Spring Cleaning at Thickson’s Woods

Saturday April 24 from nine to noon

Don’t call it work, call it play! Housework is always more fun at someone else’s place, in good company. Come play in the nature reserve, home to chipmunks, foxes, yellow warblers and snapping turtles.

It’s an ironic fact of our times that every chore on our Earth Day list has a root cause with us humans.

• Garbage cleanup: help pick up plastic bags and coffee cups blown into the meadow, and refuse dumped into the marsh
• Garlic mustard control: help dig up this invasive species introduced by early settlers, now threatening woods across North America
• Loosening beaver guards: if southern Ontario was still covered in forests, we wouldn’t have to protect precious large trees from our Canadian beaver’s prodigious teeth. Time to clip that chicken wire so the trees can grow and flourish!
• Nest box clean-out: if we hadn’t imported European starlings, and cleared 99% of our forests, there would be lots of natural tree hollows for our native birds to nest in
• Tree planting: help create the precious hedgerows warblers and saw-whet owls love, in the heart of an industrial wasteland
  Bring work gloves, plus tools for your preferred task: hand trowels, wire cutters, spades.

After lunch, local birder and naturalist Don Docherty will lead a walk around the nature reserve, enjoying the sights and sounds of spring.

Mark your calendars for the 2010 Birds, Beavers and Butterflies Nature Festival

We look forward to seeing you on
Saturday, September 18, 9:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Stay tuned for details.