for the western side of Westmoreland headwater.
Overall it was a great week with a lot of good work done!
Love, SSWA
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No Tree Leaf-t Behind!
Week four started in a very productive way, planting trees and shrubs to enhance the coastal buffer zone along the Westmoreland river estuary. Big thanks to the Kensington North Watersheds Association (KNWSA) for coming out for the day to help us plant around 800 trees and shrubs on Monday alone!
On Tuesday, the crew continued planting this riparian buffer while Ian and Cameron began their chainsaw training. Tuesday was also exciting because the first of our tree swallow clutches began to hatch! We saw some very very young birds in one of the nests when we went to check, and we are looking forward to the rest of our nests hatching soon.
Wednesday morning, the crew finally finished planting the last of the riparian buffer zone, totaling roughly 1300 plants! In the afternoon, half the crew went out to do a stream assessment in Tryon, while the other half talked to some landowners in our watersheds to ask permission to conduct our work. If you have not given us permission, live in our area, and own property with a stream or estuary on it, please fill out and send us a permission form LMIK. While most of the crew was hard at work, Ian and Cameron were tearing it up at chainsaw training.
Thursday, Matt and Nout went out to Kensington to help out KNWSA with their Grade Six Environmental Fun Day, by running a Tree Identification station. Afterwards, Island Falconry came out to show off two of their raptors to the kids, and Matt and Nout got to hold the Peregrine Falcon! The rest of the crew started park maintenance and did a stream survey in Tryon while avoiding the thunderstorms.
On Friday, some of the crew went out to maintain the rest of the parks, and the others went out to make brush mats. All in all, a very productive end to the week.
Hope you can find some sun!
Love, SSWA
Trees, Trees and More Trees
Week 3 started off with some more of our annual stream and head water surveys. This information is greatly needed for us to decide an action plan to ensure the stream remains as healthy as possible. We also finished checking the remainder of the trail camera photos that we collected last week. One of the cameras had a snowshoe hare that we slowly watched change back to its summer coat. Every time it ran past the camera it was a little more brown. And where was the boss when all this happened? NOWHERE TO BE FOUND!!! Just kidding, Matt spent some time on Monday learning how to do a forest bird count survey in Belfast. We may start to introduce this monitoring protocol into our work, so it was good to learn some more about how BAWG does it.
Speaking of bird surveys we continued to monitor our tree swallow boxes to check for eggs. While we found nests and eggs from tree swallows in many of our survey sites, we also had a surprising discovery that a Black-Capped Chickadee decided our survey box is more suitable for its nest than those pesky tree swallows. So now we are tracking the progress of a Chickadee nest as well. We also continued with our Quadrat Salt-Marsh surveys and our fish trap survey. This marks the first week we ever got fish every day we checked the trap.
During the mid-late week our attention was shifted to trees as we received trees for our first major planting project this year. 1800 trees were delivered to SSWA this week as we begin the largest planting season SSWA has ever seen. The next week or so is going to be spent planting a coastal buffer zone with around 1300 trees and shrubs! Look out for before and after pictures over the next year as this project progresses.
Thursday we did our second public event of the season with Ron. The crew and members of the public gathered at the Tryon Trail and went birding. Ron, an avid birder in the area, led us around as we looked and listened for the birds as we tracked them on the Merlin Bird ID app. We were excited to hear a catbird and a Northern Cardinal but did not see either of them. It was fun to learn from such an experienced birder, and some of the crew got excited to start using Merlin in the field.
To wrap up this busy week we conducted another stream assessment and headwater survey, did some park maintenance at the Daryl Guignon Memorial Park in Crapaud and planted even more trees.
Stay tuned for more interesting updates as our season progresses!
Love, SSWA
Warming Up
This week started off with some cleaning and tidying of our pollinator gardens and Linden Hill Pond Park and Lord’s Pond. We also checked out the extension of the Tryon River Trail to see if there were any trees that had fallen over the winter. We want to ensure that our trails are spiffed up in time for this summer season. That afternoon, we conducted the first of a few redd surveys to look for the nests of Rainbow Trout. They are the only fish in our streams that nests in the springtime so any redds we see, we can be sure are from Rainbow Trout.
On Tuesday more data was collected from the trail cameras and captured photos of a ruffed grouse, a coyote and a field mouse! It was also our first day of checking our fish trap in Lord’s Pond, which will now be checked everyday in June in hopes to record some data on fish passage up the fish ladder there. On the first day we were able to record measurements from one small rainbow trout and luckily as the week went on we were able to record measurements from six other small rainbow trout!
Next up, was to check the quadrats in the salt marshes to measure the grass so we can monitor how well the grass is growing and get an idea of how good the environment is within the estuary. The other part of the crew spent this morning putting in three brush mats! Off to a good start on our restoration efforts. The afternoon was spent conducting a stream assessment and redd survey in Westmoreland.
Starting Thursday off strong, we did some park maintenance at Linden Hill Pond Park to get ready for the event on Friday. We also continued our stream assessments in the Tryon watershed, which is one of our surveying priorities this spring–we have not conducted stream assessments in Tryon since PTS Fiona.
To finish off the week, we did some trail maintenance at Camp Abegweit and repaired the fish trap, which was somewhat worse for wear. In the afternoon we hosted Art in the Park at Linden Hill Pond Park where we painted a peace pole! It was wonderful to see people come out to such a positive event and the pole will be erected in the park in a couple of weeks. If you’re in the DeSable area, feel free to check it out! And if you’re sad you missed the event, keep an eye out next May–we host Art in the Park each spring.
We had a great week full of fun and laughs, and are excited to see what next week brings us!
Stay cool!
Love, SSWA
May Showers
Welcome back everyone to another summer season at SSWA! We are excited to be back at work in the streams with the summer crew starting this week. Our first week started on Tuesday with the installation of water temperature monitoring devices across all of the watersheds. We also spent some time going through our trail cameras. While going through the cams we stumbled upon a beautiful capture of a coyote in broad daylight. It seems like he saw something he liked around our trail camera. In the afternoon we wanted to see what some of our streams looked like and what work needed to be done to them.
The next day we wanted a jump on some early maintenance for our park locations. We started park maintenance by the Westmoreland Pond in the first half of the morning, then the second half we touched up the pollinator garden at the Daryl Guignon Memorial Park. In the afternoon we installed some quadrats which are used to monitor salt marsh grass and health and performed checks on our tree swallow monitoring boxes.
Thursday we took the whole crew out for a chill morning of water quality testing. In the second half of the day, as water quality took up all morning, some of us completed the tree swallow check and did another stream assessment in the Tryon area, the rest of us finished up going through our trail cam photos.
Ending off the first week of work we were limited to what we were able to do as it was pouring rain for most of the day. We did end up mowing and cleaning up some of our pollinator gardens before the rain got too bad, but the rest of the day was spent cleaning up the office and entering the data we had collected all week from different monitoring projects.
Happy to be back!
Love, SSWA
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